Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana Read online

  She curled herself to sleep like a baby and remembered her father and her mother and all the wise words they spoke. She remembered the kindness of the sages. No one had told her the world would be so cruel, that she would be forced to leave one house and dragged out of another. ‘There is pain only when there is attachment,’ Yagnavalkya had said. She felt pain. She was attached. Was that bad? She yearned for liberation: when would Ram come?

  ‘He has forgotten you,’ said Surpanakha. ‘Soon he will be ready to accept me as you will be ready to accept my brother.’ Sita did not reply. She watched the rains come and go. No one travels in the rain but she knew her Ram would seek her through flood and sludge: but when would Ram come?

  Then suddenly, at night, when the autumn moon was high in the sky, she heard something, very distinct from the sound of insects and the rustling of the wind.

  ‘Ram, Ram.’

  Yes, that is exactly what she heard. Was she dreaming? Was it her imagination conjuring up what she wanted to hear?

  She looked up and saw a strange sight: a silver monkey chanting the name of Ram. The monkey opened the palm of his hand and dropped something on the ground. It was a ring. Sita’s eyes widened: it was Ram’s ring. She looked up; the monkey came down and spoke, in a human voice: ‘I am Ram’s messenger, Hanuman. I have been sent to find you.’

  Sita withdrew, suspicious: another of Ravana’s tricks?

  Sensing her fears, Hanuman said, ‘I am no rakshasa. I am a vanara. We reside in Kishkindha located between Dandaka in the north and Lanka in the south. Like yakshas and rakshasas, we too descend from Brahma through Pulastya. My mother is Anjana, daughter of Ahilya. And I was born by the grace of Vayu, the wind-god. My father is Kesari, who served the vanara-king Riksha. I serve the son of Riksha, Sugriva. Surya, the sun-god, is my teacher. And Ram, the noble prince of the Raghu clan, who wanders in the forest as a hermit to keep the word of his father, is my inspiration. We found the jewels you discarded from Ravana’s flying chariot on the forest floor and have traced you to this garden on an island in the middle of the sea.’

  The words, the tone of the voice, the sheer audacity of such an intervention, replaced doubt with trust. Through this monkey her Ram had reached out to her. Sita finally smiled, a flood of relief rising up in her heart.

  The gap between Sita’s abduction and her meeting with Hanuman is at least one rainy season. She is abducted in summer before the rains and Ram fights Ravana in autumn, marked by the festival of Dussehra, after the rains.

  The meeting of Hanuman and Sita is described in many ways. In Valmiki’s Ramayana, Hanuman comes to Sita after Ravana comes and threatens to kill her if she does not submit to him. In a Telugu Ramayana, Hanuman finds her about to commit suicide. In a Marathi Ramayana, she hears a monkey chant the name of Ram. In an Odia Ramayana, he drops the ring and gets her attention while her guards are sleeping, tired after spending the day alternately terrifying and cajoling her.

  In the Valmiki Ramayana, Hanuman wonders if he should speak to Sita in deva-vacham, or language of the gods, meaning Sanskrit, or manushya-vacham, or language of humans, meaning Prakrit (or, some say, Tamil). Either way, she will wonder how a monkey can speak.

  The dialogue shows Sita’s doubt and how Hanuman gradually gains her trust using his diplomatic skills.

  Divinity is on the sidelines of Valmiki’s retelling. Ram can sense his divinity but it remains in the background. As the centuries passed, the divinity of Ram came to the foreground. His name became a mantra.

  As Ram starts being increasingly associated with Vishnu, Hanuman starts becoming increasingly associated with Shiva, either as his avatar (Rudra-avatar) or as his son, and Sita starts getting associated with the Goddess. Thus through the Ramayana, the three major sects of Hinduism devoted to Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti express themselves.

  The Sanskrit Hanuman-nataka informs us how there are eleven forms of Rudra. Ten of these protect the ten heads of Ravana but the eleventh one takes the form of Hanuman.

  Ram’s signet ring given to Sita is said to have his name inscribed on it. The use of Devanagari script currently used for Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati came into use in India about a thousand years ago while the Ramayana is over two thousand years old, leading scholars to conclude that the use of the written word comes into the Ram narrative much later.

  The Story of the Vanaras

  The vanaras of Kishkindha had turned north when they heard a vulture screech. They had watched Ravana’s sword hack through Jatayu’s wing causing him to tumble to the ground. The flying chariot had then made its way south. The sound of a woman’s wail had filled the air. She had dropped her jewels from above leaving a trail. The vanaras had collected these jewels from the forest floor and given them to Sugriva, who wondered what the commotion was all about.

  ‘Sugriva is the king of Kishkindha, and I serve him. When Ram met him, he too was an exile because of problems with his brother,’ explained Hanuman.

  Hanuman then proceeded to tell Sita all about the vanaras and their quarrels.

  Brahma’s son Kashyapa had a wife called Vinata, who was the mother of birds. Once she laid two eggs. But the eggs took a long time to hatch. Impatient, she broke open one of the eggs. The child thus born became Aruni, the dawn-god, he of unknowable gender as his lower half remains unfinished.

  Aruni served as charioteer of Surya, the sun-god, whose greatest rival was Indra, the flamboyant king of the sky, whose thunderbolts caused clouds to release rain. The reason for this rivalry was simple: people on earth prayed to Indra for wetness when the sun was the brightest and they prayed to Surya for dryness when Indra was most powerful.

  One day, without informing Surya, Aruni entered the court of Indra to see the secret sensual dance of the apsaras. To do this he had to take a female form. Aruni’s unfamiliar face intrigued Indra, who knew all his apsaras well. He approached her, enjoyed her company and eventually made love to her. As a result Aruni gave birth to a son called Vali. This childbirth happened instantly as happens with the devas. Aruni left the child in the care of the sage Gautama and his wife Ahilya.

  This tryst with Indra delayed Aruni but when he told Surya the reason for the delay Surya was most curious. He demanded Aruni show him his female form, on seeing which he too was smitten. He also made love to Aruni, and Aruni instantly gave birth to a son called Sugriva, who too he left in the care of Gautama and Ahilya.

  Gautama and Ahilya already had a daughter called Anjana. Anjana told her father about Indra visiting Ahilya while he was away. So Ahilya cursed her to turn into a monkey. Gautama cursed the two boys to turn into monkeys as well as they had failed to inform him of the same. Later, after cursing Ahilya to turn into a rock, Gautama felt sorry for the motherless monkeys. He could not retract the curse and so he gave all three monkeys to Riksha, the childless monkey-king of Kishkindha.

  When the children grew up, Riksha got them all married: Anjana married Kesari, Vali married Tara, and Sugriva married Ruma. Before he died, Riksha told Vali and Sugriva to share the kingdom equally.

  All was well in Kishkindha, until Vali killed a demon called Dundhubi.

  Dundhubi’s son, Mayavi, entered Kishkindha and challenged Vali to a duel to avenge his father’s death. In the forest, a duel is a challenge to authority and so one can never say no to it. Sugriva watched as Vali and Mayavi began their fierce fight. It was a great fight with each hurling rocks and trees at each other at first, and then showering each other with blows and kicks. It lasted for days. Finally, Mayavi gave up and ran into a cave.

  Vali wanted a decisive victory. Determined to kill Mayavi, he followed the demon into the cave while Sugriva watched the mouth of the cave. ‘If he gives me the slip or succeeds in killing me, make sure you kill him as he leaves the cave,’ Vali instructed Sugriva. Days passed. Thunderous roars of their fight kept coming out from the mouth of the cave. Sugriva waited patiently for the duel to end. Then came an eerie silence and no hoot of victory.

  Was Vali dead? It was