In Ayodhya life passed slowly, nothing was normal anymore.Twelve days after the cremation, the 'Shraddha' ceremony took place, when the Brahmins were bestowed with gifts of gold, silver, gems, wealth, food and fine clothes along with hundreds of cows and goats.Mansions and servants too were part of the charity. On the morning of the thirteenth day Bharata collecting his father's ashes lamented, "Father, I have lost the brother to whom I was entrusted to the jungles and you to death! Who will be my refuge now? Beholding a mighty monarch reduced to a fistful of ashes and a handful of bones, Bharata sobbed hopelessly, abandoning all restraint.

Satrughna battling with his own sorrow and overwhelmed with Bharata's grief wailed. "Father when you, the very essence of dharma, departed why did not the earth shatter? I will never enter an Ayodhya, which is not graced by Rama." Consoling the prince, Vasishta gently reminded him of his duties yet to be fulfilled. He said that every man born on this earth was subject to the dualities of nature such as hunger and thirst, grief and delusion, old age and death, common to all and from which there was no known escape. The wise do not grieve for that which is inevitable and cannot be escaped.Life is an eternal war between these dualities and death is the ultimate event of every life. Birth and death are natural and unavoidable, so one should not sorrow for them." Comforted and quietened, the princes and the ministers prepared to bring to a close of what was left of the funeral rites.