Sita — Nandini Sahu

Apart
from listening to my grandmother’s oral tales, I read a whole lot of The
Ramayanas during my formative years. Some of those versions were: Kavitavali by Tulsidas, R.K. Narayana’s Ramayana, which was a rendering of
Kamban’s Ramavataram into prose in
English, The Ramayana of Tulasidasa
translated by F.S. Growse, the seven Kandas
of The Ramayana by Valmiki,
Balarama Dasa’s Jagamohan Ramayan in
Odia, Adikavi Sarala Dasa’s Vilanka
Ramayana in Odia; and then I watched the Rama-Lila performances in Odisha(and
now in Delhi in the Ramlila ground) with keen interest. I read Gangadhar Meher’s
Tapaswini and Upendra Bhanja’s Vaidehishavilas, both in Odia, and was
quite inspired by their poetic rendering of Sita’s  character. Reading the religious texts of
many other religions too inspired me. Somewhere in this text, as an epic poet, I have
referred to the Moses story from the Old Testament ,drawing  obvious parallels between The Ramayana and the Holy Bible .

In Odisha, my home state,
the  Bhagabat
 Tungis  were places where people gathered in the
evening to listen to discourses from the Srimad
Bhagavad and The Ramayana. (The
tradition is sadly on the verge of being wiped out under the impact of
modernization.) I listened to the Ramayana
there as a child, and understood that Srimad
Bhagavad is the most popular among the 18 Puranas; it contains the essence of Indian philosophy. It
simplifies the many esoteric philosophies of other scriptures and Vedas. It
imparts knowledge of life, that is, doing one’s duty without any attachment–
as T S Eliot would have said, depersonalizing oneself. It teaches us to shun
pride and arrogance. Devotion has nine marks–listening to the name of God,
chanting his name, remembrance of Him, serving, worshiping, saluting Him,
friendship and self-dedication. We should surrender the fruits of our
achievements to God without bothering about success or failure. I correlated
these inherited ideas of Srimad Bhagavad
with the life philosophy of Sita and interpreted her character with passion and
devotion.

When
I grew up, I thought objectively about Sita’s acceptance of life with all
positivity. Her never-give-up attitude made her my role model, my icon. Even
though she was the icon of rebellion, she had great patience. Her birth from
the womb of Mother Earth stood for Nature, vivacity and truth. Sita is the
epitome of a virtuous woman in Indian cultural imagination. Mahatma Gandhi,
during the Non-Cooperation Movement, projected Sita as the ideal character
before the Indians – that their anti-colonialism and respect for cultural
values may be emulated from Sita, who was rebellious enough not to accept
injustice, patient enough to protest silently, uncompromising when it came to
proving her virtue and independent when she was dejected by all. That way, Sita
was truly modern, even though her patience and silent suffering is sometimes
criticized by us modern women – that by being so forgiving by nature, she has
kind of justified, encouraged the subjugation of women! I do not agree to this
version of Sita’s character. To my mind, Sita had the courage to break all
conventions. Perhaps I consoled myself by thinking, Rama could never lead a
normal life after he banished Sita. Ultimately after her going back to Mother
Earth, he had to make an end of his life by going into the Sarayu river. Isn’t
it a lesson / example for any man that if he gives heartache to the ‘Laxmi’ in his life, his woman, he has
to pay back? Sita was like Parvati, raising her children single-handedly,
making them such powerful that they could defeat the entire army of Rama during
the Asvamedha Yajna. Then, she was
none other than Goddess Kali when she refused to go back to Ayodhya as the
queen and wife by proving her purity once more. The people of Ayodhya realized,
ultimately, that by abandoning a woman, they have lost all glory of Ayodhya.

 Even when we read the folk tales and folk
songs of India, especially those related to the Sita myth, orally transmitted
to us from the Mithila region, this sentiment comes through. Sita has been
accepted as the daughter of every house in Mithila, and the parents are
reluctant even today to marry off their daughters in Avadh. In all wedding
songs of the region, one can hear only the names of Sita, not Rama. One of the
folktales depicts the story of the Shiv
Dhanush. Once Sita was smearing cow dung on the floor when she casually
lifted the Shiv Dhanush. Then her
father decided his daughter would marry a man who can only break the Shiv Dhanush into nine pieces. I was concerned
after reading this patriarchal attitude in our folklore as well. If a girl is
good enough to do something praiseworthy, her husband must be at least ‘nine
times’ better than her!! Again, the very idea of a Swayamvar is to facilitate a girl to select her husband among
many. But by putting this precondition of getting her the mightiest husband, at
least nine times better than her, again patriarchy has snatched the freedom of
a woman. This continues even today—the preconditions of any marriage, and the
criterion to find a good bridegroom, are mostly decided by the elders in the
family—thus many loveless marriages happen. Like Rama qualified in the Shiv Dhanush test, but finally he failed
to be a praiseworthy husband.

 It is an accepted fact that the story of Sita
comes to us with an entirely captivating contemporaneity. Since the last 2500
years, the story has been articulated in innumerable ways in the diverse
tongues of India. But in these interpretations, not only are the beseeched
historical accounts juxtaposed with a decipherable degree of magnetism that
would make an interesting neo-historicist study, authors across the spectrum of
time have also endeavoured predictive elements of their own periodicity into
the incarnate history of the ever renewable legend of Rama-Sita. I have the
similar enticement, and devoid of dipping into the  jeopardies of survival, I have attempted here
a miracle of divining and humanising Sita, with a quixotic presentiment. There
are the plunges of a very subjective otherworldliness to recount the concerns
rampant in the contemporary society  with
the recurrent morals and multiplicities of the story of Rama-Sita. Willy-nilly,
however, the gendered stereotype of an epic as a masculine form has come under
the scanner in my perspective in this poem.

Oppression,
austerity, obedient allegiance to husband are some of the epitomes associated
with the standard observations of the character of Sita. But  the Sita who embodied feminine power, who
could lift Shiva’s colossal bow, who audaciously decided on  convoying with  Rama into exile, who dared to encounter
Ravana  boldly, and who disproved to
undertake a subsequent trial, a second fire-test, is time and again
disremembered. To me, Sita is the strongest woman in any mythology in the
world.  I would rather say, Sita lives in
our collective consciousness as a powerful inspiration on the spirit of all progressive,
independent women, with or without their knowledge of it.

Kamban
has portrayed The Ramayana as a ‘divine
comedy’; it has been translated by the able hands of R.K. Narayan, who had
no religious-bias in his character. Perhaps, like Ramanujan, he too believed
that religion is ‘like one’s underwear’. Anyway, I was moved by one phase in
Kamban’s Ramavataram, where Sita
reunites with Rama after one year’s separation in Lanka in full public view,
and is agitated by her husband’s indifference:

“Rama remained brooding
for a while and suddenly said, ‘My task is done. I have now freed you. I have
fulfilled my mission. All this effort has been not to attain personal
satisfaction for you or me. It was to vindicate the honour of the Ikshavaku
race and to honour our ancestor’s codes and values. After all this, I must tell
you that it is not customary to admit back to the normal married fold a woman
who has resided all alone in a stranger’s home. There can be no question of
living together again. I leave you free to go where you please and choose any
place to live in.” I was deeply grieved
and shocked to think of the helplessness of a wife, who loved only and only her
husband in her thought and action, is deserted because she had to “live alone”
in a stranger’s place for some time, for some reason, without the support of
father, brother or husband– precisely without any patriarchal support. Anyway,
without being shattered, the way Sita handled the situation, proved her
chastity without asking Rama to prove his chastity (he, too, lived among
strangers in the absence of his wife!) made me respect her to the utmost, and I
decided, I am going to pen it down.

Sita (A Poem) presents
my assertion and assessment of Sita that reconnoitres multiple traits of her
life and personality. It retreats to the regional Ramayanas, mythology,
folklore and talks about her birth, love, marriage, exile, abduction, test by
fire, and as a final point, her homecoming/going back to Mother Earth. I
endeavour to offer a novel elucidation to this mysterious, inexplicable
character and her ineffaceable influence on our lives. It’s a poem about the
contemporaneity of Sita. Could I say, I have deconstructed the stereotypical
‘Sita’ and instituted the bits and pieces of the bold and beautiful Sita in all
of us? The world says, a woman is mysterious. She wants to look good, get
admiration and devotion, yet she doesn’t desire to be coveted! It’s such
difficult to understand her when she keeps her beauty beyond bounds with the
armour of knowledge and power! This is what I call the ‘Sitaness’ of every woman.

Sita
was a woman close to Nature—she was the original ‘ecofeminist’—if I may!
Deserted twice, abducted once, she never spent her life brooding over a
decipherable destiny, rather she took the charge of the flora and fauna, and
then her own children Lava-Kusha, as a single parent till they were twelve
years old. She was like Mother Earth. She was the embodiment of patience,
endurance, optimism, love and motherhood. At one point, Sita realized her
weaknesses as well, like any mortal woman. She tampered with the laws of Nature
by believing in a golden deer, whereas rationally she should have thought that
Nature cannot produce a golden deer! She crossed the Lakshman-rekha, doubted the integrity of her brother-like
brother-in-law, Lakshmana, when he denied to leave her alone in the jungle and
go in search of his brother Rama. She accepts her culpability, thus sends a
message that guilt and punishment go hand-in-hand, even for Goddess Sita. Sita’s
silent acceptance of injustice, her fire-test, cannot be manipulated as her
acceptance of victimhood, setting a platform for future injustice to women
through domestic violence, bride-burning, Johar
or Sati. Sometimes critics are like
lice on the body of a text. That’s what some critics have done to the character
of Sita in the Ramayana; they have
mostly distorted her character and personality. For me, nonviolence was Sita’s strength
and she was a true Satyagrahi ; and
she defeated patriarchy at every step, by not attacking the accoster with the
same weapon. Thus, I transact with the bigger questions of patriarchy and
identity politics in this poem. It’s a poem about patriarchal management,gender
and identity issues of a text. Finally, I talk of today’s women, the new women,
and their strength of character vis-à-vis / as an inspiration from the
character of Sita, who, to my mind, remains a living prototype.

Fritj of Capra, a
physicist, whose  The Tao of Physics (1975) was inspired by a mystical experience in
which he realized the working of the cosmos to be “the Dance of Shiva.” About
the vibrating universe and peace, he comments:

 “Modern
physics…pictures matter not at all as passive and inert, but as being in a
continuous dancing and vibrating motion whose rhythmic patterns are determined
by the molecular, atomic and nuclear structures. This is also the way in which
Eastern mystics see the material world. They all emphasize that the universe
has to be grasped dynamically, as it moves, vibrates and dances; that Nature is
not in a static, but a dynamic equilibrium.”

I find its Indian parallel
in our myth. Both linguistically and discursively, there is this common claim
of Hindus that God stands for G.O.D.–Generator, Operator, Destroyer, i.e.
Lord  Brahma, Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva
–  and such ideas only make the familiar
unconventional and the strange  more
familiar. The word Shanti, peace,  is firmly couched in the Sanskrit, mostly,
Hindu tradition – but it’s everywhere – in Eliot’s The Waste Land to Madonna’s lyrics to Michael  Caine’s character in the film Children of Men (2006) . In Indian
mythology, Sita spreads this word ‘Shanti’
in its true spirit through her peaceful rebellion. She herself is the Generator,
Operator, Destroyer; and the familiar and the strange, both are her ideas of taking
life in her stride.

A
part of me says that Sita should never have given even the first fire-test
after Rama rejected her publicly in Lanka. Rather she should have gone back to
the lap of Mother Earth at that instant without giving Rama the joy of being
her rightful husband and father of her children again. After all a man had
accused the character, the purity, the sanctity of a woman which is the
ultimate unbearable thing for her! Why did she bear with this humiliation,
prove her purity, and go back to the man who had no respect, no trust, and no
faith? Yet another part of me believes, what Sita did was most desirable. After
all a woman stands for patience, purity, penitence and perseverance. She took
the fire-test and proved that what the society can think of a woman out of its
narrow outlook, is wrong. She earned the reverence of all by the fire-baptism.
Next, she had to come back forgiving Rama for his first ever mistake because
she truly loved him. Also, she had some incomplete work in her life as yet. A
woman is complete with motherhood. She had to perform her duties of a wife,
queen, daughter-in-law and most importantly, a mother. Thus, I leave it to the
reader of ‘Sita’ (A Poem) to frame
his/her own individual view about Sita’s character. For me, Sita was a rebel
even though she never fought back with the same weapons, because she didn’t
believe in the victor-vanquished theory. She had more patience, courage and
conviction than any woman, because a non-violent revolution needs far more perseverance
than a violent one. I have posed some existential questions of life through
this poem, through Sita’s questions to Lord Rama, and of course to the society.
Through my long narrative Sita, which can be read as a poem of social mobility,
I salute the spirit of women who succeed in leading a meaningful life against
all odds.  

References:

–Ian Hacking, ‘Memory
Sciences, Memory Politics’, Tense Past: Cultural
Essays in Trauma and Memory. New York:Routledge,1996. (70)