The land of the Ramayana
My first close look at a bonnet monkey was an experience that I still remember. I was five then and…
Book name: The Liberation of Sita
Genre: Fiction
Author: Volga
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Price: Rs 199
The modern day readers of Valmiki’s Ramayana would term it the most anti-feminist piece of work in the world’s history. Although people now would think it is unethical to bring out the follies in the epic which is kept on a very high pedestal by the followers of Hinduism, they wouldn’t disagree with its misogynistic angles either. Women in the Ramayana are portrayed as an inferior race, a symbol of incompetence and a mere object whose existence is not worth a tuppence.
Volga’s ‘The Liberation of Sita’ is a fearless, strong retelling of the most powerful epic, which deals with the most subjugated characters of the Ramayana–the women. Volga’s ‘The Liberation of Sita’ is originally written in Telugu and translated into English by T Vijay Kumar and C Vijayshree. It presents the protagonists in a very different light from that of the original text by Valmiki and Rama himself.
In Volga’s narrative, we meet Sita in the very beginning where she is seen raising up her kids singlehandedly in Valmiki’s ashram. She has been abandoned by her husband Rama, the king of Ayodhya, even after he freed her from the malicious grip of Ravana who kidnapped her after Rama chopped his sister Surpankha’s nose and ears.
Sita is delved in the serenity and peace of the deep forest, which is drastically different from the life of a princess she was leading prior to her ordeals. The amount of freedom to wander unabashedly in the wilderness without pondering over the worldly responsibilities appeased her to the core. She deals with the pain of abandonment in the most subtle way and the women she meets in the course of her journey makes it easier for her to understand her own worth and free herself from all the mental bondages.
In her first adventure, she met the most feared and the abhorred character of Ramayana, Surpanakha–the sister of Ravana. Rama was known for his notorious act of chopping off her nose and ears because she had committed the heinous crime of falling in love with him. Her son’s everyday stroll to the forest made Sita aware of Supankha’s beautiful garden in the midst of a forest and she decided to meet her. On meeting Surpanakha, Sita was taught a lesson that a woman should not depend on a man for her happiness, a man can never decide how a woman should feel about herself. Volga was hugely lauded for casting a merciful eye on the most venomous character of the epic, who was always looked down upon by the readers and the preachers.
On her next adventure she met the Renuka and Ahalya, who were also the victim of the male-dominated mindset that prevailed during that time. On meeting both them she learned that no man can ever question the chastity of a woman. If they can’t trust you, they don’t have the right to be with you and for a woman her life is much more valuable than surrendering herself to the services of her children and husband. Though Sita tried hard to defend her man but the reality of her own situation left her dumbfounded.
Her next encounter was with Urmila, the wife of Lakshmana. Never before this was Urmila portrayed in such a heroic way. She was not even regarded as a victim of circumstances by the readers or the portrayers. She was left alone by her husband for fourteen years, who did even not ask for her consent before leaving. Though Urmila changed for good yet she could never come to terms with the hard-hitting reality of the world. On meeting Sita, she told her to liberate herself from all the bondages and especially from Rama. That was the most important lesson that jolted Sita completely.
Volga’s audacious narrative gives us an altogether different perspective of Ramayana. It forces us to rethink about the way we have been looking at it for all these years. It’s not the men but the women in Ramayana who triumphed. Although poignant and thought provoking, the translation suffers from limitation like every other translated work. AK Ramanujan once said that a poem can only be translated by another poem, there can never be a thing called literal translation. Nonetheless, the hard-hitting reality and the lyricism carried the essence all through.
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