The Book of RAM Read online

  Sita knows her place in the world. It is to be her husband’s shadow. So she follows him into the forest. If Ram had had his way, she would have stayed back in the palace. But Ram is her husband, not her master. As his wife, she has duties towards him but he has no rights over her.

  Like Ram, Sita prepares to wear clothes of bark when it is time to leave for the forest. But the palace women stop her from removing her bridal finery.

  In Vedic times, at the time of marriage, a girl was bedecked with sixteen symbols that transformed her from a woman into a wife. These symbols included (the list varies in different texts): parting the hair; smearing the parting of the hair with vermilion powder; knotting the hair into a bun; decorating the hair with strings of flowers; sandal paste and perfumes over the body; a red sari; earrings for the ears; kohl around the eyes; nose ring for the nose; necklaces and garlands around the neck, especially the mangalsutra or the string of marriage; bangles, bracelets and armlets for the arms, rings for the hands; anklets with tiny bells for the legs, toe rings for the feet; alta or red dye for the palms and the soles; chewing betel nut wrapped in betel leaves.

  Sita is not allowed to remove any of these symbols as she remains Ram’s wife even in the forest. These symbols distinguish her from an unmarried girl and a widow. Only when the husband dies were wives asked to remove these sixteen symbols. To do so before was to bring bad luck to the husband’s household.

  In the forest, Ram and Sita pay a visit to the hermitage of sage Atri where his wife, Anasuya, gifts Sita with a sari that will never tear or get soiled. Thus her marital status is not just reinforced but celebrated.

  In temples where a goddess is enshrined, the primary offering to the deity is either fabric like a sari or a blouse piece, or jewellery like nose rings and bangles, or cosmetics like kajal or alta. Implicit in this ritual offering is the desire that the goddess become a bride and mother. Without these offerings, the goddess is naked. Unclothed, she is the wild and violent Kali, much like Tadaka. Clothed, she becomes Gauri, the demure and domestic one, much like Sita. There is the constant fear that the goddess may return to her unbound primal state, that the field may become a forest. Perhaps that is why Ram does not want Sita to go to the forest. Perhaps that is why the palace does not want Sita to shed her bridal finery.

  In the forest, Sita watches her husband kill demons and make the forest a safer place for sages. She feels that his violence is at times excessive and unprovoked. Ram does not think so. This conversation between the field and the farmer draws attention to the fact that a good king is supposed to know how much domestication of the forest is necessary for human needs and how much is too much.

  Sages in the forest

  After crossing the Ganga and Yamuna and staying for a while in Chitrakut on the advice of Rishi Bharadwaj, Ram and Sita along with Lakshman decided to move south exploring the dense wilderness known as Dandaka. There they encountered demons like Viradha and sages like Shrabhanga. They killed the demons so that the forest was safer for sages. So passed thirteen years. In the final year of exile, they met Rishi Agastya, who gave Ram many weapons and thanked him for making the forest a safer place by eliminating numerous demons. Directed by the sage, they went to the woods known as Panchavati.

  The field is constantly under threat of being overwhelmed by the forest. Thus, while in the forest, as Sita walks behind Ram, she does attract the roving eye of men, despite wearing all the symbols indicating she is someone else’s wife.

  Crow’s eye

  A crow kept chasing and pecking Sita. She endured the harassment silently. When Ram saw what the crow was doing, he was so incensed that he picked up a blade of grass, chanted a mantra and hurled it at the crow. The crow turned out to be none other than Jayanta, Indra’s son, who harassed Sita in order to test if Ram was really God. He ran across the three worlds to escape Ram’s grass missile. Finally, he begged Ram to forgive him for doubting his divinity. Sita intervened too. And so Ram said the missile would not kill the crow. It would only pierce one of its eyes. Since then crows are supposed to have only one eye.

  Jayanta is Indra’s son, the same Indra who seduced Ahalya. This is no coincidence. Indra is renowned in mythology as a god who seeks to seduce women unaccompanied by men. Finding a woman dressed in bridal finery accompanied by hermits, who are supposed to be celibate, Indra’s son clearly assumes Sita is unattached and available. He pecks her and even scratches her breasts ostensibly for food. But Ram is not amused. He knows what the vile creature seeks and he punishes him without mercy. Thus the farmer protects the field.

  The story is narrated by Sita to Hanuman when he locates her in Lanka. This story, she tells him, is a secret known only to her and her husband. Clearly, the two do not want this to be public knowledge. It stains their royal reputation and highlights the worst fear people have about the forest—beyond the frontiers of civilization women are exposed to a realm where the laws of marriage have no hold, and are hence liable to break free from the shackles of dharma.

  As a hermit, Ram has to stay celibate. In the forest, he witnesses the freedom of nature, birds and beasts responding to instinct and mating in public. But bound by his word, forced to be a hermit for fourteen years, he must restrain himself from being intimate with his young wife. His commitment to his word is thus tested to the limits. Ram’s celibacy is never explicitly stated in the epic but is alluded to by the fact that despite being in the forest for fourteen years, Sita never gets pregnant. Across India, there are many spots associated with Ram and Sita. Typically, there are separate ponds where Ram and Sita performed their ablutions, suggesting the distance they maintained between them.

  Like Ram, Lakshman too follows the path of the hermit. Beside him is his beautiful sister-in-law who any man would desire. But he does not even look at her. Thus he keeps his natural instincts under check. The following story comes from Ekanath’s Bhavarth Ramayana written in Marathi.

  Clothes of Sita

  Once while Ram was away foraging for food in the forest, Sita and Lakshman were busy setting up a shelter using branches and leaves of a tree. Having done so Sita fell to the ground exhausted and decided to take a nap. Lakshman sat with his back to Sita while she slept. Suddenly the wind blew and Sita’s robes got disarrayed and her body was exposed. Ram returned and saw this and asked Lakshman, ‘She lies there almost unclothed. What a beautiful woman she is! Who can restrain their passions at the sight of one such as her?’ To this Lakshman replied, ‘He whose father is Dashratha and whose mother is Sumitra and whose brother is Ram is the one who can restrain his passion at a sight that he has never seen but has only heard you describe.’ Ram was touched by his brother’s purity of character.

  This story highlights what distinguishes human society from the jungle. In the jungle, sex is instinctual but in the human world it is governed by both emotions and intellect. In the jungle, all males are attracted to the female in season but only the most powerful or most beautiful or most skilled male is allowed to mate with her. In some species, the selection is done by the female. In others, the males fight amongst themselves and the winner alone pursues the female. But in human society, law, not power, binds man to woman. Every man has a spouse and the two are expected to be faithful to each other. In human society, man even has the option of conquering his sexual urge, even when a woman is available, something that is not seen in the natural world.

  Sita is in a peculiar situation: she is a wife but her husband does not touch her because he is forced to be a hermit. She is constantly in the company of another man, Lakshman, who is not her husband. Their close proximity can breed attraction but both Sita and Lakshman overpower these natural instincts by their adherence to dharma. Thus, Ram, Lakshman and Sita, by being chaste, embody civilized conduct. They may have left Ayodhya but Ayodhya has not left them. By upholding dharma, they do not let the forest make animals of them.

  Surpanakha, however, does not adhere to the code of civilization. She is therefore deemed a Rakshasa. Like Tadaka, sh