Sita's Ascent Read online

  From the moment the Ashwamedha horse disappeared under the shadow of the form that had leapt on its back, a code of whistles twittered between spies and messengers and relayed the information to the control tower at Ayodhya: Ashwamedha captured; Rama challenged.

  Valmiki opened his eyes and wondered if what he was seeing now—the white Ashwamedha captured by Lava and Kusa—was a dream, or whether the seven boys he had seen so clearly taking flight as seven swans, when his eyes were closed in sleep, was a dream.

  ‘Ma!’ Lava grinned, enchanted. ‘Look what was coming our way!’ He led the horse to Sita as she stood up.

  ‘There was no struggle, Ma, he came as if he belonged to us. He is ours now!’ Kusa said, stroking the horse whose hot breath was cooling down. Its flesh quivered as Kusa smoothed the foaming sweat with his bare hands.

  ‘This is such a beautiful creature, Ma. Please bless it as I want to gift it to you,’ said Lava as he walked towards her.

  Valmiki feared Sita was in shock. For both of them the first image that flashed in their minds, evoking a sense of defeat, was that the boys had not been schooled properly. The second image was a signal of fear as Sita saw her sons so radiant in their ‘conquest’ in this moment. She knew it would not last long. She could not say how, but her mother’s intuition knew that Rama would not take this lightly.

  ‘When … did this happen?’ she found herself asking. The beauty of the boys, the horse, their sense of completeness and its ephemerality made her eyes swim. Valmiki saw her face from the corner of his eye. Sita gripped her right wrist with her left hand as it moved towards her pounding heart. Urmilla, who had crept beside her unnoticed, placed her hand on Sita’s shoulder to steady her from falling into a spiral of self-doubt. Valmiki could sense the churning within Sita. Whatever she felt for Rama all those years ago and the way she had overcome the feeling of exile were now being turned upside down. Impulses of messages were flitting through her mind. ‘Rama had never seen Lava; who was Kusa to him? After all, this was the Ashwamedha, and with his sense of duty, Rama would do everything that the ancestral rites and his people demanded of his authority.’

  ‘Ma! We have not stolen anything. Why are you looking at us as if we have?’ Lava had that look as he and Sita remembered the time he had picked out eggs from the sparrows’ nest. She had to explain what the act of ‘stealing’ meant in the forest. ‘Many things are here for us to eat, to take. But this nest is a home, and you are snatching away the bird’s family; it’s like fate stealing away our chances.’ The words had stuck because he saw the pain in her eyes as she made him return the eggs to the nest.

  ‘It was so natural … and it was running wild and free,’ agreed Kusa, his teeth shining white as his smiling face caught the moonlight. He threw his head back in delight while gazing at the full height of the horse.

  Valmiki did not want to interrupt any perspective or prism of the truth that was emerging; he was watching it unravel the way new leaves unfold in the warmth of the sun’s rays. Urmilla knew that every strand of love, security, reasoning, confidence and responsibility in bringing up the boys was being tested. In the hermitage, in this forest, only Sita, Urmilla and Valmiki knew what the rules of society were, because they had lived in one. With the strange collision of their fates, they had brought the boys up in this wilderness with no assurances of what the future would bring. Sita had sent news of Lava’s birth to Ayodhya, and it had been received with silence. The only way forward at that time seemed to have been to bring the boys up with no indication of their royalty, while enabling them to develop the presence of mind they needed to become masters of their future.

  The horse’s flesh twitched as it began shifting its weight from hoof to hoof. Both Lava and Kusa held on to its mane. Lava would not break his gaze in the direction of Sita. Kusa whispered into the horse’s ear as it dived its head down to shake its mane free. Each strand looked like a luminous moonbeam from where Sita, Valmiki and Urmilla stood. They could not ignore the sound of branches being brushed, twigs snapping, leaves squelching and the uneasy quiet of animals stalking as an unknown wave moved through the forest.

  On hearing the news of the Ashwamedha’s capture, Rama took on the challenge and rode out to the post that the messengers had signalled. He was accompanied by an entourage of his best soldiers, some on horseback and others on foot. Rama halted at the entrance to the hermitage, not knowing it was there. The tall branches formed an archway to the clearing, and the dazzling moonlight made only Lava, Kusa and the white horse visible.

  ‘It would be wise to return that horse to its owner,’ he said calmly. For Sita, Rama’s voice still had that rumbling sweetness and calm authority that was never threatening, while its intention was not fully revealed to the listener.

  ‘We found this horse, and he is ours now,’ said the boys turning to him, unruffled.

  ‘I can see that you found this horse, but this horse belongs to a ritual. You cannot stop its course. If you do, then the shastra says you must fight with me because I sent the horse out. It is clearly a mistake as you did not intend to harm anyone or indeed this beautiful creature.’

  ‘Can you not see that this horse has now ended its journey and wants to be here?’ said Lava, as Kusa cajoled the horse to eat grass out of his hand. The horse nuzzled comfortably against them.

  ‘Ended its journey?’ Rama smiled and his soldiers took a step further out from under the low branches. He raised his arm as a signal for them to step back. ‘We all have rules by which our lives and the lives of others are kept in harmony. Otherwise we would be like the elements—constantly interrupted by the force of our energy which we cannot contain.’

  ‘We are human,’ Lava said with a degree of impatience.

  ‘We too are made up of the elements,’ Kusa added with his winning smile.

  ‘But there is an order and a sequence in the elements—when water rises clouds are formed; in time the thunder rolls and the rain falls,’ Rama continued, almost enchanted by the possibility of a discussion on cause and effect in the soft light.

  ‘Why not speak plainly, even if you are on such a high horse!’ said Lava. In spite of his stubborn hold on the Ashwamedha, Lava was engaged by this stranger who spoke to him in a voice that bathed everything in the cool moonlight.

  ‘The horse belongs to my kingdom. It is part of a great sacrifice. You have stopped its course. That is a challenge.’

  ‘We will fight for the horse.’

  ‘You both are engaging in fantastical and unachievable claims and I do not wish to cause you harm. Besides, I can only fight an equal. Neither of you is close to me in age, and indeed, in the middle of the night, I cannot fight two wilful boys who have spent their lives in the forest.’

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ Lava said. Sita stood still in the dark without breathing. Rama could not have been aware of her, Valmiki or Urmilla sheltering in the cavernous shade of the tall trees.

  ‘And who, may I ask, are you?’ said Rama.

  Lava began: ‘I was born at the first stroke of that hour past midnight when darkness moves towards daylight. They said of my birth that Brahma visited and wrote his name on my forehead. I cannot take this as praise as I am a guest of those who brought me into the world, bloody, screaming and fighting on a full-moon night.

  ‘My lessons stood for my father, and my teacher gave me a world where I could learn to read with my breath, my tongue, my eyes, my inner eye, my touch, taste and smell.

  ‘My teacher’s Teacher taught me

  how to shape friendship from anger,

  peace from haste,

  going slow while travelling with speed,

  learning silence from the dance of the trees

  and singing with the insects to test an opinion.

  ‘My closest companion is here, my brother, and his heartbeat and mine are one.

  ‘We both were placed in the forest, our kingdom of reason where we learnt what is cruelty and what justice, and the language of beings that do not sha
re our tongue.

  ‘All this we could not have done without the one who filled my ears with the first story of how life came to be. So, listen to the story of my beginnings, as neither age nor status, kin or clan, can lay claim to true ancestry.

  ‘My mother is spirit and earth. Her eyes shine like stars and when she left her girlhood she carried that light into her husband’s home. My father, from her account, was a man who embodied compassion; and truth was the one jewel he wore when he lived a life of prosperity. When fortune’s wayward winds began to blow, my father held on to truth as an anchor in the stormy sea of unimaginable events. My mother did not just witness his misfortune but decided to travel with him and give him courage. “After all,” she often said, “what is the point of love if it cannot weather all seasons?”’

  Rama had been listening as a patient bystander. His mind was open to listening—as a king he would hold an audience and listen to news and grievances before pronouncing his verdict or decreeing a law. He was enchanted by the musicality of the boy’s voice. The poetry of Lava’s language seemed unusual for a forest-dweller. Rama was impressed by the boy’s indignation at having to prove that the horse now belonged to him and his brother. It was evident they would challenge Rama. The boy seemed to have an interesting story but his ancestry would never be equal to the lineage of a king, so Rama was relieved on the boy’s behalf that he need never fight him.

  It was when he heard ‘what was the point of love …’ that something rippled through Rama. It seemed to echo words from a very deep yet unforgotten chamber in his heart. Rama decided to listen more intently to the boy and discover what was happening to him as the story unravelled.

  ‘And what kind of misfortune was it that befell them?’ Rama asked, in spite of himself.

  ‘My father, she says, was a man who knew what was expected of him, and he followed the path of honour and truth. When the time came for him, soon after they were married, to take charge of the whole family, he was sent away with no reason except that his father wanted it so. As his father lay dying, unable to speak except through the words of another, my mother insisted she travel with my father to the lands where he was decreed to roam nameless. He did not wish her to suffer hardship but she would not be reasoned with, because, as she continues to say, “what is the point of love if it cannot weather all seasons?”

  ‘Thirteen years they spent travelling across lands, meeting people who came to them with their stories. Wherever they went they were welcomed because they lived simply and found ways of easing the burden of other peoples’ lives, in spite of having their own. One day, my mother, by yet another unfortunate storm of fate, was snatched away from their life as travellers to another country against her will. She was held captive and, against all odds, my father, with the help of his dearest friend and his brother, rescued my mother and overthrew the inglorious king who had oppressed his own people, and thus restored their peace.

  ‘My father and mother returned to their family home and, following a warm welcome, my father took on the business of his people. I started growing within my mother. My father, kind, compassionate, heroic and honest as he was, delighted in the future. Again, by some unseen mischief, my mother was sent away, never to return to her home, her husband’s heart, again.

  ‘So great was her grief, greater than when she had been imprisoned in another land, that she could have ended her life …’

  Rama knew this was beyond analogy or metaphor—it was his story. All his life he had seen beyond the immediate moment, always in preparation, always generous and conscious of what he owed others. It usually turned out to be the business of doing the right thing. Anyone who was a part of himself, like Sita, Lakshmana and Hanuman, was treated by him the way he treated himself—a sense of selfhood with a sense of self-abnegation. Sita had given him a sense of his self in the physical world and all that was in it.

  Over the years, after he had banished her and Lakshmana had not returned, he was in a void of hearing counsel. The only body he knew was the state. But now, his life was told in a story by the boy, unmistakably his son.

  Rama got down from his horse, so gently that neither of the boys felt it necessary to be on guard, and knelt close to Lava.

  ‘But she knew,’ Lava continued, ‘that life is a chain of energy. Letting herself live and give birth to me were not merely endurance. She had ascended beyond the chains of name, birth, caste, clan—she is the one who gave me light.’ Lava paused. Rama took the boy’s right hand and placed it on his own head. All he could utter was ‘Sita, Sita … Sita’ with long-lost joy.

  Valmiki and Urmilla were awed by Lava’s rendering of his mother’s life, with Kusa’s accompaniment, from what he had gathered over the years. They were relieved that they would not have to intervene in any struggle to save the boys’ lives. The boys had come of age.

  They stretched out their arms to support Sita. The warm breeze made everything come to life. The leaves shivered and there was a stream of light where she stood. There was no pain or need for reconciliation. Sita had ascended time cycles. She turned to face the footfall that was behind her. ‘All would be well for a while,’ she thought and cried out, ‘Hanuman!’

  A Note

  ‘[A] novella is often restricted to a single episode or event, leading to an unexpected turning point [wendepunkt]’

  Professor John Mullan 1

  Sita’s Ascent is, in the form of a novella, a retelling of Sita’s story and a reimagining of the idea of woman as goddess. Three things inspired me in this undertaking: the first was the fascination with a literary form that would best tell a woman’s story—as when others tell us about something that happened to someone we know. The second was the inspiration that is Sita—an exiled queen, an expectant mother abandoned and left alone, undaunted by the extraordinary circumstances that are thrust upon her by the husband she continues to love. Thirdly, the function of memory as a metaphor for ‘re-membering’ a dismembered story because it is told to us infrequently and in parts, and for experiencing culture through its epic characters.

  I will start with the third point. Memory is a powerful tool that makes reflection possible by recalling through this process of rejoining with the past. A.K. Ramanujan’s essay ‘The Ring of Memory’ demonstrates this with inimitable clarity while relooking at Kalidasa’s Sakuntala.

  King Dushyanta, after rejecting Sakuntala when she arrives at his court, regains his memory as a result of seeing the lost ring that eventually dispels the curse of the angry muni. Dushyanta’s repentance facilitates a process of remembrance; a re-membering of dismembered memory. Sakuntala’s absence is made present by his longing that is recounted in the poetry, not solely about her physical attributes but also the essence of her being that afforded him companionship in the alien world of the forest where he first met her, and as his soulmate.

  Sakuntala’s and King Dushyanta’s longing and loss are metaphoric of exile. Memory is sharpened by longing. I experienced this exile in re-membering and retelling Ramayana in spaces and cultures that knew little or nothing of the epic’s origin or sensibilities. Familiarizing myself with the characters as real people acted as a trigger of cultural memory. A retelling gives us new insights that could, and should be allowed to, make meaning of what is valued across cultures, in spite of different traditions.

  Sita’s Ascent for me began as a pause; a remembering of the epic with a new idea of who Sita is. Like many, I have often wondered what happens when a character goes beyond the realm of the author’s imagination. I wanted to re-member Sita’s essence through a reconstruction of events that were outside the familiar in the epic. In Sita’s Ascent, I have endeavoured to enter into the future of someone from an epic tradition, who continues, through change, to haunt our imagination.

  In performance storytelling, I have worked on the prequel—Rama’s story. I have always been struck by a folk rendition of the episode when Rama is going into exile. He pleads with Sita not to come to the forest. To this she replies, ‘Ram
a, in all versions of the Ramayana, Sita has gone to the forest. Without Sita, there is no Ramayana.’ 2 Sita is central to the plot.

  For me, it is this idea of Sita as a character who is conscious of her choices in spite of what happens to her, and the circumstances under which she is placed (by authors and storytellers), that is a trigger. This makes her empathetic, inventive and resourceful—she is able to ride out the terror that strikes her.

  The second thing: Sita as inspiration. For me, the ‘idea’ of Sita is for all time. The idea enables a matrix so that when I place her across several time zones and continents, she ends up lighting the way even when she is violently abandoned.

  In Sita’s Ascent, the character challenges the author, as well as the reader, to follow a narrative through the remembrances of the people with whom she lived in the time of the epic. But this story is not merely about the perspectives of other people on Sita. I attempt to create a new story, a fiction, by drawing upon an age-old familiarity with the different characters in the epic.

  Thus far, our popular imagination has been filled with a Ramayana story and its direct association with Deepavali or Diwali in some parts of India. The many representations of the epic that have originated in India assume that the story is solely Indian. I make a case and celebrate that this is not so. It is true that the third and fourth generation Indian diaspora across the world continue to keep the epic alive mostly with the story of Rama and Sita. Of special interest to me are the South East Asian versions that have the effect of sliding doors—dealing with the familiar in an unfamiliar way, affording greater depth to both character and action.

  I have drawn on Sita and her situations from diverse sources. These helped me to see her as everywoman, epic hero and goddess.

  My search for a multidimensional Sita began as an exploration for a character who goes beyond Valmiki. In doing so, Sita continues to be the familiar character we know, while she goes on to create a new plot line. In Yuganta, Iravati Karve had set the framework for first-person narratives. Here too the omniscient author is made redundant. The protagonist invites the reader to follow a narrative spoken in the voice of other characters that she has come in contact with. It is akin to an exchange of tales, possibly gossip, or, as attributed to the origin of storytellers and their tales, ‘this is how the story came my way, and this is how I see it’.