SITA’S SISTER Read Free

and delicate, her long neck curved gracefully so that she appeared willowy and taller than she actually was. In azure blue silk—her favourite pastel colour—she looked pale but not an unhealthy pallid. She was very fair, her skin almost translucent and stretched across her high cheek bones, her thick brows highlighted her slightly slanting eyes; her heart-shaped face was suffused with a perpetual serenity and demureness. Despite the gentleness, Urmila knew that her elder sister had an indomitable will and strength of purpose, but she masked her emotions so smoothly that not a wrinkle furrowed her fair brows.
    ‘Sita, aren’t you happy about your wedding?’ Urmila asked abruptly. ‘You seem so…so aloof, so nonchalant about it—it’s not normal!’
    ‘What do you want me to do, cavort in joy?’ Sita questioned with a soft laugh, ‘I know it’s my wedding and, of course, I am elated about it…’
    ‘Then show it! You don’t look too thrilled…or even remotely excited as brides often are!’
    ‘I am happy, dear, for how things will be. It is all planned, so what is there to be so anxious about? The man who manages to break the famous Shiv dhanush shall be my husband. It’s very simple,’ she explained sedately.
    ‘Break the Shiv dhanush?’ Mandavi expostulated, with a shake of her head, ‘Just because you could wield it so easily as a child, Uncle wants some superhero to do the same? That bow is more than eight-and-a-half-feet long and so heavy that it needs around three hundred people to lift it! It needs an enormous trolley to cart it around and again another three hundred people to push the cart to move it an inch! And Uncle has announced that whosoever wants to marry Sita can do so only after stringing the bow. I can’t imagine anyone even shifting it, forget lifting it!’
    ‘That’s exactly the point, don’t you see?’ Urmila asked quietly. ‘It has to be an extraordinary man who can do that—and indeed, it is going to be an extraordinary man who will marry Sita!’
    ‘You have answered your own question, Urmila,’ said Sita amiably. ‘And that’s why I am so calm about my wedding! I trust father…’
    Urmila gave Sita a sharp look. There was always an air of quick, quiet acceptance about her. She was rarely confrontational like Urmila; and though it was a swayamvar—to marry a man of her choice—Urmila knew Sita was bound by her father’s decision.
    But who would be that man who would achieve this monumental feat? And would that man be good enough for her good sister? The thought had been niggling at her relentlessly ever since her parents had planned Sita’s swayamvar. Urmila sighed; she couldn’t stop worrying about her elder sister. Sita was the gentlest, kindest, sweetest person; so achingly, implausibly nice that she seemed like a beautiful angel come down to earth. She was really an angel, her father always reminded her. She had been named Sita—the furrow—after the channel of love and hope in which her childless parents had found her as a bawling baby. This had happened while they were ploughing the fields as a part of the yagna they were performing. The beautiful baby had touched their heart and soul and the childless King Seeradhwaj, Janak of Videha and his queen Sunaina had promptly adopted her as their first daughter. Janak, the philosopher-king that he was, believed that ‘sita’ was actually the most poetic description for his daughter—a metaphor for verdancy and fruitfulness—and an unending blessing coming from the soil—the bhumi. She was earth’s child—warm, rooted and life-giving.
    Urmila had been born a year later, a foil to Sita right from the start. The two cradles had rocked in perfect harmony since childhood as smooth and strong as the bond that was to blossom between the two girls. Completing the circle of love and laughter were Mandavi and Kirti, their younger cousins, the two chirpy daughters of the widowed King Kushadhwaj, the king of Varanasi