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Trans. from Assamese by: Tejoswita Saikia

1

‘… at one point of time I found her. Sitting under a banyan tree she looked at me as if she had known all along that I would be there… and then she asked – “How would you narrate my state? Would you be able to?”

“I can,” I said “but for that I’ll have to rewrite my story.”

2

Who was I? Sita – finding me in a ploughed furrow, Janak had raised me. It must have been an unwed mother who had abandoned me there hounded by social stigma. My existence had no identity. Raised amidst affection and dotting, yet the obscurity of my identity – how overpoweringly frightening. It gnawed at me drawing me deeper into a perplexing despair. The bliss of being a princess seemed a farce, a cruel joke being played on me. And then, one day, my adoptive father announced a ‘swayambar’ for my marriage.

Ram had come for the ‘swayambar.’ At the first sight of him a tremor shook my entire being. What was it in that dusk hued martial body, in the body glowing like the full moon? Under the hypnotic spell of those eyes like a fathomless ocean, all walls around my heart came collapsing down and I lost myself to him. For the first time a faith on my destiny flickered in me and I was surprised by my own thought of willing to go against the word of my father to choose Ram as my husband even if he failed the test. Unashamed, I felt as if destiny had brought Ram into my life like a beggar being serendipitously blessed with navaratnas… What kind of feelings were those!

I arrived at Ayodhya with Ram. But I grew dejected there. Ram – the benevolent King, devoted son, the greatest of all men – under the overshadowing persona of Ram what was my identity? As the eldest daughter-in-law of the royal family I had innumerable responsibilities, so, where was the time for love and intimacy? Yet, with longing I await that hour of nightfall when all the lamps are turned down, the doors of the palace to be closed and the noises of the royal household to be drowned in the tranquil silence of the night.

He comes.

“Janaki…” All of a sudden the honey-dipped moments of waiting and yearning come to a halt. Janaki – the daughter of King Janak, this word pricks me like a thorn of the sacred grass of Kus’a. I try to smile. Lying on the bed he talks of his troubles of statecraft – the dishonesty of his ministers, anticipation of rivalry for kingship, the blind and suppliant love of his father, King Dashrath for Kaikeyi. Sometimes he asks – “Are you alright?”  A livid anxiety chokes me but concealing by tormenting angst with a smile or sugary words I surrender myself in his arms.

At that time his libidinal drive was enormous. I felt like a gazelle being pounced upon by a hungry lion. Passionate I was too, but as the carnal games would come to an end I was left with a harrowing sense of desolation, an excruciating void. Everyone extolled Ram’s acceptance of exile as the epitome of his exemplary life. Breaking down the news of his exile he said – “You, with the body of resplendent beauty, I renounce my desire for you. These bounteous succulent curves and legs like the trunk of a ramkadali tree, I quit all the maya of your firm, curvaceous body and don upon myself death in life.” A wave of smile washed across my lips even as I was struck with these bitter words like thunderbolt. I am a wife, the desired, the gratifier… I pleaded to accompany him and in an instant he agreed to my entreaty. 

What bewilderment, pleasure and anguish awaited me in the exile!

During the exile I discovered a different side of Ram. At Ayodhya he had always been the King, preoccupied with his statecraft. But here he seemed almost undisturbed by it all. One day sitting beside the Mandakini River, when the water had assumed a wondrous hue of blue and some wild geese were frolicking in the river, the fragrance of nageswar and champak flowers filled the air around us; my heart experienced a deep sense of tranquility and contentment.

Suddenly I felt as if Ram was calling out to me.

“Sita.”

As I looked back at him his gaze felt as if he was seeing me for the first time. His eyes shone like lightning.  It seemed as if a cloudy night sky had cleared up for the moonlight to spread across like a flowing river in which were swimming numerous silver and golden fishes.

“What are you looking at?”

“You.”

“This body, this face isn’t an unknown mystery to you.”

“You do realize that at this moment I have rediscovered you.” As if to himself, he said, “I hadn’t tried to notice you before now. It was as if I had lived like a blind man all my life.”

Those were the blissful days of my life. Laxman was busy hunting deer or gathering fruits for food and offering protection to the forest-dwellers while I and Ram spent hours sitting on the bank of the river under the cool shade of the trees.  Time flowed in tranquil silence as we luxuriated oblivious of it. Even in this silence I found a sense of captivating intoxication. I felt elated as if I had finally been able to understand and find Ram… He had learnt to revere my body and mind. It wasn’t the unrestrained savagery of before. His touch was like a black bee hovering on a flower as I showered my fragrant love on him with abandon.

I do not know what turn my relation with Ram would have taken had we spent all the days of exile together. But those days of our togetherness had filled me with a happiness I was never to know again.

The moment Ravana kidnapped me, the course of my simple flow of my life as I had known it ended. I stepped into a complex vortex of scandal and bewilderment that I could not comprehend.

In Ravana I saw all the qualities of an insane and violent lover. It seemed as if he had almost sacrificed his wife and family for me lending a deaf ear to all the counsels of his well-wishers. In the midst of the angst of being torn apart from Ram, defying all better judgment, deep within me stirred an elated pleasure that filled my heart. I could see how Ravana was blinded in my love and even when I rebuked him every time he came near I could not help offering my obeisance to his indomitable love for me.  It was astonishing that he never spoke a harsh word or forced himself on me. I couldn’t help being drawn to his chivalrous nature.

Time had weakened my hope of Ram. Days turned into months without any news of him.  I was beginning to slip, being drawn towards Ravana, slowly but steadily. I was ready to give in to the yearning arms of Ravana when the shrill cries of war bugle tore through the skies of Lanka. As if awoken from a stupor, crawling up from a pit I had dug for myself I reprimanded myself – Chi! What was I about do to? At a time when a king, tired and hungry, for days on end, was raking through a forest, for an ordinary woman like me, with each breath put in service for this very aim, here I was drowned in the thoughts of a strange man.  My guilt and remorse had no end.

The war began. Ravana’s army had been losing battle after battle. In the war that went on for months all of Ravana’s family perished. Hundreds of thousands of Ram’s soldiers too lost their lives. All this news reached me. But it had been a long time since I had seen Ravana. My affection for Ram had found a new vigour and somewhere Ravana’s existence that become like a shingle buried in the sand on a beach… On one such day Ravana came to me. He was emaciated and looked like a walking skeleton. In his eyes, it seemed, hallucination was playing its tricks. I mumbled something, indistinct words.

He stared at me and laughed.

“Soon your wait will be over, Sita. Who knows if we’ll see each other tomorrow, or not?”

“Then why don’t you let me go. Why do you invite death upon yourself?”

“My arrogance. A man’s pride, a king’s pride, a lover’s pride… what would you understand of it all?”

Like a dagger his words pierced through my heart. As if in a trance I called out to him –“What do you want? Come here to me.”

He is stunned for an instant and then slowly steps closer to me.

I swamp his face with kisses and whisper into his ears –

“What more do you want?”

“…Nothing more.”

Two days hence Ravana is killed in the hands of Ram.

On a rainy night I came to Ram. Seeing nobody else in the room I realized Ram wanted to see me in solitude. I wanted to run into Ram’s arms and let the flood of my tears flow, but a shiver ran down my spine as I saw the stony look on Ram’s face.

“Sit down.”

I sat down as he came closer to me.  The look in his eyes seemed like a sharpened sword chasing after me to rip me apart.

“What happened between you and Ravana?”

A terrifying shock shook me up to the core of my being. My heart turning cold as a cadaver it felt as if my tongue had been pierced with a piece of hot iron. Aghast I stood there words failing me.

He comes closer to me. What would Ram do now? Will he clench my throat in his strong hands and draw the life-breath out of me? With the middle finger of his right hand he feels my cheek.

“Could Ravana resist the lure of this body hued like the bel fruit? This body…” – His warm breath grazes my cheek – “Was it impervious to Ravana?”

…and for the first time I spoke – “Calling to witness the Sun, the Moon, and all the heavenly Gods I promise – I and Ravana had no bodily relation.  Ravana loved me – he wasn’t a ruthless bandit who would rob me of all I had. His love was pious and hence I am here unscathed.”

My own words seemed cruel and strange to me! Ram’s face was changing colors like a chameleon, but at that moment I dared to look into his face.

A long time had gone by. The sound of the rain gradually became louder… At one point Ram said – “Alright, I believe you. I accept you.”

It had been days hence and we had already returned to Ayodhya, but the memory of that night kept haunting me. I couldn’t fathom why it felt as if I had deceived Ram even though what I had told Ram was wasn’t entirely false. Ravana had never touched me wilfully; it was me who had smeared his face with my kisses on the last night. That last meeting with Ravana still burdened me like a curse. Every day I had carried around with me those eyes of Ravana, that voice of his, that blind affection for me… and why did over the days my suspicion of Ram’s unhappiness become stronger?  There was something that was corroding him from within. But I could never gather up enough courage to ask him about it. At nights as we made love he would suddenly freeze his touch incoherent and tardy. His heavy sighs singed my heart.

One day I had a dream. I am travelling through the sky on a chariot with Ravana. When the chariot disappears into the clouds I scream and hold onto Ravana. Ravana is laughing. Suddenly something resembling a meteor sparkling through the sky falls near our chariot with a loud bang and breaks it into two. We are freefalling through the sky and I shout in fright – “Ravana, help, help.”

I wake up writhing and look at Ram. He is sleeping with his back turned towards me. I breathe quietly.

Few days after having the dream, Ram had begun retiring to the bedroom quite late. I would fall asleep waiting for him. By the time I woke up in the morning he would already be gone. In fact, I did not even know if he had actually come to the bedroom at night. Ten days had passed like this.

So, one day I became resolute and as dawn approached I kept sitting on the bed. After a while Ram arrived. We were both startled to see each other. In these ten days his face had changed alarmingly. His face had lost its ebullience and his eyes weren’t bright as before.

“You are awake so late into the night?” 

 “What do you want?” In that moment I did not realize that I was putting the same question to him that I had done to Ravana. He was dumbfounded.

“You have to listen. Today I set you and myself, too, free from this game of hide-and-seek. “

He looked into my eyes and then there began an inexplicable understanding between us. He slowly sat down beside me and said – “Go on.”

I began.

Seventeen days later Laxman brought me to this place. The afternoon sun shone like a ball of fire. The entire flora stood still in the scorching heat. At the bank of the Yamuna we got down from our chariot and crossed the river in a boat. Sumanta waited for us in the chariot.

Sitting me down under a tree Laxman said – “The King has ordered your exile.”

Drops of warm tears ran down my cheeks.

“But there’s still a way…” I do not know why the sound of Laxman’s voice at that moment sounded so strange. Pointing southwards he said to me – “The dense forest that you see over there, five hundred krush hence lies the subordinate kingdom of my maternal uncle… We can leave to go there.”

My eyes opened wide as if ready to explode in indefinite bewilderment.

“I don’t understand.”

“Brother had said – ‘I was the central hero of the war of Lanka. He had adorned me with numerous titles like the War-Victor, the Greatest Hero, but did I want just that. That wasn’t my prime object of desire. I wanted…’”

Laxman stopped and for the first time looked into my eyes – “I wanted the love of a woman.”

I felt as if I had been struck by lightning. “I had fallen in love at the first sight of that damsel. It is often said – a man loses all sense of heaven and hell in his desire for a woman. I too felt the same. But someone else had had obtained her. Within I was driven crazy but could not erase even an inch of her image that was embedded in my heart.”

“Stop, Stop! Don’t talk of such things.” I screamed in anguish.

Laxman drew closer to me.

“At last you can be mine. Just as Mandodari did to Vibhishan, Tara did to Sugriv, you too must accept me, Sita. I’ll bring you every happiness. I will not distrust you like brother. I will not restrain you in anything you want to do… Be my wife, Sita.”

I felt the whole world around me spinning. It was the same dimness within me and the outside. A darkness spread in front of my eyes. When I regained consciousness it was almost evening. I was lying on the ground. Laxman was fanning me with some peepal leaves. My eyes return his worried gaze unanswered.

…Suddenly as if an unknown door in my heart had opened. A jumbled montage of memories started running across my mind… Laxman, the devoted follower of his brother, Laxman – the one who had always been vigilant, always awake during the exile, Laxman – who had rummaged the entire forest to get me fragrant flowers and fruits, shy, humble, reticent, Laxman, who was ready to brutally punish Dashrath and Kaikeyi on hearing of the exile… Why had Laxman left Urmila to accompany us in exile? For me? Yet, in those long years of exile there wasn’t a day when I had received any inkling from Laxman. Did Ram know anything about this? I was getting inextricably entwined in the serpentine coils of my own thoughts.

As I opened my eyes Laxman was fixedly looking at me.

 “What do you want?” The question that I had once asked Ravana and then, Ram, I repeated once again to Laxman. “What you want isn’t possible now.”

I had assumed he would again ask me to be his wife or desire the pleasure of my companionship.

But then Laxman said – “I want justice.”

For a long time Sita remained silent. I realized her story had ended but the final sentence of her story cast a spell on me from which I could not escape. What did Laxman actually mean when he asked for justice? From whom was he seeking justice? What was Sita telling me this story indicative of?  I had composed the Ramayana as I had imagined it, through my perception, but today the characters of my imagination are telling their own stories from the different perspectives of their own. To glorify Ram’s character, his idealism and his love for his subjects, I had relegated the other characters to a position much less of his. But today these subordinated characters are voicing themselves, with a hitherto unrecognized intensity challenging my story, the ideas that had been accepted so far; they are struggling with each other to make themselves be heard.

So drowned was I in my own thoughts that Sita’s voice startled me. Sita said – “Now, only you who can relieve me of this predicament. Show me the way.”

I told her – “Now, there are only two ways in front of you. One that I had determined for you – your exile. The other – to cohabit with Laxman. I will rewrite my story and this time I’ll have both the endings in it. What do you want?

… I began to wait for Sita to answer.

(In the story S = Sita, R² = Ravana/Ram, L = Laxman, and the sign ‘/’ indicates numerous possibilities.)