Sita's Ascent Page 2

  He had so far chronicled events; he now had to tell the history of the heart. Sita exiled by Rama was a cold fact. This was not just Sita. This was Sita with child who faced him. Her eyes looked into the distance. She stood there, a woman abandoned. Holding her belly with both hands she said, ‘How will my child bear his name?’

  Valmiki had to learn to listen to her story from a primeval beginning, the way consciousness enters a foetus still forming.

  Urmilla

  In the palace, night came with the swiftness of a traveller’s tiredness. It was a windless day even by the river Sarayu, and everyone welcomed an early night in Ayodhya. On still days, the night blossoms, exuding their opiate perfumes, sat snug in the gardens. Unwavering flames of oil lamps stood like sentinels guarding the centre of the courtyard of each home. Mosquitoes whimpered past. Children clung to their mothers, sleeping heavily, while men and women caressed their dreams as if these were predictions worth investing in.

  Rama worked till late, examining land taxes and deeds, and he too rubbed his eyes wearily trying to forget the weight of the day. His head drooped like a ripe coconut from a palm tree and sleep dulled all his senses as he slumped over the scrolls of the maps of his kingdom. Urmilla was the last to snuff out the oil lamp in her apartments. She bathed her arms in the moonlight, wondering how Sita would be sleeping in the hermitage, wondering if there would be crickets there too, conversing so late into the night.

  Even after all these years, when the sisters-in-law met, they entered the inner courtyard of girlhood familiarity. Over the last few months, now that Sita was pregnant, Urmilla had created a checklist of her cravings. They seemed different from most pregnant women in Ayodhya. ‘Your child bears the mark of a foreigner,’ Urmilla said the other day as she came in hastily with a bowl of soft skinned almonds. Sita loosened her hair for the massage before her bath. Both women looked at each other. Urmilla bit her lip and said, ‘Oh, Sita, I didn’t mean …’ Sita burst out laughing. ‘Of course, you didn’t mean what you said.’ Urmilla was embarrassed. It was too clumsy a mistake and, relieved by Sita’s quick response, she began to chew the soft almonds before she offered them to Sita. ‘All I really wished to say was that this child will bear the mark of our birthplace, Mithila.’

  Sita lay down on the mat ready for the warm oil, scented with camphor and hibiscus leaves, to be massaged into her long, bee-black hair. Urmilla’s fingertips were firm, pressing all the pressure points at the back of her neck. Sita winced with pleasure as the tension was released from her neck.

  ‘How strangely time heals, Urmi. I had never thought I would be able to laugh so easily about the whole foreigner thing,’ Sita said thoughtfully. ‘Some were eager for me to return. But how quick the others were to test me and see if I had indeed given in to Ravana.’

  ‘Be careful, Sita. After all these years, much as Ayodhya is our home now, we too are foreigners here,’ Urmilla said as she looked towards the door, hoping no one was listening. Ravana was a dreaded name even after his death. ‘After all, when women marry they get adopted by their husbands’ people,’ she continued.

  ‘I think we need to turn that urn of thinking around, Urmi! When we left Mithila we were not orphans. Our husbands came in search of us.’

  ‘Well, they didn’t actually come in search of us. There was a challenge announced for your swayamvara, inviting princes from all around,’ Urmilla added, smiling, mocking Sita’s claims about Rama and Lakshmana making it their mission to seek brides.

  ‘Yes, but Rama and Lakshmana happened to be there because Vishwamitra brought them after restoring peace to Dandaka forest—and who knows what plans destiny had for us all to come together in this lifetime. Anyway, the point I was making was that we women have to change things around—our husbands’ homes do not adopt us; we adopt them and create homes and families around them.’

  Urmilla kissed Sita’s forehead, saying, ‘Long may that thought prevail, Sita. Let your child hear that and carry it forward, whether it is a son or a daughter.’ She was swift in moving from the role of friend and oracle-bearer to that of masseuse. ‘Okay, now let’s see how the great belly is doing.’ Sita swept the cloth off her belly. The shaft of sunlight peeping through the skylight of the bath chamber swathed her belly.

  Urmilla anointed her palms with warm coconut oil and placed them on the sides of Sita’s stomach. ‘Great mover! I hope he’s a dancer first, then a warrior,’ she said.

  ‘How are you so sure it is a he?’

  ‘Protrusion of the belly. Pushing its way into the world, only a man can do that,’ Urmilla said with her arched brow and cheeky smile. They both giggled abashedly.

  Sita sighed with happy exhaustion. Urmilla began to gently massage the oil on the stretched skin of the stomach and hummed softly. Sita drifted into a doze for a few seconds. The sun’s rays had shifted and a delicious aroma wafted in from the royal kitchen. As she woke, Sita placed her hand on Urmilla’s and said, ‘You know, a foreigner is not just someone from another place. Here it has come to mean someone who is threatening because he thinks or acts differently. And, when they feel threatened by difference, they call it “evil”. They have now become quick to associate Ravana with what is foreign, therefore different; and different equals evil. But difference is not evil. That’s what has become the curse of us women, coming from a different place with different ways of doing things. Oh, Urmilla, let us vow that this child will never be made to feel a stranger here in Ayodhya, at Mithila, or anywhere in the world.’

  Urmilla knew how the trial by fire, the agnipariksha, had made Sita burn with anger, not shame. After all, when she had been asked to prove her purity in public, Sita was the one who had called out to Agni and the essence of fire as ammunition in her defence. Only a woman who possessed such an infinite capacity to love could go through that—not for her man, or to justify herself to the world, but because she raged against the inquisition all women had to face. ‘How dare anyone question me?’ Sita would sometimes mutter under her breath. Urmilla initially thought this was the Sita of their youth in Mithila, positioning herself occasionally as a royal in a moment of an adolescent tantrum. But soon it was clear that Sita was reworking in her mind the ordeal she had been through when she was held hostage in Ravana’s exquisite Asokavan garden. It was exquisite to the visitor, but the mental traps that were constantly being set and changed to utterly confuse everyone about what was real required the moral and physical resilience of a martial art guru. So when she was released and asked to demonstrate how ‘pure’ she was, everything within Sita rankled. Urmilla wondered: ‘Was there ever any choice? She was lucky she fell in love with Rama. But between being married and touched by one man who was the husband and being abducted and held hostage—or, as others would say, according to convenience, being “kept”—by another, how many women could tell the difference?’ It was the ritual of marriage—the vows taken for the family, the state, for the protection of the future, the children not yet born—which sanctified the relationship in everyone’s eyes. Sita had reached a point past caring for social opinion. She not only knew what the truth was but wanted to stand in for every other person who was challenged about their innocence, whether it was within relationships or for the sake of social opinion. It was clear from the way Sita would look straight into anyone’s eyes—Urmilla’s, of the maids-in-waiting, the servants’, or Rama’s—when she gave an instruction or was queried. She was without artifice and challenged anyone, royal or subject, who was conciliatory towards her. In Sita, there had emerged a strange combination of being open but also on guard.

  ‘I should have come with you into exile. I would have massaged your neck and back every night after those long treks. Then you wouldn’t have had these tension knots all along the back of your neck!’

  ‘Aha! But you can’t deny that exile made my hair grow long and heavy—that’s what’s giving me the tension. Can you imagine, Urmi, if I had to coil all this hair on top of my head like the sages!’

  ‘Mm,
I don’t think your head is hard enough for it, Sita,’ Urmilla replied. They both laughed at themselves, remembering the time when they were girls in Mithila, acting in religious dance dramas depicting life-denying ascetics and seductive courtesans.

  During the day Rama was busy with affairs that brought people from different parts of the kingdom to seek his audience, offer counsel or represent grievances and inform him directly. In the afternoon, before lunch he would be briefed on matters within the court and its councils. He would retreat to his palace where Sita waited for them to have lunch together, as Urmilla would hurry back to her apartments to wait for Lakshmana.

  Lakshmana’s hair was greying at the temples. He was less short-tempered now than when he had left for the forest. Urmilla and he had just been married at the time. He was deep in thought, oblivious to her entering the room with a pitcher of buttermilk. She touched his shoulder and he burst into a quick, reflexive smile. ‘It takes time, Urmi,’ he said impatiently, frustrated with himself.

  She put the pitcher down and sat on the cool stone floor beside him. ‘Let it take all the time, my dearest. The most important thing is that you have returned.’

  He placed her hands on his face as she began to massage his throbbing temples. Urmilla held him close and whispered soothingly, ‘It takes time—for thirteen years there was the forest. You haven’t even completed two years since your return here. At least Rama and Sita had each other. Do you know how much I ached for you? I still cannot believe this is real—to be able to hold you like this.’

  Tears streamed down Lakshmana’s face. A woman’s tenderness was so foreign to him. It wound itself like a sapling around his heart, bursting with buds. Lakshmana had increasingly been having headaches since returning to Ayodhya. After years in the forest and being on guard, and then the war, he could not think of anything else but Rama’s safety. He no longer had a sense of himself. Adjusting to city life and a companion, Urmilla, was difficult. The long years of celibacy had created a feeling of distance. Having someone waiting for him was piecing him back together. She was a part of his being that felt necessary but foreign. Being a husband and having a wife required new codes of behaviour, almost a different language. He found it strange not to fly into a rage any more; it was uncharacteristic. Urmilla, in her wisdom, could read his troubled heart and his loyal mind. For Lakshmana, while performing his role as a beloved younger brother and as councillor in the kingdom, Rama and the state were inextricably bound together. Strangely, Urmilla could see how it held Lakshmana together, and how it also tore him apart.

  When Rama entered his chambers, Sita was bustling with the aarti platter, the flame burning brightly in its centre. She waved it steadily clockwise before him, from right upper arm to above the forehead to the left shoulder and down to his knee, circling it three times and finally placing the vermilion mark on his forehead. It was a ritual to keep out sinister spirits and malevolent energies encountered during the morning duties. She looked at him through the camphor’s flame. The flame was a window for both of them to focus on. She, smiling but looking at him intently; he, disturbing her steady gaze with a smile that hovered at the corner of his lips. It was his way of saying: ‘After all those deep and dark forests, here we are, urbanized, wearing fancy clothes. A fine drama—these waves of life. Let’s enjoy this act for now.’

  That’s how she greeted him home for lunch every day since they had returned. In fact, that was also how the news of her pregnancy became public, when she deftly handed the aarti platter to a maid of honour and fainted, with Rama quick to catch her fall. Today, when all the maids-in-waiting slowly bowed and left the dining hall, Sita and Rama smiled at each other. It was after a long time now that, through the scaffolds of daily rituals, they were returning to their former selves.

  Exile had made them strangers to a life in court. Sometimes living in a palace struck them as yet another brief sojourn from the forest. In the late evenings they were, independently, haunted by the prospect of preparing for a departure.

  Exile is not dislocation, it is a rising sense of loss. The loss of time and experience amidst the whirlpool of life. Quite simply, there was a lot to converse about, but the hopelessness of being left behind dogged them. The real challenge lay in moving forward in spite of feeling paralysed. They constantly straddled the emotional geographies of exile and royal luxury. They had begun to realize that moving across geographically, covering the terrain of forests, mountains, rivers, even an ocean, was more bearable than defining an emotional geography. With two in a companionship, how did one map what was unseen in the other? Even in oneself? At last, a bridge had emerged between them—Rama and Sita’s child, yet to be born. This foetus was the desire for life swimming in a limitless ocean within the universe of the womb. It sparked a new channel of communication between them.

  Sita led Rama to his place. The banana leaf had been spread on the gold platter. The first morsel of lentils and rice drizzled with pure ghee was offered to the gods. The crows across the courtyard cawed with delight, acknowledging that they, who were visiting as the spirits of the ancestors, had been fed, and now the living could continue with their meal. The temple bells began their orbit of sound. Rama sat and as Sita served him the curried yam and plantain, she said, ‘The salt seller came by today. She told me a fine story.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Rama as he dipped his finger in the yam sauce and licked it. ‘Was it about how one day people will have to pay for salt?’

  ‘You don’t say! Are we coming to that? Cheh! What a day that will be when we have to pay for what’s in our blood! No, no, thank god it was nothing like that. It was about a woman who had been blessed by Surya and had a vision that she must tell the story to everyone.’

  ‘Why? Didn’t she want to keep that vision to herself?’

  ‘Naturally, possessing a woman’s generosity, she wanted to share it with everyone.’

  ‘Did anyone listen?’ Rama asked as he drew the rice to the centre of the leaf plate awaiting the next course.

  Sita now served him spinach. Pouring tamarind soup on his rice she said, ‘Of course not. Finally, she found a pregnant salt seller who said she would listen, but fell off to sleep.’

  ‘This is getting increasingly believable,’ said Rama as he reached out for a poppadom and cracked it.

  ‘But then a voice from within the womb said, “I will listen.” So the old woman sang a song:

  ‘Listen to this song, and its good luck will follow you—

  You will turn ruined ghost towns into bustling cities;

  Where there are dry cotton fields you will fill its branches with pearls,

  You will return lost treasures buried under the sea to the shore

  And you will even bring the dead back to life.’

  ‘What an extraordinary claim. A very ambitious challenge. I hope we aren’t setting those sights for our little one!’ Rama’s eyes danced as he spoke.

  ‘Oh, Rama! Forever teasing me. But after all the fuss, a girl was born, a king met her and as the prophecy unfolded …’

  ‘So, what is the point of the story?’ said Rama with affection, as he delicately slurped his creamy dessert.

  ‘Simply that the ritual of telling is a wish. It gives hope. Hope is what every human being thrives on whether they are wretched or rich. Stories, apart from giving hope, must be told and shared so everyone can try to understand the experience of life from another point of view,’ replied Sita matter-of-factly.

  ‘Wonderfully put!’ Rama drank the cool water laced with sarsaparilla.

  Just as he finished his last course and washed his hands in the gold finger bowl, Sita brought out the sweetened fennel. A minister came in, very apologetic, and explained that Rama had to tend to a court matter urgently that afternoon.

  Rama returned in the late afternoon to the Assembly Hall. Urmilla was gathering the special herbs and bark from the courtyard that she had left to dry in the sun for a new supply of ointments for Sita. She could see Rama leaving th
e palace, winding his way from the pond full of lotuses towards the Grand Assembly Hall. Lakshmana was off on a mission to meet the hunters who brought news of changes in the migratory patterns of birds, so Rama was by himself. Urmilla noticed that over the last few days he looked more the Rama she had once known. He was getting used to the thought of a child in their midst, Sita had told her. Rama knelt and held his hands out to a male swan that came gliding at some speed, summoned by a king. The smell of clay wafted in the air as the afternoon breeze rose from the river. There was a moment of stillness to know that this could well be a happy time before jubilations, celebrations and all the anticipatory preparations for the birth of the royal.

  By the time the cows returned to their herds, the dust was rising. Urmilla was standing in her garden on the western side that faced the palace garden pond. She marvelled at the way the lotuses opened with the first fingers of light at sunrise and gradually began to fold before sunset. The sun was turning crimson and the grove on the far western side of her compound wall looked dark with the foray of the banyan tree’s branches. The bank sloped and her attention was diverted by the sunset, when she heard two men talking. One of them was clearly distressed.

  She edged closer to the wall and could see an old man pleading with a youth, ‘Please, take my daughter back.’ Urmilla could tell by their dialect that they were dhobis, washermen.

  ‘Why did she leave in the first place?’ hissed the young man. ‘Does she not know once she steps into my house, that is her place?’

  ‘I beg you, forgive her, she is still a child at heart,’ the father continued.

  ‘Well, a child is afraid of the dark. But she walked out in the middle of the night.’

  ‘What could she do? You beat her so hard, she was bleeding, she was afraid …’

  ‘That I would kill her! Yes, I wish I had. At least I would have saved my honour! What will people say—she walked out like a prostitute!’