Bharata had been counting for fourteen years.
He was not living in the palace. He had never sat on the throne. He lived in a village called Nandigrāma, just outside the city, near enough to see the road — and on the throne, where a king would sit, he had put his brother's sandals.
Every day he brought them what a king would be brought, and told them what a king would be told, and then went and looked at the road.
The fourteen years ended on a particular day, and that day arrived, and the road was empty.
It stayed empty all morning.
And then there was a monkey on the road, running, and getting bigger, and shouting something nobody could hear yet.
Hanumān had gone ahead. That is all he had been sent to do — to get there first, so that Bharata would not have to spend one more hour of the day not knowing.
Ayodhyā had a few hours' warning and used every one of them. They washed the streets. They hung flags off everything that would hold one. Every doorway got a garland.
And because nobody knew what hour he would come, and nobody was going to risk him arriving in the dark, they put lamps out — along the walls, along the roofs, down both sides of the road — and lit them, and did not let them go out.
That is the night. That is the whole festival: a city that did not know exactly when, and so lit everything, and stayed up.
Nobody in that city knew what hour he would come. They lit the road anyway, the whole length of it, and sat up to watch it burn.