Sita's Ascent Read online

  Only, it was not Lava. It was an avatar of Lava created by Valmiki’s imagination. Valmiki was enthralled. He realized how women felt when they gave birth and beheld their creation. He chuckled and started to play with this wonderful creation. And the creation responded as any lively child would.

  ‘Maharaj! Maharaj!’ It was Sita calling out. ‘Please help me, I cannot carry this bundle as well.’ And when Valmiki looked in the direction of the voice, Sita was standing with the bundle on the ground, and coiling her hair into a knot with Lava pulling her by her hand.

  Sita and Valmiki looked at each other, then at Lava and the child beside Valmiki. Both were astounded. The two boys began to play. Valmiki leapt towards Lava and hugged him. ‘Where did you vanish, my little one! I was so worried about you. I thought a tiger may have come and taken you away. I’m so happy you are safe.’ Lava giggled as Valmiki’s thick, knotted beard tickled him.

  ‘But whose child is this?’ inquired Sita who was by turns enchanted, surprised and intrigued at the resemblance to Lava.

  Valmiki must have been in a parallel universe of reality following the tribulations of being an author before Sita arrived on the scene at the hermitage. ‘Who? Oh, that! Him? Oh yes! Sita, what can I say …’ and he began to tell her. ‘But now that Lava is here, I can send him back into nothingness,’ said Valmiki hesitantly, attempting to be conclusive. ‘Into nothingness? Just like that? What is this, Maharaj? A game? Is life just a toy for some inventor? Now that you have created him he must stay. And we must hear his voice, just as he will become part of our story.’ Valmiki could hear in Sita’s voice genuine anguish at the notion of any kind of power over life—real or imagined.

  A piercing squeal interrupted Valmiki and Sita’s musings. Lava had gripped his new playmate’s thigh with one hand and was in a wrestler’s lock. The playmate squelched a handful of Lava’s buttock and cried out, ‘Koossa!’ Lava let go his grip. He too let go and they rolled and tumbled and laughed. Sita repeated with great delight: ‘Lava and Kusa!’

  Mandodari

  Valmiki now spent time being a little more alert to the things around him. With Lava and Kusa there were multiple questions that had to be answered instantly. Valmiki, as a poet, saw the boys as phrases, sounds, sentences budding from an image and slowly he started to see them as Sita did. Here were two young boys, in flesh and blood, who unravelled life’s potential in every passing moment. If Lava was more interested in following Valmiki around and capturing sounds and exercising his lung power in reciting the improvised slokas, then Kusa would stay close to the women, using his tiny hands to be initiated into making herbal paste and sniffing the combination of ingredients. Kusa delighted in squelching and combining many unguents to daub himself. His various stages of anointment were received with Urmilla’s ‘Aeyee! That was meant for dry and wrinkled skin!’ or ‘No, no, that’s not to be eaten, it’s for healing eye infections!’ and concluded with washing and drying, accompanied by hugs and a chorus of endearments. He had a tactility that Sita found herself being drawn towards, even if he was not her own flesh and blood.

  One day Lava was out with Valmiki and Urmilla to learn how to make handheld catapults to knock guavas down from very high branches as the parrots had ravaged the fruit on the lower ones. Sita was in the kitchen. She had carefully swept with her hands the dry lentils that had spilled on the mud floor when she was measuring them to cook dal. She was on her haunches and was flicking a few lentils from her fingernails when Kusa, who was playing with the chapatti dough, asked, ‘Amma, how were you born?’ Sita blinked. ‘Of course, yesterday was the boy’s birthday, celebrated together with Lava’s.’ Sita had told them the story of how they were born, being economical with the truth as Lava and Kusa had come to regard themselves as identical and inseparable twins. While they looked identical, their emerging personalities emphasized different aspects of longing and fulfilment, endurance and resourcefulness that were also known to be strong aspects of Sita.

  As she was wondering how to answer Kusa, so many memories came tumbling back to her that she could not make out which were real and which imagined. But within the shafts of the images she remembered, within each one of them, she realized there was a story that had to be told, and a story that had to be handed down to the boys as a chronicle of their origins. What was the story that she remembered about herself that she could tell Kusa? What was the story she would want to be remembered by?

  She could feel herself squeeze through that narrow doorway of the past into another time. She screwed up her eyes as if to see clearly in the haze of the half-light. A woman stood in the doorway. When the woman turned, her diamond earrings and nose studs flashed like suns against her dark skin. The gold threads from her pomegranate-pink silk sari gleamed like the sun’s reflection on a rippling river. Her voice was deep and bellyful and resonated from her nose. It was Mandodari. Ravana’s queen and wife. For quite a while Sita sat, forgetting herself as she watched Mandodari tell Kusa a story.

  ‘A long time ago a holy but poor man lived in a little thatched hut on an abandoned field. He used to wake every morning and bathe in a pond and pray to Vishnu, the great sustainer of life. Many people used to come to sit by him during the day and through his silence he was able to heal their family troubles. Vishnu, too, saw that this man did not crave anything in life except to help others. “How would he go about getting his food?” thought Vishnu, and decided that instead of the man having to go and seek alms or work to earn money, why not gift him a cow. Not just an ordinary cow but a holy cow. The man could carry on his work, and whether the cow went out to graze or not, it would give him a limitless supply of milk. The man collected the milk in a pot and sometimes he shared it with those who came to him to be healed. The poor man knew that this gift could have come only from Vishnu. So, as he thanked Vishnu while praying, he suddenly thought of Vishnu’s wife Lakshmi, and hoped she would be born on earth as someone’s daughter.

  ‘At that very moment, he saw the clouds burst with a Twaannngh! in the sky. He could not see, but it was Ravana storming through the sky in his aerial chariot.

  ‘Ravana was on a mission of “blood collecting” from holy men. This was a game, at first designed for his amusement. The rule was to seek out and spy on people who were considered holy. Then, with beguiling charm, Ravana would take on different disguises to question these people at a solitary moment about the nature of “Good”. He had stunningly complex arguments. What was the need to be good or ethical? Why were a conscience and ethics always associated with “good”? What if we did not want to be good? Why did we have to have a sense of judgement? If life was about celebrating, why were there so many morals to keep us chained like prisoners when we could be free? If someone committed a wrong and fled the place, could anyone catch up with him? What on earth was a conscience? Why have one if it made you doubt everything you did? Why should one respect women? Weren’t they all the same—sisters, wives, daughters, etc.? Why should we look after people who were disabled or care for children? Weakness should be put down, and why should the experience of an elder, who had no physical strength left, be considered? What did they have to teach us about life—nothing but regret.

  ‘He defeated his opponents with well-illustrated and subtle arguments against good in human nature. He got a buzz in playing this game, and winning. Of course, he was always in disguise as a vulnerable contender, so he caught people unawares. But when a few people challenged him about the need to question one’s actions and take responsibility for those actions, it stopped being a game. There was no buzz for Ravana when he wasn’t winning. He soon discovered that one way of accounting for his successes was by collecting the blood of anyone who contested him, and labelling it “holy”. The blood was preserved in several pots in his palace.

  ‘On one such occasion, while he was lurking around the hut of the man with the holy cow—who had gone to the pond for his bath and prayers—Ravana found the pot of freshly drawn holy milk and stole it. Just for the sake of c
reating chaos.

  ‘Ravana returned triumphant to his palace with the stolen pot. Then he mixed the blood from his other pots into it. Ravana called me, his queen, Mandodari, to hide the pot with the mixture of blood and milk (that had by now turned pink), and warned me that it contained poison. I knew the game he had begun to play had now turned into something exceedingly sinister.

  ‘When Ravana left on yet another mission, I discovered through my secret intelligence services what he had done. I was disgusted by this behaviour. It made me wonder—why was I such a prisoner to all the silks, jewellery, feasts, slaves, servants, palaces and much more? Ravana had said he provided me with these to prove how well he looked after me, and how powerful his wealth made me. I was very proud to be his queen. But his power had gone so much to his head he could not see sense. I felt smaller than an ant that could be crushed under his foot. I was like anyone else in his life—he would tease and tease and tease till your heart and mind would explode. He was in total control. The way a frog is held in a snake’s jaws—neither dead nor with the hope of life—just dying.

  ‘When I learnt about the blood collecting of the holy men who had challenged his arguments, I wondered what would become of me? I was a mere woman, his wife—I could disappear and no one would know what really happened to me or be able to tell my story.

  ‘He had gone away from the palace for some months to test a new range of deadly weapons. I prayed in secret. I prayed and prayed that someone should teach him such a lesson that—if he lived—he would never forget.

  ‘As the days passed I grew afraid that there was nothing in the world that could defeat him; when even the gods were afraid, what chance did any animal or human have?

  ‘Then it struck me like a thunderbolt! I prayed that a goddess be born on earth as a woman, and that she should defeat him. I prayed on behalf of all womankind.

  ‘By now, I was so disgusted by the thoughts I was thinking, I wanted to finish myself. So I drank the blood mixture. Nothing happened.

  ‘Meanwhile, I think the wishes of the holy man, who had prayed that Lakshmi be born on earth, came true. I heard, across the ocean, in the kingdom of Mithila, King Janaka was ploughing a field. He saw something glistening in the distance. As he approached the spot he noticed a crystal cradle that was wedged between the furrows of the earth, and there was a baby girl in it. She looked radiant. He held the child close to his face as if she were an answer to a long-forgotten prayer and took her home to his queen. As she was found in the furrows of the earth, the child was named Sita.

  ‘All this happened in the flash of an instant when Lakshmi vanished from Devaloka, when Narada cursed the maid of honour, when there was a Twaannngh that sounded like it came from a cloudburst. Lakshmi had fulfilled a poor holy man’s prayer that she be born as a human on earth. The devas, viewing this sight from Devaloka, sighed with relief.

  ‘The following years I sent out various spirits and spies to feed me with the hope that such a woman had indeed been born. They gave me news and I found hope.’

  Sita was loved dearly by her royal parents. As she was an only child, Urmilla was adopted as her sister. Sita was quick to make friends, and she treated them as her equals. She would have bouts of fiery temper, especially if someone had been deceitful. But she had a quick wit, a sense of humour that endeared her to everyone because she could bend any sorrow with a lightness of word or touch, without being insensitive or careless. Her nature was fed by fire. She had an unquenchable desire to live, and celebrate life in all its tints and hues.

  King Janaka had a prosperous kingdom that rivalled Dasaratha’s. But it was not as vast as Kosala, which had a natural gift of three rivers flowing around it, making it extremely fertile. Mithila depended on trade with other kingdoms and also knew the significance of strong regional relationships, rather than standing apart in isolation. This enabled the citizens of Mithila to feel safe. A healthy economy and a sense of security often make people feel they can take time out on holidays, or spend time planning elaborate rituals, like naming ceremonies for babies, ceremonies on becoming a teenager, or just travelling and enjoying the countryside away from life in court.

  Janaka insisted on holidays for three reasons. Firstly, it connected people who lived and worked at court to experience the pace of rural life; secondly, it enabled courtiers to discover the requirements of villagers in an unofficial capacity. The third reason was that while on holiday, one could plan for the future. For Janaka, holidays helped him think clearly, away from the pressures of a daily schedule of meetings. It was sheer joy being in the company of his wife, his daughter, Sita, and their friends.

  Janaka had an orchard with fruit trees at the back of the holiday resort palace. He kept a limited number of servants there; this enabled him to be himself and prepare for his final ashrama, that is, retirement, when he would have to do the daily chores himself.

  He would pray to Shiva with a sincere heart, every day without fail. One afternoon he noticed a giant iron bow half buried in the earth, standing up to the height of a banana tree! It was inscribed: ‘Janaka, a gift of love—Shiva.’

  ‘What in heaven’s name was the use for a bow, that too this size, in a vegetable garden when one was on holiday! For Karma’s sake,’ thought Janaka, ‘I have no intention, inclination or time to show any neighbouring kingdom how mighty Mithila is!’

  As it was hidden amidst the banana trees, he decided to leave the bow there while he went away and thought about the best way to show his gratitude to Shiva. He did not want to endanger his kingdom by revealing to Mithila’s neighbours the huge iron bow and what it could signal: capability of war.

  His queen had cooked him a simple and satisfying meal. Just as Janaka finished and went to the inner courtyard to wash his hands and rinse his mouth, he could see straight through the doorway. What did he see? Sita looking up at the bow. She was in one of her clearing-up-the-garden moods. She had her arms akimbo and her head tilted to fathom the actual size of the bow underground from its height above ground. Then in a flash, Janaka saw his fifteen-year-old Sita lunge for the bow at its widest arc and, with both her hands, pull it out and fling it away. ‘Yes! Take that!’ she shouted gleefully, dusting her hands matter-of-factly. ‘That’ll teach you to wedge into the roots of these fruit trees! What a mess this is.’ And she began levelling the yawning hole in the ground with the rubble around it.

  Janaka was awestruck. That was Shiva’s bow Sita had just plucked out and chucked like some soft, rotting plant! Throughout lunch he had been calculating how many men he would have to get to dig that bow out of the ground to then heave it on to a chariot and carry it back to Mithila. ‘Oh, it doesn’t bear thinking,’ he said to himself. Then something dawned on him. ‘Sita! Even she is not aware how extraordinary she is.’ That beam of light in her eyes, the fire in her soul, were all signs of how blessed he and his wife were to have her as their daughter. He thought it best not to say anything either to his wife or to Urmilla.

  Two weeks passed. Spring was in the air and bullock horns were painted with vermilion and turmeric, strung with flowers, bells and streamers. It was time to return to court for the royal festivities marking the birth of a new season.

  Janaka, his wife and Sita, with her favourite Urmilla, were returning in the royal chariot. They were often accompanied by the female storyteller who knew a thing or two about the different villages and towns they passed en route to Mithila. Somehow, she always got wind of the latest news, and this was Janaka’s best way of keeping up with what had happened while he had been away from court.

  A female storyteller never just reports facts; she adds wonderful emotional twists and turns to events, and gives insightful details about the people she meets. Urmilla and Sita were listening to the latest news about two young men from the Kosala kingdom who had entered the Dandaka forest accompanied by Vishwamitra. ‘Do you know what they saw?’ The storyteller’s eyes widened as she could see it clearly in her mind’s eye. ‘They came upon a large, black rock.
One of the young men, being curious as young men are, was examining this strange stone. His toe grazed its base. And, suddenly, it burst into a soft flame, and a woman emerged from it. Her name was Ahalya. She was so radiant, had always been a real beauty. You know what her name means?’ Without waiting for a response from the royals, she continued, ‘The one in whom there is no imperfection.’

  ‘I cannot even imagine it,’ said Urmilla excitedly.

  ‘You mean it is even greater than being just perfect?’ demanded Sita indignantly.

  ‘Now that’s something for you two to live up to,’ said the queen with a warm laugh.

  ‘So, what happened?’ asked Janaka, as he wanted to find out about the two young men, while masking his concern for his kingdom’s safety.

  The storyteller continued cheerfully, impervious to these lively interruptions:

  ‘It was long before my mother’s, mother’s grandmother’s great aunt’s time that if any woman’s beauty was compared to Ahalya’s, all the neighbours would “tut, tut”. It wasn’t just her beauty, it was her nature that was beyond comparison.

  ‘She was a caring woman. She loved her husband who was many, many, many years older than her. He was a great philosopher of his time. There they both were, in the forest, in a little hermitage. He used to wake early and go off to meditate and she would make the place spotless by the time he returned.

  ‘When the devas watched over the couple, they couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be close to her. Finally Indra, the chieftain of the devas, could hold back no longer. He thought of Ahalya night and day, and day and night. All the courtesans of Devaloka grew ferociously jealous of an earthly woman holding sway over a deva, and that too over Indra. They taunted him. He found this a good excuse to come down to earth and prove what a powerful deva he really was; that no one could stand in the way of such striking godliness. But as the deva who held the thunderbolt and struck lightning, he decided not to descend to earth so dramatically. It would scare everyone off. He knew the only way he could come into Ahalya’s presence was if he were someone else.