Sita's Silence

Dedicated to the strongest-willed woman who walked this planet-Sita

I disappear. And everything is silenced. The accusations, the taunts, the weariness. The living down of a sin I had never committed. I disappear and you bind me in temples forever as a goddess and forget the living vital woman that I was. I disappear. And all of you women, who come after me, in villages and cities, suffer trying to live up to my name. None of you question, none of you try to reason. I disappeared, suffering, chaste Sita, into the bowels of the earth. And all of you are the victims of my silence.

The purest, most loving woman who was ever born. Princess and queen. The most devoted wife on earth, the wife who never rebelled. You believed all that? You, women yourselves, believed so many lies?

Of course, I loved my husband. When I came to Ayodhya as a bride I was as much in love as the books tell you, as the songs sung at dusk in the temple courtyards. I look back at myself, in those innocent days at the palace, and smile. I can still smile at it all.

And then palace intrigue and banishment to the forests. Even then I was happy. A sheltered princess, having the great adventure in the deep woods of the great forests. That was possibly the last time that we were so content. Rama and I. The very complicated, intensely insecure man that I had married. Blithely. Without knowing of the deep vagaries of human nature.

Moving out with her husband. That was the best move for a woman in love. But I didn’t think of it as a move in the game then. I didn’t even realize that it was a game. I wonder now. Wounds. Violence. There’re many forms. You don’t have to be physically cruel to a woman to destroy her.

And then the hullabaloo of being kidnapped by Ravana. The rescue. The hope, the joy when I saw my husband again. And I was met with accusations. You cannot be chaste if you had been in another man’s house for so many months.

He couldn’t cast me off then and I came back to Ayodhya . And then. Unexpectedly. Suddenly. “Was he kind to you?” “Yes..” for Ravana had been kind to me. The Ayodhya brothers. Most of their victories had been against women. Taraka, Shoorpanakha, Tara-the monkey queen….Kaikeyi, the queen mother and finally, oh yes, finally…Sita.

I was kidnapped by Ravana who was a ruthless man. But he had been kind to me. Even when his brothers were dying, even when Indrajit, his most beloved son, was killed by Lakshaman, he never once sought to harm me. I came back, unscathed. But my husband didn’t believe that. Or in me.

It was the King I encountered. Not the boy that I once knew.

And finally exile. Pregnant and banished again into the deep forest that I now knew, better than the vast, cruel halls of palace. I did not protest. The laughing princess of Mithila had become a frightened queen.

Could I have changed all that? Yes, if I had been the silent, subservient Sita that you all think of me to be. Yes, if I had realized that loving someone was not enough. Yes, if I had told Rama that I was terrified of Ravana. But I could stand up to him. That was unforgivable.

And then because I had my sons, the twin heirs of Ayodhya, I was summoned back to that bleak kingdom. Did I imagine the joy in my husband’s eyes when he saw me? That fleeting brief gleam of happiness? Perhaps. For again in the open courtyard of the palace, I was faced with the same accusations, the same taunts. And I left.

The earth didn’t open to cradle me in her arms. That is what legends and myths say. Reality is different. I left. My children and my husband. I walked out of the city and into my own life. Sita was no more.

Was the cause of destruction of my marriage Ravana? No. For one day, Rama would probably have been suspicious of somebody else. For I always answered back and suffered. I could never keep quiet. Sita was never silent. If she had been, she’d have remained Ayodhya’s Queen.

I did not say that I never loved my husband. Only that he never did..or trusted enough..or believed enough.

And sometimes in the cool shades of a monsoon evening, when the rain twinkles through the leaves, I catch the glimpse of a golden deer.. I remember Rama..and am glad that Sita vanished.