Sita's Ascent (2 page)

The shock of the sound of his voice, the
look in his eyes. It was a primeval beginning. White light, dry mouth, white lips. A
string of images floated in white clouds behind her eyes; they were bereft of all
meaning. Her left hand rose to hold her throat. Her right hand clasped its wrist.
Her bangle snapped. The figure floating away in the chariot was a man called
Lakshmana. She repeated the name in her mind:
Lakshmana
.
The more she did the more he evaporated from her memory. It, he, had no meaning. The
sound filtered in and she could hear the wheels of the chariot grinding recklessly
on the pathway in the distance. The clouds of dust they raised made Valmiki sneeze.
Sita let out the first scream. A short one and held her belly tight.

Words, which came so easily to Valmiki,
now burned on his tongue. What do you say to a woman who has been abandoned, and
that too, so many times?

‘When?’ she uttered.
She felt cold and shivered in the afternoon heat. In the distance there was a sound
like crashing. She was tumbling down in a spiral within herself the way
Lakshmana’s chariot was tumbling down the gorge. He was flying through the
air, kicking his legs for the last time.

‘When … did all this
happen?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’
A soft bulb of white light burst in her mind’s eye. Rama was standing as
she was ready to step into the chariot. He looked at her and her heart melted. He
even said he was going to miss her. How long ago was this planned? She was tumbling
fast and Valmiki wanted to catch her before she fell into that dark abyss of
betrayal.

‘This is good,’ he
said. ‘Sita, I was born from the darkness. Listen,’ said Valmiki
with urgency and music in his voice. She lifted her head; somewhere inside her there
was a doll called Sita, tumbling.

‘Listen. When that strange man
came, the one they called Narada, I thought he was another joke. I threatened him
and he presented me with a challenge: “Go and see if anyone in your family
will visit death in your stead and take your sins on their heads.” I was
so sure everyone would. My father was having his afternoon smoke and, when I asked
him, he accused me of wanting to kill him. My beloved mother said I was a snake, and
my darling wife accused me of attempting the greatest murder because I was wiping
the smile off her face by asking her to visit death and take my sins upon her head.
Till then I had been so sure they all loved me. I risked my life every day for them,
I thought. I thought they loved me for me. But I did not know that I only loved
myself and, naturally, they,
themselves; and whom I killed, what
I brought home or how I risked my life was really of no concern to anyone. My home
suddenly struck me as a wilderness. I ran for my life. I returned to untie that
strange man. He could see what had transpired from the way I looked. He gave me a
word. I repeated it for what seemed like years on end and, out of that darkness,
worlds began to swim out of my heart and sing inside my head. I could see the future
and Rama, and you.’

‘Did you see me like
this?’ Sita asked him. Valmiki hung his head. Had he imagined her as a
character for the compelling epic as he saw her now? Was she to always stand tall
and take the blows her husband’s fate dealt her? Had he never seen her as
a victim? That for a long time to come she would have to be the ideal by whom women
swore when they took their marriage vows? He suddenly realized what a burden this
must be.

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.

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.