Sita's Ascent Read Free

kicking his legs for the last time.
    ‘When … did all this
     happen?’ she asked. ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’
     A soft bulb of white light burst in her mind’s eye. Rama was standing as
     she was ready to step into the chariot. He looked at her and her heart melted. He
     even said he was going to miss her. How long ago was this planned? She was tumbling
     fast and Valmiki wanted to catch her before she fell into that dark abyss of
     betrayal.
    ‘This is good,’ he
     said. ‘Sita, I was born from the darkness. Listen,’ said Valmiki
     with urgency and music in his voice. She lifted her head; somewhere inside her there
     was a doll called Sita, tumbling.
    ‘Listen. When that strange man
     came, the one they called Narada, I thought he was another joke. I threatened him
     and he presented me with a challenge: “Go and see if anyone in your family
     will visit death in your stead and take your sins on their heads.” I was
     so sure everyone would. My father was having his afternoon smoke and, when I asked
     him, he accused me of wanting to kill him. My beloved mother said I was a snake, and
     my darling wife accused me of attempting the greatest murder because I was wiping
     the smile off her face by asking her to visit death and take my sins upon her head.
     Till then I had been so sure they all loved me. I risked my life every day for them,
     I thought. I thought they loved me for me. But I did not know that I only loved
     myself and, naturally, they,themselves; and whom I killed, what
     I brought home or how I risked my life was really of no concern to anyone. My home
     suddenly struck me as a wilderness. I ran for my life. I returned to untie that
     strange man. He could see what had transpired from the way I looked. He gave me a
     word. I repeated it for what seemed like years on end and, out of that darkness,
     worlds began to swim out of my heart and sing inside my head. I could see the future
     and Rama, and you.’
    ‘Did you see me like
     this?’ Sita asked him. Valmiki hung his head. Had he imagined her as a
     character for the compelling epic as he saw her now? Was she to always stand tall
     and take the blows her husband’s fate dealt her? Had he never seen her as
     a victim? That for a long time to come she would have to be the ideal by whom women
     swore when they took their marriage vows? He suddenly realized what a burden this
     must be.
    He had so far chronicled events; he now
     had to tell the history of the heart. Sita exiled by Rama was a cold fact. This was
     not just Sita. This was Sita with child who faced him. Her eyes looked into the
     distance. She stood there, a woman abandoned. Holding her belly with both hands she
     said, ‘How will my child bear his name?’
    Valmiki had to learn to listen to her
     story from a primeval beginning, the way consciousness enters a foetus still
     forming.

Urmilla

    In the palace, night came with the
     swiftness of a traveller’s tiredness. It was a windless day even by the
     river Sarayu, and everyone welcomed an early night in Ayodhya. On still days, the
     night blossoms, exuding their opiate perfumes, sat snug in the gardens. Unwavering
     flames of oil lamps stood like sentinels guarding the centre of the courtyard of
     each home. Mosquitoes whimpered past. Children clung to their mothers, sleeping
     heavily, while men and women caressed their dreams as if these were predictions
     worth investing in.
    Rama worked till late, examining land
     taxes and deeds, and he too rubbed his eyes wearily trying to forget the weight of
     the day. His head drooped like a ripe coconut from a palm tree and sleep dulled all
     his senses as heslumped over the scrolls of the maps of his
     kingdom. Urmilla was the last to snuff out the oil lamp in her apartments. She
     bathed her arms in the moonlight, wondering how Sita would be sleeping in the
     hermitage, wondering if there would be crickets there too, conversing so late into
     the night.
    Even after all these