Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of the Ramayana Read online

  The place where Bharata and Ram meet, Ram’s first major camp after his exile, is called Chitrakut.

  Across India, there are cities that are divided based on the events that occur in the Ramayana. In Varanasi, for example, there are portions of the city identified with Ayodhya (Ram Nagar) and with Lanka. They are located on either side of the river Ganga. Then there are specific locations identified as Chitrakut where Ram meets Bharata and as Panchvati from where Sita gets abducted. Thus the grand epic becomes particular and intimate. Similar mapping is seen in Wayanad in Kerala.

  Bharat Milap (1942) is a popular Hindi film based on the meeting of Bharata with Ram.

  In the Buddhist Dashratha Jataka, Dashratha who is king of Varanasi exiles Ram into the forest to protect him from his ambitious second queen. Astrologers tell Dashratha he will live for twelve years and so he tells Ram to return after twelve years. But when Dashratha dies only nine years later and Bharata goes to fetch Ram, Ram insists on keeping his word and staying in the forest for twelve years. He speaks of the impermanence of all things, thus revealing himself to be the Bodhisattva. This display of integrity makes him noble and worthy of reverence.

  In the Dashratha Jataka, Ram and Sita are described as siblings. The assumption that this indicates a prevalence of incest has riled the Hindu orthodoxy. Beyond such titillating interpretations that get media coverage, the story probably resonates the ancient belief in Indic faiths that there was once a golden age (the sushama-sushama period or the yugalia era of Jain cosmology, for example) where couples were not husbands and wives but brothers and sisters, twins actually, as there was no need for sexual activity since the mind was so highly evolved that the body did not crave sensual pleasure and children were born out of thought. With time, pollution crept in, and sexual activity emerged, giving rise to marriage laws and incest taboos. Thus Jain Agama speaks of Rishabha having two wives, Sumangala who is his twin and Sunanda whose twin dies in an accident. Further, in India, where child marriages were prevalent, husbands and wives addressed each other as brother and sister, until they were deemed old enough to consummate the marriage.

  The Last Rites of Dashratha

  When the tears stopped flowing, Bharata told Ram the terrible events that followed after Ram had left the city.

  Bharata had left Kekaya and returned home after receiving urgent word from his mother. He found the city shorn of all joy. No music, no smiles, no fragrances, no colour. Glum faces everywhere. At the palace gate, Manthara greeted him, but no one else. In his mother’s courtyard, he found his mother with a shaven head, wearing the ochre robes of a widow. Rather than telling him how the king died, she told him excitedly how he would now be king. When he insisted on knowing about his father, she revealed how he had collapsed on the threshold of the palace shortly after Ram’s departure to the forest. He died without his sons by his side, or his subjects around him. His body had been kept in a vat of oil, to prevent decomposition, waiting for one of his sons to perform the last rites.

  ‘But I did not perform the last rites,’ said Bharata. ‘Sumantra told me the king’s last wish very clearly. He did not want Kaikeyi’s son to light his funeral pyre. Shatrughna, the youngest, had to do what is supposed to be done by the eldest.’

  Shatrughna then said, ‘Yes, the rituals are complete but our father’s spirit refuses to cross the Vaitarni. Yama’s crows refuse to eat the funeral offerings. I have been tormented by dreams. Father wants the meat of the one-horned rhino, hunted by his four sons together. That is why we have come to see you.’

  Ram realized how desperately his father wanted to see his children united. ‘Then let us go hunting. Let us work as one and give our father the food he is hungry for.’

  While the royal entourage waited, the four brothers went deeper into the forest in search of the one-horned rhino. They returned shortly with its carcass, and performed the necessary ceremonies. The crows accepted this offering, indicating that Dashratha was finally ready to leave the land of the living.

  ‘Produce sons soon,’ the spirit of Dashratha whispered in his sons’ ears before he left. But he realized that all four sons would live like tapasvis until Ram’s return fourteen years later. He would have to be patient until then. Enraged, he caused the wind to uproot a few trees in the forest, before he crossed the Vaitarni to await rebirth from the land of the dead.

  Traditionally, the eldest son performs the last rites of his father. In the Valmiki Ramayana, the tragedy of Ram not being able to perform the last rites of his father, even though he is the eldest son, is highlighted.

  The detail of Bharata being denied the right to perform the funeral comes from Kamban’s Ramayana.

  The hunting of the rhino episode is based on the Ramayana play performed in rural Odisha.

  Hindus believe that the river Vaitarni separates the land of the living from the land of the dead. In the land of the living live the sons or Putra. In the land of the dead live the forefathers or Pitr. Pitr are reborn through Putra. Those who fail to produce Putra are doomed to be trapped in the hell known as Put. Scholars are divided if Putra and Pitr are gender-neutral terms or refer specifically to sons and forefathers.

  In Bhasa’s play Pratima-nataka, Ravana takes advantage of Ram’s desperation to perform the last rites of his father. Pretending to be a brahmin well versed in funeral rituals, he advises Ram to offer a golden deer found in the Himalayas to please the departed soul of his father. Thus Ram is encouraged to leave the hermitage, enabling Ravana to abduct Sita.

  Gaya in Bihar is favoured by Hindus for making funeral offerings to ancestors. The river Falgu has no water here, even though there is water upstream and downstream, because it runs underground. Digging the riverbed reveals the waters. It is said that Ram came to this spot with his brothers to perform Dashratha’s shradh rituals and while he was away bathing, the spirit of Dashratha appeared before Sita and asked her to feed him immediately. She did not have any rice or black sesame seeds, so she gave him pinda balls made of riverbed sand. This pleased Dashratha. When Ram returned, she told him what had happened. He did not believe her. Sita pointed to her witnesses – the banyan tree, the river, the cow, the tulsi plant and the priests. Unfortunately, none but the banyan tree spoke up. Enraged, Sita cursed the river that henceforth it would lose its water in Gaya, the cow that it would henceforth be worshipped from the back not the front, the tulsi plant that it would not be worshipped in Gaya and the priests that they would always be hungry. She blessed the banyan tree that it would have the power to accept funeral offerings made not just to deceased parents but also deceased friends, enemies, strangers and even oneself if one is childless.

  The Sandals of Ram

  All ceremonies of death were performed facing south. When the mourning period was over, Dashratha’s sons were asked to face east, and resume the ceremonies of life. Bharata said, ‘It is now time to return home. End this nonsense. You shall be king as you are meant to. And I shall serve you.’

  Memories of his father rose in Ram’s heart. He enfolded Bharata, Lakshman and Shatrughna in his arms and wept. They were orphans now. Then he said, ‘Our father died keeping his word. Let us live keeping his word. I will have to stay in the forest for fourteen years.’

  ‘Look at all the people who have followed me. Look at the expectation in their eyes. They all want this bad dream to end. Let us go back to things as they were.’

  ‘No, Bharata,’ said Ram calmly.

  ‘I will follow you then,’ said Bharata, ‘as Sita and Lakshman do.’

  ‘Who then will take care of Ayodhya?’ asked Ram. ‘We are kings, Bharata. Let us not sacrifice responsibility at the altar of sentimentality. Father was not obliged to give our mother a boon; but he did, not one but two. While expressing gratitude to his wife who had saved his life, he forgot he was also a king and his boons could have far-reaching implications. We now have to face the consequences of that lapse. The Raghu clan must not be seen bending their rules for the sake of convenience. We need to be dep