Cantos XXV

 

I am away from Rama since ages, but my eternal monologue continues

I have been taking births and rebirths, my

thirst unquenched, my heart passion-drenched.

 

I distribute myself into atoms in my rebirths; in the

Sitaness of every woman Sita eternally breaths.

I am re-born as Mother Teresa, Florence

 

Nightingale, Lucy Grey, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra,

Atlanta, Cordelia, Desclemona, Penelope, Sylvia Plath,

Athena, Kunti, Draupadi, Gandhari, Shakuntala,

 

Radha, Meerabai, Kalpana Chawla, Kiran Bedi,

Indira, Nirbhaya, Damini, Lata ,Nandini, Rebati or Anandi.

I live numerous lives, in women, bold and beautiful.

 

In the Ramayana, my incandescent strength

did resolute my character and self-respect.

That was my aura, not to acknowledge opposing infringements.

 

Trijala was another form of Sita in my

incarceration, in our fellow feeling and feminine bonding.

I was the spark in Mandoodari, who

 

questioned her husband Ravana poignantly

even on his deathbed. I was in Urmila,

in her patient waiting, her merciful self-control.

 

 

 

I was in Draupadi, who wandered with her

five husbands in the forest for twelve years

and got disrobed in the Kuru Sabha in

 

their silent protest. I got burnt with my humiliation

in her sinuous open hair. And I lived in her

platonic love for her sakha, Lord Krishna.

 

I lived in Nirbhaya, gang-raped in a

moving Delhi bus; I struggled, I survived, I perished,

enkindling the fire of truth amongst mankind.

 

I have heard, Ravana was a great scholar,

A yogic personality, who poised 'Shiva

Tandava Stotra.' Then how could he desire another's wife?

 

I was never the subdued woman as painted in

Tulsidas' Ramacharitamanas. I was eternally

pure, eternally chaste. Sufi poet Mullah Masiha

 

has likened me to the soul. Like soul

that is eternally covered by the body, Sita

is infinitely covered by clothes, never disrobed.

 

My wholesomeness is talked of in Madhav Kandali's

Sat Kanda Ramayana. Hanuman reached

Ravana's Madhusala and found him asleep

 

 

 

in the midst of beautiful women. To

look for me, Hanuman became a honeybee

and smelt the mouth of each woman

 

as it was impossible to drink wine for the pure

woman, Sita. I was vocal and intrepid

before the fire-orci9at and when I withdrew to Mother Earth

 

Thus, I am glorified in classical literature,

Epitomized in folklore. Why did you

try to receive me back as your queen, oh

 

Rama, after you met Lava-Kusha? Had

another washer man, at some other point of

life, questioned my integrity, you would

 

have designed a third fire-ordeal for me?

How often a woman is married, since then,

to a man who is acutely apprehensive of her

 

character. How often the Wife doesn't question

him, rather spends ages defending herself and assuring of her

single-minded love to her husband, for the sake of her children?

 

Isn't it time for the woman to stop ruminating

and pleading, and assent single parenthood, like Sita?

Someone accused me, Johar, Sati and

 

 

 

bride-burning emanate from my willful fire-test.

I beg to differ here. Johar, Sail, bride

burning are vehemently, malignantly done to women.

 

But I accepted the first fire-test by choice, and

I declined the second one, when I was

asked to prove chastity by fire, by sheer chance.

 

Oh women! Take Sita, the bold defender, Sita

the ecofeminist, Sita, the mother, as your role model.

I never felt the necessity to explicate my life

 

to anyone, and was in harmony with myself

in the Valmiki ashram, which is my

utmost forte as a complete woman..

 

Many Ramayanas have conveyed my

loyalty, my docile character, I am illustrated

as a one-dimensional character.

 

Stop it. It's time to terminate that image

and resurrect me, alter the Sita-myth,

talk of the progressive woman Sita, redefine Sita.

 

Some Ramayanas have rendered me as a typical Indian

woman in a patriarchal society living

under the security of father, husband, or rishis and sons.

 

 

 

Some say that Sita cannot be a contemporary

role-model. It's time to disrupt that

customary expelling image, and critique me as an individual.

 

Women! When the society asks you to be

'like Sita, and decides your future by

virtue of public morality, forces you be chaste

 

and submissive, please redefine your lives.

Let me hark back, there is yet another

veiled, unseen Sita in the Ramayana, the one

 

who questioned the standards and rulebooks

of public morality, purity, chastity set for her.

Live life like Sita, communicate a new relevance of her.

 

My fire-ordeal was never a metaphor for subjugation.

Rather I was archetypal for expressing what

any other woman would have repressed.

 

I had my strength to protest in predisposition,

rectitude and concentration. My fierce love for Rama

was an inexorable force, a real cradle of feminine control.

 

My story is the story of the aboriginal and the shared

glitches of love — possessiveness, parsimoniousness and loyalty

on the one hand, and dedication, truth, honesty on the other.

 

 

 

I attained moksha with my fire-ordeal, I

achieved redemption by going back to Mother Earth.

I had organic love for the man who broke my heart.

 

With this poem, I am not amending sacred religion

or creating a profane version of faith. Mine is the

collective tale, shared fate of Sita, Salina or Margaret.

 

Then, what is new about retelling my legend told

by all regional, folklore and classical Ramayanas? With this,

I am getting out of the traditional Sita, and this is a text hybrid.

 

A medieval Ramayana, Adhyatma Ramayana, reads

that I knew at my Swayamvara that you'll

be exiled for fourteen years, and I would be no queen.

 

By wedding you, oh Rama, I invited exile

and forest-life for me, with all consciousness.

In return, what did you do? You are the

 

mightiest king. You could have defeated

Ravana in a moment and brought me back home

rather than allowing your wife live in someone's

 

house for one whole year and then question

her loyalty'! I was under another man's control!

Magnanimously you told, I couldn't be your

 

 

 

wife after being 'disloyal', but I could chose

anyone else to live with -- may be "Lakshmana,

Vibhishan or Sugreeva !" Didn't you cross the parapet of maryada

 

oh Maryada Purusottam Rama? You disgraced

my relations with brother Lakshmana and

my devotees, Vibhish3n and Sugreeva.

 

How could you cross this limit--you

believe in defining relationships, yet you questioned the

relationship of a solitary woman with a resilient male!

 

Thus, now I articulate my ins and outs as an autonomous

person, derive my explanations from the codes

of social ethics and sovereign obligation, which

 

I position beyond the patriarchal decree of the

husband's unconditional power over the wife.

The paradox is, to oblige you, my husband,

 

I challenged you at last; to let you know

that a woman need not be 'loyal' like a tamed animal, the

question of 'loyalty' cannot even come

 

between master-slave in case of any bonded-labour

or not even between the pet and the pet- owner.

My uncomplaining approval of injustice cannot be

 

 

 

manipulated vis-à-vis communal and sacred ideologies

of wifehood; because it was my satyagraha.

I defeated patriarchy, and did that with invisible, imperceptible weapons.

 

We have heard a lot about both parents being inevitable to

groom the children well. Well, look at my children!

Do they lack power in character or proper education?

 

I was a single parent, I bequeathed in them good values and the

conviction to live life minus their father, and never question.

They could one day defeat Lord Rama and mighty Hanuman !!

 

And look at the Kauravas—could King Dhritarashtra and queen Gandhari provide them the ideals deemed fit for enlightened children?

Uttara did that better for Pareekshit, being a widow and alone.

 

Mothers, do not be disheartened if you are all on your own.

Providence might have designed it so for you for a cause greater.

What matters is father or no father—a worthy life for your children.

 

I am told about the Adbhuta Ramayana, where

Ravana's real destroyer was never Rama. Rather

it says, Sita accepted the manifestation of

 

Goddess Kali, the killer goddess, and she

salvaged you from Ravana. You must understand

oh Rama, that shakta Philosophy is the

 

 

 

most prevailing truth, and the definitive

energy originates from the feminine source

of structure, and not from male-chauvinism.

 

But you have your defends too my Lord.

Male authoritarians convincingly justify your injustice

They explain their discomposure of  accepting

 

the truth that Rama did utter injustice to Sita.

The responsibility is shifted to some cruel

design of cosmic destiny. It says the

 

Sita whom Ravana abducted was a simple image

of Sita, and Rama had hidden his real wife

to keep her untainted. How convincing a story!

 

This doesn't happen in the real world, women!

Real Nirbhaya is raped in a moving bus in Delhi

and real Madhavi is ever suspected by the man of the World.

 

In the folk Ramains of Kullu and Shimla

from the Solan and Una districts, it is believed

that Sita was Ravana and Mandodari's daughter.

 

Ravana had obtained under duress some blood of sages and

saints which Mandoodari drank by chance

and got pregnant. Then she placed her

 

 

 

new-born daughter in a casket and got it thrown

near king Janaka's kingdom, whose daughter

she became, was named as Sita. At a later stage

 

Ravana, abducted her, his own daughter, but

couldn't touch her, she placed a thin grass

between him and her, which he couldn't cross.

 

This doesn't happen in the real world, women!

Drunken fathers rape minor daughters,

their mothers may not even protest! Don't be

 

a glorious victim, don't get flattered being called

a besieged beauty or an effervescent and

pioneering woman. It's just identity politics.

 

Hymns and songs confer a romantic image

on me; Balarama Das  in Odia Jagamohan

Ramayana writes an Ode, Kanta Koili, that Sita

 

laments her separation before a cuckoo

and sends messages to Rama through her.

Odia writers Upendra Bhanja in Vaidehishavilasa

                                         

and Gangadhar Meher in Tapaswini, both

classics, Write erudite poetry about Sita.

All these avant-garde works of fine art authorize

 

 

 

women of noble households and honours.

Women! You grow up in the Indian households

listening oral tales and poetry of Sita. Filter those and

 

I went from a life of royal extravagance to one

of exile and privation, marginalization — a

stride demanding courage and physical endurance.

 

Providence was pitiless to me, yet it didn't

make me stranded. When my husband

gave in to the questions of ethics and boy

 

I had the courage and conviction to exercise

my freedom to choose a life of a docile

wife or death-by-choice of a stubborn Woman. I took

 

'Ichha-mrityu like Vheeshma in the Mahabharata.

By going back to Mother Earth after fulfilling

all my responsibilities and denying to live with

 

a disrespectful husband, I used my

admirable cognizance- to withstand, subsist and

finally rise above  my anguish. What else

 

is freedom? With freedom, I exude the

sparkle concomitant with mystical holiness.

With , freedom, I made an assortment to culminate the cycle

 

 

 

of torments, exceeded the parameters of history.

I am born again and again, baptized

by different names; going back to Mother

 

Earth by choice, I became immortal, I

entered her deathless encirclement. Oh

Mother Earth! I swear, I shall take birth

 

again and again, and in every birth

I will be the free-spirited, contemporary,

enlightened woman, for I am the manifestation of freedom.

 

Oh Rama! My esteemed husband for lives!

I may be your ultimate love and dedication.

But you rescued your pride, not me, from

 

Ravana; thus, Sita may be your Muse eternal.

But think twice, you'll get the 'loyalty' of

the real Sita the day you no more demand her to be 'loyal

 

I might be forced to believe that the second exile was

due to public opinion. But can you justify the reason

why did you ask me the first fire-test in Lanka oh Rama?

 

Wasn't the purity-pollution question already there in your mind

since the day I was abducted though you 'accepted' me back?

Wasn't the comment of the washer-man later on in Ayodhya

 

 

 

Just an imploration for you to do what you always believed

oh Rama? Wasn't it just-a way out to reject me by putting

the responsibility on public. opinion? Wasn't it a Plea? But then

 

you might not have banned me as a spouse but just as a queen

with regard to public estimations. I banned you from my life as

a husband who failed in his duties to wife and children.

 

The world still does debates about Sita's purtv and Pollution.

By contrast, Sita's silent living out life as doled out to her

minus enormous arguments speaks her conviction.

 

Your rejection of Sita is comprehensively judged by the world

as unacceptable, but my rejection of Rama is believed as

an illustration of highest dignity of a just woman.

 

This is my poem, lucid, unembellished, ironical engaging

my personal notion of the lives of women,.

It's invigoratingly redolent, delineated with the

 

uncontrolled brevity of the 'Woman' who knows

exactly what and where the striking philosophies are

since I am candid as the west wind and the twilight charcoal.

 

Women! Don't be intrigued by the questions patriarchal.

Comprehend and accomplish the kinetic dichotomies of

life; I offer you my reciprocated sisterhood universal.