Urmila: The Sarayu Flows Silently Tonight 2

But that time I stayed back in Ayodhya to wait for you. To wait for your coming back after fourteen years.

What shall I wait for now, Lakshmana?

I hear tomorrow morning Rama is taking the entire Ayodhya to the Sarayu. There will be a mass suicide there, so that all Ayodhya could go to the worlds he is going to.

The entire population of Ayodhya would commit mass suicide tomorrow morning.

But I shall not be with that crowd. I shall not be in that crowd

Tonight, while others wait for the morn, I shall walk alone to the Sarayu. There, I shall light a pyre. I know I’ll have to do it by myself. When Sita wanted a pyre made in Lanka, she asked you to do it. She said, prepare a pyre for me, Lakshmana. And you did it. But in my case I will have to do it by myself. I shall do that.

Sita entered fire to prove her purity. But I am entering fire not to prove anything. I do not want to come out of the fire unscathed. I just want to annihilate myself.

Urmila has nothing to prove. And no one to prove it to. She just wants to end her life.

Tonight shall be my last night on this earth, Lakshmana. And hopefully the last night of loneliness. The last night of rejection. Of abandonment. Of longings.

Everything shall end tonight.

As the Sarayu flows by silently.

The Sarayu flows silently tonight, Lakshmana.

Very, very silently.

And tonight shall be the end of Urmila.

Everything shall end tonight for Urmila.

With my own hands I shall prepare my funeral pyre. And, with no one watching, I shall walk into it.

I know no god will come carrying me in his hands out of it. But that is all right with me. I am only Urmila. I am not Rama’s wife – I am the wife of a slave of his. Of a mere slave of Rama’s.

I hope the winds will scatter my ashes in all directions so that not even the remnants of the pyre shall contain anything of me.

I will do that. Tonight. After Ayodhya has slept.

But before that, Lakshmana, I have one or two things to tell you.

One or two things I have long wanted to tell you but couldn’t because you were not available to listen to them.

~00~

One thing: I have heard that you, with Rama, built a raft for crossing the Yamuna on your way to Chitrakoota and then you built a seat for Sita on it while Sita sat watching you both at work. I wish I had been there to see it. I wish it had been me who had sat watching you building that raft and that seat.

I always admired your body – the way your tight muscles moved knotting and unknotting themselves. Do you know that I have many times watched you as you bent a bow or climbed into a chariot or did something that brought your muscles into play? Though I could never see you in the battlefield, I have heard you were wonderful there. I have heard that apart from being a superb archer, you were also equally gifted as a swordsman. I wish I could have watched you at these.

I have watched you practising, though. Quietly slipping into places forbidden for us women, I have watched as you practised the bow and the sword. I have watched you as you practised the mace and the spear. I have watched you as you tamed wild horses. And as I watched I have felt thrills running down my spine again and again.

You excelled in all of these, Lakshmana.

And as I watched, Lakshmana, I wished I could be to you what Kaikeyi was to Dasharatha – an equal partner, equally fearless, equally daring. They say I’m as beautiful as Kaikeyi was in her younger days. How I wish you had taken me into battlefields with you! How I wish I had driven your chariot as you fought the enemies! One of my fantasies had been that you were wounded in the battle – the gods forgive me for such a thought – and were surrounded by powerful enemies and I drove you to safety from among them.

Speaking of that there are other fantasies in which I’d like to substitute myself for Kaikeyi and you for Dasharatha. But these are forbidden fantasies. At least forbidden for a daughter-in-law to think about her parents-in-law.

Be that as it may. But I’d certainly have loved to sit and watch you worked at that raft. Sit and watch as the raft took shape as your expert arms worked at it. Sit and watch while you cut down branches from a tree from the jungle and with your own hands, built a seat on it. I’d have loved to watch your muscles rippling as you raised and lowered the axe, watch the woodchips flying in all directions as the axe fell on the wood with all your strength behind it. I’d have loved to sit and watch as you tied twigs and branches together to make that seat.

I’d have loved that.

And didn’t you build a hermitage for Sita and Rama in Chitrakoota? I wish you had built one for me, too, Lakshmana. For me and you. That hermitage would have given a thousand times more, nay, a hundred thousand times more joy to me than the palace at Ayodhya ever gave.

And as you built it, as you cut down trees and cut them into smaller pieces, as you gathered twigs and leaves and grass, I’d have loved to sit and watch you. I’d have loved to watch the miracle of a new dwelling coming into being in your expert hands – the trees of the jungle, their branches and twigs and leaves, with vines and grass gathered from the jungle, being transformed into a house for people to live in. For you and me to live in.

I would have loved to do that.

Did you know that I too was a tree waiting for your touch to transform it? To transform it into… I don’t know, maybe a small dwelling on a riverbank, a beautiful chariot, or just that raft. Or maybe I was a tree waiting for that magical touch of yours so that my soul which is really a tree nymph could come out and spread her wings that had not been spread for ages. A nymph imprisoned in a tree by an evil yaksha waiting to be released by your touch.

Oh, how I’d have loved to stand just behind the gate of our cottage, waiting for you to come back from your hunting with a deer on your shoulders! And to cook that deer for you as you reclined watching me with loving eyes!

I’d have loved to roam the jungle with you, Lakshmana. To chase each other among its trees, to swim in its streams, to bathe in its waterfalls… To dig up roots and tubers from its soil, to pluck fruits from it bushes and trees and to explore its caves, holding your arm tightly as my whole body shivered in excitement and fear. Maybe, we would have walked into a magic land on the other side where everything was made of pure ecstasy. And maybe there, surrounded by so much beauty, you’d have lain on your back in a meadow and pulled me down onto you and then, rolling me over, make wild, passionate love to me.

I would have loved to hear you laughing then. Laughing forgetting yourself.

One of my desires had been to see you laugh, Lakshmana. See you let go of yourself and laugh. Once. Just once. And I wanted you to make me laugh with you, Lakshmana. Once. Just once. Make me laugh forgetting myself. Forgetting the world. Becoming the laughter. Once. Just once, Lakshmana. But you were always wound up. You could never let go. Never let go of yourself. Lest you fail your god in some way. In some way unknown even to yourself.

There is something sinister about people who can’t laugh.

Perhaps you would have laughed there. On that meadow.

A million dreams, Lakshmana, that were never to be. A million ordinary dreams. A million every young woman’s dreams.

~00~

And there are things I wouldn’t have you done, too, Lakshmana. Other things, apart from that you hadn’t abandoned me so.

I wish you had gone to Sita to bring her to Rama at the end of the war after Ravana had been killed.

She had heard the news of Ravana’s death. The war had ended. And she waited for her Rama. Now there was nothing to keep her away from her Rama. From her Rama whom she loved so. Her Rama who loved her so. Who could not keep himself away from her even for a moment.

Sita waited breathlessly for her Rama in Ashokavatika.

Wondering every moment what was keeping him away from her. Now there was nothing between her and her Rama.

And she would learn that Rama was busy with preparations for Ravana’s funeral.

Couldn’t that have waited? Couldn’t he have come to her first? A whole year. She had been waiting a whole year.

A dread began gnawing at her heart. A nameless dread. Dreading, she waited.

And then she learnt the funeral was over.

Still he didn’t come.

He was busy preparing for Vibheeshana’s coronation.

Coronation? That would take ages. Couldn’t he have come to her first?

Poor Sita, Lakshmana. She didn’t know her Rama. She didn’t know him at all.

And then the coronation was over. While Sita waited for her Rama to go to her.

And then eventually it was Hanuman who went to her.

Not Rama, but Hanuman.

Of course she knew Hanuman. She loved Hanuman. His visit had been the only happy incident of her yearlong ordeal in Lanka. He had brought her hope. And with that, strength.

But sending him now? She had hoped Rama wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to go to her even for one moment. She knew how deeply he loved her. Knew how terribly he must have suffered. Knew how he had looked forward to this moment.

And yet it was not he who had gone.

Not even you, Lakshmana.

Not even you, Lakshmana. I still remember how much sadness was in her eyes as she told me that.

For all her love and respect for Hanuman, he was not family.

You were Rama’s brother. She could have understood your going. But Hanuman!

And then she learnt that he hadn’t gone to her to take her to Rama. He had gone with a message. Hanuman was only a messenger. Instead of Rama, what had come was a message. Just a message.

A million thoughts rose up in Sita’s mind as she looked at Hanuman standing before her with joined palms. A million thoughts and a million emotions. And a million memories.

Overpowered, she remained silent.

Rama’s message was brief and clear. Rama was always clear and precise. The message informed her of the recent events. It told her he had fulfilled his vow to save her from Ravana’s clutches. Told her that she should no more fear in Lanka – that she was in her own house now. And told her that Vibheeshana, filled with joy, was coming to see her.

But it was not Vibheeshana that she wanted to see. It was Rama that she wanted to see. Why was he not going to her?

The dread had a clear shape now. A very clear shape. A very clear, dark shape.

And then, later, Vibheeshana went to her.

And told her that she should have a bath, wear fine clothes, have all the alankaras, ornaments, and then go to Rama with him.

But she wanted to go to Rama as she was. The bath could wait. Fine clothes could wait. Alankaras could wait. Ornaments could wait. She wanted to go to Rama.

Vibheeshana told her Rama’s instructions were clear. He wouldn’t take her to Rama until she had complied with his orders. A woman should obey her husband’s orders – he told her.

And she did.

Weeping. Weeping silently, weeping tearlessly, weeping all along.

And then, when she went to him, he rejected her.

You know that, Lakshmana. When Sita went to Rama, he rejected her.

~00~

I wish you hadn’t so obediently prepared a chita for Sita when she asked you to. I know you were not obeying her but Rama’s iron will, his unspoken words, which were always inviolable commands for you.

There was nothing Sita needed to prove. Her mind had always been centred on Rama. Not once did she waver from it.

True, Sita’s body had been touched by Ravana, but he had just touched her to carry her off. After that, once she was in Lanka, Ravana had never touched her.

And the scriptures say, the wise men say, that even if a woman has been raped by a man she becomes pure after a month.

A woman’s body is purified every month.

But you obeyed the unspoken command of Rama and prepared a pyre for her.

Perhaps, Lakshmana, you could have prepared that chita for Rama instead. Or maybe you should have. What was it he told my sister? My sister who had lived only on the strength of her love for him, whose every single breath was meaningful because she breathed them in the hope of one day uniting with her Rama? “I didn’t do these things for you, Sita. I did not wage the war for you. I did it for the glory of the Raghus – so that their name remains unblemished. Now, Sita, the honour of the Ikshwakus has been vindicated. And you are free. Free as the wind. Free to go where you like. Free to do what you want. I have no need for you anymore, Vaidehi. Go where you wish. Want to go with Vibheeshana? Go with him. He is now the king of Lanka. Want to go with Sugreeva? He is the lord of Kishkindha. Go with him then. Or go with Lakshmana, if that is what you want. Or with Bharata. With whoever you wish. Wherever you wish. But as for me, I do not find you fit for me. I will have nothing more to do with you.”

Cruel words. Cruellest of words.

Didn’t he say that, Lakshmana? And can you think of anything more shameful than that, Lakshmana?

Rama, they say, is the greatest ever of the Ishwakus – greater than Dasharatha, greater than Aja, greater than Ikshwaku himself. But let me ask you, Lakshmana, has any other Ikshwaku ever done anything as shameful as this glory of the Ikshwakus did?

Lakshmana, you should have prepared that pyre for him.

Though I doubt if the fire would have succeeded in purifying him.

And if you couldn’t do that, Lakshmana, then you should have prepared it for yourself.

In protest. In anger.

And if you had done that I’d have worshipped you forever, Lakshmana. By that act you would have sanctified yourself, Lakshmana. And you would have atoned for all your sins.

They say Sita is the mother of the universe. I do not know about it. To me my sister is purity itself. She is virtue incarnate. She is the symbol of all that is beautiful in creation.

And before preparing a chita for her, you should have prepared one for yourself.

A man’s touch does not defile a woman’s body. But arrogance does defile a man’s heart. Conceit does defile the human heart. Unlimited ambition that tramples all that is noble in men does defile the human heart. Boundless pride does defile the human heart. It creates such darkness around one that even the brightest light becomes invisible. It turns men into heartless beings.

Rama could not see Sita was undefiled.

I pity him.

And you should have prepared that chita for him, Lakshmana. Or, at least for yourself. Urmila would then have worshipped you for all eternity, in life after life, for that single act of yours.

You loved her so much, Lakshmana. You revered her so much. Why didn’t that thought come to your mind, Lakshmana?

Or was it that you were still furious with her for those cruel words she spoke to you in Panchavati? No. I can’t believe it was so. For all your slavery to Rama, you were never so heartless. Certainly not when it concerned Sita. I am sure you had already forgiven her that. I am sure you believed what she had suffered from that day for a whole year was more than enough punishment for those words.

Why didn’t that thought come to your mind then, Lakshmana?

~00~

And I don’t approve of what you did to Shoorpanakha, Lakshmana.

Chopping off a woman’s nose, ears and breasts!? For the crime of approaching you seeking love?

Why didn’t you kill her, Lakshmana?

Approaching you seeking love! Approaching you? And seeking love? She deserved to be killed. She certainly deserved to be killed.

In all my years with you, I never approached you for love once. A woman has no right to. What a shameful thing to do! Approaching a man seeking love! She should wait. Wait silently. Wait prayerfully. For the kindness of love bestowed upon her by the man. A woman shouldn’t take the first step. Never.

And Shoorpanakha broke that rule. She approached you for love. Of course she deserved to be killed.

For, for a woman to approach a man for love is to admit she too has needs. A woman is not supposed to have such needs. A woman with such needs is ugly. She is a slut. A wanton woman. She is a whore. And you could do anything to a whore. That is perfectly fine.

Women are supposed to be pure creatures. And pure means sexless. She should please her man in bed. She should be available to him. But on her own she should not have any desires. Not have any physical desires. No needs.

A woman has no sexual desire. The men’s world denies her that right. She can’t have any. For, for a woman to have sexual desire is a frightening thing. She should deny that part of herself, suppress it, if it is there. Otherwise she would be a threat. A threat to man’s ego. For the sexual act is a power game. In which the man subjugates the woman with his superiority. He has to be on top. How can she be on top? That will upset all equations. Only the whore can be on top.

And anything could be done to a whore.

Women should be sexless. They shouldn’t seek sex. They shouldn’t seek love.

But did you, and your God, ever consider the possibility that there might exist other cultures, other societies, other ways of living, in which a woman does not have to so completely pretend that she does not have the sexual impulse? That perhaps poor Shoorpanakha belonged to such a society? Such a culture, such a way of life, that in her way of life perhaps it was not wrong to approach a man?

There are perhaps societies in which women are still kin to the night and the earth, Lakshmana. Women who are not out of tune with themselves, with their rhythms, with their music, as our women are. Our women are not free inside themselves, are bound up in a thousand knots, knots tied by a thousand years of suppressions and repressions, by a thousand years of being dominated by their men, during which time they were told again and again that whatever was natural to woman was ugly, that to be free within oneself was to be ugly.

The first knot, I’ve heard, was tied by Shwetaketu. And then there were a thousand others to tie her up in other knots. Until she was unable to move, to breathe. Until she looked to her man before she took a breath. She needed his permission.

But wasn’t there a time before that, Lakshmana? A time when our ancestors told that a woman could approach a man for love and when she sought it, the man should never say no to her? Arthinee stree anupekshaneeya – isn’t that what they used to say, Lakshmana?

But of course those are ways of life of a past time that we have left behind, ways of an uncultured past. In our culture a woman’s only function – apart from giving birth to children – is to please her husband, to provide pleasure to him and to look after him and his children.

Shoorpanakha was very wrong. And she had to be punished. Even if it was not exactly sex she asked for. Even if it was to be your wife she asked for.

Remember, she wanted to be your wife. That was what Rama sent her to you for, telling her you were still a bachelor.

But she had to be punished.

Just as Ayomukhi had to be punished later. Exactly as Ayomukhi had to be punished later. For the same reason.

What exactly did Ayomukhi tell you, Lakshmana? “Come, be my love and we shall sport in the rivers and the caves of these mountains,” she had said. She too had wanted to be yours for ever. So long as life lasted – wasn’t that what she said? And she gathered you in her arms, offering herself to you.

This time you did not even wait to be asked by your God. You just pulled out your sword and chopped off the woman’s ears, nose and breasts. In quick, efficient strikes. In perfectly smooth motions.

I know you were furious. It was not long since Sita had accused you of having dark plans over her. She had said you were waiting for your brother to die so that you could have her. Dark words. Evil words.

So you were furious. You were in a terrible mood, all right. But why did those words so
infuriate you, Lakshmana? Did you, by any chance… No, I won’t even say that. I won’t even think of it.

Let’s just forget the whole topic. What is chopping off the ears, nose and breasts of two women after all? And in any case they were only Rakshasis - not even Arya women. At least not Ayomukhi. At least not that we know of. In Shoorpanakha there was some Brahmin blood. So what? She was just a Rakshasi, after all. So let’s just forget it.

One last thing, though. Poor women – they would have been disappointed if you had accepted them. What did I get marrying you?

By the way, did you ever realize that if you hadn’t been so heartlessly cruel to Shoorpanakha, so savagely brutal to her, Sita would never have been kidnapped by Ravana? Sita would never have had to spend a year of agony in Lanka?

It was to avenge Shoorpanakha that Ravana had come to that hermitage, Lakshmana. To have revenge for what you had done to his sister.

Of course he became obsessed with Sita’s beauty. But that would not have happened if you hadn’t done that to Shoorpanakha.

You sent Sita to Lanka, Lakshmana.

You made her suffer indescribable pain and privations for a whole year in Lanka, Lakshmana.

Did you ever realize you sent the Sita you worshipped into the pyre?

~00~

And there is one more thing for which I’ll never be able to forgive you, Lakshmana.

That night when Rama called you into his room…

That evening had been particularly beautiful for Sita. Rama had been very loving to her in the Ashokavanika attached to the antahpura where they spent that evening. After walking about in the gardens they sat down and Rama, with his own hands, gave Sita a drink of exquisite madhu maireyaka, even as Indra gives drinks to Shachi. They sat together under the trees watching the sun setting in the distance. Refreshments were served to them there. Apsaras, Naga maidens and Kinnaries danced. Rama asked Sita about her pregnancy, his hand over her growing stomach. Sita was five months advanced in her pregnancy then. And then Rama asked her the question every loving husband asks his pregnant wife – though you never asked me that question, but that is another matter. Well, Rama asked Sita what she wanted – was there any desire in her heart? And of course, Sita said, none, none whatsoever, his love was enough for her.

Sita was like that. So full of her Rama. He was enough for her. His love for her was enough for her. She didn’t need anything else. With his love, her world was full. If she found a place for herself in his heart, that was enough for her. She still shook in fear at what he had said to her in Lanka – those terrible moments, those unreal moments, before she entered the pyre. He shouldn’t repeat that – that was enough for her. He shouldn’t banish her from his heart – that was enough for her. He shouldn’t disown her – that was enough for her. She wanted to live as his – that was all she wanted. He should never abandon her – just that.

The memories of Lanka hadn’t been forgotten by her, either. The one long year, every moment of which was like a year. Every moment of which was pure hell for her. A year for most of which she had no news of him. She had counted that as punishment to her – punishment for desiring anything other than Rama, anything other than her Rama’s love. She had been tempted. She had allowed temptation, desire, to enter her heart. She had desired that golden deer. And she had been punished. Almost instantly. Ravana had come and carried her off. No, she didn’t want anything other than her Rama and his love for her. She just wanted to be loved by him and the right to love him in her turn – that’s all. Nothing else.

She said, “No, Rama, I desire nothing. You are beside me, that is enough for me.”

But she must have shivered at the mention of the word desire. No, she desired nothing.

Except that she be never separated from him. Not physically, not mentally. That was all.

Sita loved Rama as no woman ever loved her man – yes, not even me. No, Lakshmana, I never loved you with the love Sita had for Rama. I wasn’t capable of loving like Sita loved. Loving so completely, so totally… That required a different being. She had it. I didn’t.

And yet Rama insisted. And eventually she surrendered to his insistence. And she said she would like to visit the hermitages of the sages in the jungle whose sacred presence she had liked so much on her way to the jungle exile.

Rama was pleased.

And promised she would go to them the very next day.

It was later that evening – rather late into the night – that Rama sat with her friends listening to their light talk. And towards midnight he asked them – the group included his spies – those questions that ruined Sita’s life for ever.

“What do the people say about me?” he asked. “And what do the people say about Queen Sita?” he added.

I wonder why he asked that question. That second question.

I can understand why he asked the first question. As a king it was his duty to ask that question. But about the queen? About Sita?

True, Sita was the queen and therefore a public figure. But apart from that fact, she did no public works. She never appeared alone in public. Sits was the most private person I ever knew. She never, ever appeared in public unless it was with Rama. And then, as in private, her conduct had always been impeccable. Ever since she returned from Lanka, her conduct had been blameless – just as it had been before. Why then this concern about what people said about her?

People adored Sita. Particularly after they learnt of her coming out of the fire unscathed. And Rama knew this.

I maybe wrong, Lakshmana, completely wrong, but sometimes I’m tempted to wonder if Rama did not grudge Sita something.

Unbelievable, I know. Shocking, I know. But, did he?

Coming out of the fire unscathed gave Sita a goddess-like stature. A stature she had gained not through Rama, but by her own action, by her own being – by the sanctity and inviolability of her being. The God of Fire acknowledged that he couldn’t touch her.

People began adoring Sita – as much as they adored him, if not more.

And I don’t think Rama could handle this. He wanted himself to be the centre of all attention. He alone. That is how it had been ever since his birth and that is how he wanted it to remain till the end – no, not his end, but the end of the universe. That one thing he couldn’t share with anyone and now Sita was being given a share of it. A big share of it. Much more than what was comfortable to him.

She being adored by the people – they called her not Queen Sita but Mother Sita now – was not something he could tolerate. He wanted the stage exclusively for himself. Others could be there, on the stage, but not with him. A little behind, as part of his background.

He wanted the shrine exclusively for himself. Or with Sita as a mere appendage to him. But now she was claiming – no, she was not claiming it but people were giving her – equal status with Rama.

Some were even building separate shrines for Sita. Exclusively for Sita.

Sita was not where she should be.

Could it have been that?

And he got one rotten washerman to his aid. One rotten, drunk, wife-beating, mother-defying, arrogant wretch of a man. The kind of man who should be tied to a pillar and whipped.

And that was enough for Rama. That one washerman was enough for him to abandon his pregnant wife whom the multitudes adored calling her their mother and a goddess. Because of the drunken words of a beast, Rama would abandon her whom the masses called the Mother of the Universe.

For, that was what people were calling her.

And Lakshmana, that night you did something for which I cannot forgive you. And the next morning you did something for which I cannot forgive you.

That night you did not faint when Rama asked you to take Sita beyond the Ganga and abandon her there in the jungle. That I cannot forgive you, Lakshmana.

Before asking you to do that evil deed, Rama had called Bharata from his palace, past midnight, and asked him to do it. And Bharata had lost consciousness and fallen down in a swoon at the cruelty of those words.

And then Rama had called Shatrughna and asked him to do it and Shatrughna too had fallen down fainting at the inhuman cruelty of those words.

And then he called you and asked you to do that evil job.

You did not faint, Lakshmana.

And I cannot forgive you for that.

Instead, you agreed to carry out your brother’s orders.

The elders have to be obeyed, you said to yourself. Parashurama killed his own mother when his father asked him to do that, you said to yourself.

Why didn’t you think of following the example of Chirakari instead of Parashurama’s, Lakshmana? When his father Sage Gautama asked him to kill his mother Ahalya, he did not obey him. And Gautama himself praised him for it later.

Blind obedience is not always a virtue.

Did you know Lakshmana that even Rama did not expect you to obey him?

He knew of your immense love for Sita. Of your boundless devotion to her. And he did not expect you to carry out his command. Rama expected you to defy him for the first time in your life. He was afraid you would defy him – for the first time.

That is why he called Bharata first. And then, after he swooned and fell down, Shatrughna. You know he always called you first for everything. But not this one time. Because he expected you to say no. For the first time in your life.

But you did not. You said yes. I know it killed you to say that yes. I know that yes always tortured you till your very end. I know when you walked into the Sarayu to offer your life in a final sacrifice, that yes was one of the things that moved you, that haunted you.

But say yes you did. And early next morning you took Sita to the jungle and abandoned her there.

I know you hated what you were doing. I know you wept all along the way.

But you did it.

And for that, Lakshmana, I can never forgive you.

You failed yourself there, Lakshmana. It was an opportunity for you to once come out of your slavery to your God. For once to defy him. For her sake – for the sake of Sita. Your love for her should have given you the strength. Strength would have come to you, Lakshmana, from her, if you were open to it, if the thought had entered your mind, had half entered your mind.

Sita could have been your strength to come out of your slavery. Your love for Sita could have been your strength to come out of your slavery.

But you failed.

And I would say you failed even your God, Lakshmana. For it was your duty to Rama to defy him then. To defy him and to stop him from doing that immeasurably shameful act of his life.

For glory’s sake Rama abandoned Sita. And that act brought shame upon him for all time to come.

You could have saved him from that, Lakshmana. You could have saved him from that by defying him, by refusing to obey that command.

But you failed.

Failed him. And failed yourself.

For that act, Lakshmana, I can never forgive you.

~00~

You never told me anything about it, Lakshmana. Not one word.

But when I learnt of it, a part of me died. A big part. A part of me bigger than myself. For Sita was a part of me that was bigger than myself.

After that I no longer waited for you, Lakshmana. Not once any longer. For, I wasn’t really alive any more. With that act of yours, you had killed me. I became a dead body. Just a carcass.

What you found in your bed when you came to sow the seeds of Tashaka and then Chhatraketu in my womb was my dead body. It was on my dead body that you procreated them. It was my dead body that bore your seeds, nourished them and metamorphosed them into two human beings. Your images. But it was not I that did it. It was just my body. A dead body. It breathed all right, but it was dead.

Takshaka and Chhatraketu are a dead woman’s gifts to you.

~00~

And, Lakshmana, you failed me another time.

Rama had sent for Sita. And that news had brought me back to life.

For sixteen years, I had waited for Rama to make enquiries of Sita. To make one enquiry of the wife he had abandoned so abruptly in her pregnancy. He did not.

And I waited for sixteen years for you to make an enquiry of her. To find out what happened to her. For you loved her. Loved her and adored her. Truly and devotedly. I waited for you to make that enquiry. You did not. Of course, how could you have, unless he asked you to?

It was as though she did not exist. As though she had never existed. For sixteen years, there was not a word spoken of her in the palace of Ayodhya that was her home.

When the Ashwamedha began, it was a golden idol of Sita that sat next to Rama – as though she was dead.

How appropriate! An idol of Sita was preferable to the real Sita. Rama did not need Sita. An image was enough for him – a golden image. A golden image that makes no demands on him. It does not have the complications of a real person. It wouldn’t ask him to take it to the jungle with him, if he were to go to the jungle. It wouldn’t ask for the golden deer. You could put it in the cellar and lock it up and forget it. And when you need it, you could take it out. It makes none of the demands a woman makes on a man.

Even the sages and the priests said an image would be enough. The gods would be satisfied with an image of the wife beside the man. The gods did not mind an image replacing the wife. The gods did not require the presence of a living wife, her feeling, her emotions, her devotion, her prayers. An image would do. An image that does not live, that does not feel, that has no emotions, that does not feel devotion, does not pray.

But Sita did not make much more demands on Rama than an idol would make! Those are the only two things she ever demanded of Rama. To be taken to the jungle with him and that golden deer. Just those two things. Otherwise she was no more troublesome than her idol.

But of course the idol was perhaps still more perfect. It wouldn’t make a single demand. Not even those two.

I wonder if Rama wouldn’t have preferred an idol of Dasharatha, too, a golden idol, in place of the flesh and blood Dasharatha. It would not have been subject to the will of Kaikeyi. It wouldn’t have any of the weaknesses of Dasharatha.

But perhaps that is what he did. It was to make Dasharatha an image of perfection that he left for the jungle, more than for anything else. Dasharatha should be perfect. Images are perfect.

I wonder why he did not have an image of you made, too, Lakshmana, after you left for the Sarayu. But then an image of you would be useless to him, I suppose. Your image can’t guard his door. It can decorate the door, but it cannot guard it.

The Ashwamedha began with the golden idol of Sita beside Rama.

And then I heard that Rama had sent for Sita. And life came back to me. Suddenly my limbs were alive. My heart was alive. My soul began breathing.

No, I didn’t expect Rama to go and fetch her from the ashram where he had learnt she had been living all those years. I knew him too well to expect that.

But I expected you to go. You to be sent, that is.

Instead, it was the sage himself that brought her.

Rama sent Valmiki to bring Sita back!

In fact, he did not sent the sage to bring Sita back. No, not to bring her back, but to give her a message from him. Again a message, as in Lanka. And the message was: “If Sita is pure in character and if there is no sin in her, then let her come here, with the permission of the sage, and prove her innocence. To erase the blemish that is on me, let her come here and take a vow of her purity in the middle of the parishad tomorrow morning.”

Of course you knew everything that happened exactly as it happened. Rama learnt that Lava and Kusha were Sita’s children and she had been living in Valmiki’s ashram. Then he sent his messengers to the sage telling him that Sita should come and take the oath in public if she was willing to and if she believed she was pure. And the sage told them, the messengers, that she would do that. “Whatever Rama orders, that is what Sita would do. For to a wife, the husband is God himself.” – these were his words.

I expected you to act then. Act on your own. Once in your life. It was the last chance you had to redeem yourself.

For, you should have known what was to come. Because, it was not Sita, his wife and the mother of his children, that he was asking to come back. It was the queen he was commanding to come back. He was asking her to come to the parishad, to the assembly, and not to the antahpura, not to where his mothers were staying, not to where Mandavi, Shrutakeerti and I were staying. Sita should come directly from the ashram to the assembly!

To the assembly of Rama!

To the court of Rama!

It was not to be a private occasion. Rama meeting his wrongly abandoned innocent wife after sixteen years was not going to be a private occasion but a very public occasion. With all the ministers present. With all the courtiers present. With invited special guests present.

He had made sure there would be a huge crowd present in the temporary court in Naimisharanya where the sacrifice was in progress. The moment he received word from Valmiki that Sita would come the next morning to prove her purity, he announced to the sages and kings assembled for the sacrifice: “Revered sages, I invite you all to come to the parishad tomorrow, along with your disciples. And I request all the guest kings to come with all their retinues. And everyone else who wishes to witness Sita’s taking the vow of purity is welcome too.”

The sages and kings who had come in their tens of thousands from all across the land were to be present there.

And in their presence, Sita should prove her innocence.

But she had already proved her innocence!

That was in Lanka. She should do so now in Naimisharanya. Before the assembly.

Would that be enough? What about those who were not present in Naimisharanya? Maybe she should do it again for their sake too. For the sake of the hundreds of thousands of common men and women of Ayodhya who were not present in the court? And then, maybe, since the people of Ayodhya cannot all assemble in one place, since the population is too large, Sita should prove her innocence again and again in each street corner in Ayodhya?

And how should she do that? Would a vow be enough? Would that please the people? Convince them? Wouldn’t some of them doubt even a vow?

Maybe Sita should enter the fire in each street corner in Ayodhya?

And again and again if required. For there might yet be some wretch who still did not believe in her innocence. Yet another rotten, drunk, wife-beating, mother-defying, arrogant wretch.

Rama wanted it to be a very public occasion. A festival – to which all were invited.

And, let me tell you, Lakshmana, it was a command he sent to Sita through the sage. Not a request, but a command. An order from the king. From the glory of the Ikshwakus. There was no conciliation in the tone. There was no apology for the wrong he had done. There were no regrets.

It was as though his position justified his actions. He was the king. And he was the man. He can’t do anything wrong. What he did was perfectly right. It required no apologies, no atonements. He was making amends, wasn’t he? He was ordering her to come back, wasn’t he? He was giving her a chance to be accepted back, wasn’t he? All she had to do was prove her innocence, wasn’t it? What more should he do?

It was as though Sita was really the guilty one. As though it was she who had sinned.

Rama was punishing her, Lakshmana. He hadn’t finished with his punishments for her.

He loved her, Lakshmana. Rama loved her. It is not that he did not love her. I am not saying that. But it was the love of an autocrat. The love of master for his slave. The love of a master who was tied up in knots. Who could reward one moment and punish the next. Who could be tenderness itself one moment and heartless the next moment.

That kind of love is frightening. Terrifying.

You should have acted then, Lakshmana. For you should have known what was coming. There is a limit to what a woman can take from a man. Even a woman like Sita.

You could have prevented Sita from committing suicide. You could have saved her life.
You loved her so much. And she loved you so much.

You failed again, Lakshmana. Failed her. Failed yourself.

You could have reminded Rama it was he who had abandoned her, not she him. You could have reminded him she was at no fault then, at no fault now. You could have told him that he should go to her and fetch her – not send an order for her to come. Or that you would go and fetch her, just as you had gone to abandon her.

You could have objected to the public ceremony. She had been forced to go through a public ceremony for the same purpose once in the past. That was enough. There was no need for another public ceremony.

You could have asked him what faithlessness Rama wanted Sita to disprove. What unchaste act of Sita did he have in mind? What faithlessness he had in mind.

You could have reminded him that if it was what happened in Lanka, then she had already proved herself innocent of it. With multitudes as witnesses. With the gods as witnesses.

You could have asked him if he meant some other unchastity, a new unchastity? Something after Rama had abandoned her in the jungle?

Did he mean she had been faithless to him after that? Unchaste after that? With someone in the ashram? You could have asked that.

But of course these are questions that men of honour ask. You were always a slave. These questions would never have come to your mind.

Sita entered the assembly, quietly walking behind the sage, her head bent, her palms joined in prayer.

She did not look up. Not at Rama. Not at you or Bharata or Shatrughna. Not at the ministers. Not at the courtiers. Not at the sages. Not at the kings. Not at the rest of the crowd.

She did not acknowledge anyone. Not Rama. Not you or Bharata or Shatrughna. Not the ministers. Not the courtiers. Not the sages. Not the kings. Not the rest of the crowd.

She had last looked at Rama in Ashokavanika that evening before her abandonment. She would not look at him ever again.

She had last seen his face that evening in Ashokavanika. She would not see his face ever again.

She had last spoken to him that evening in Ashokavanika. She would not speak to him ever again.

Like some sad shadow, she walked quietly behind Valmiki.

A quiet stream of tears flowed from her eyes. An incessant stream of tears. A silent stream of tears.

Like Sarayu tonight, Lakshmana. Flowing quietly, incessantly, silently.

And standing there, in the middle of the vast assembly, with Sita behind him, the sage spoke. He said, “Son of Dasharatha, this Sita, whom you abandoned for fear of ill-fame for yourself, is ever steady in her religious vows and has never swerved from the path of righteousness. She will now give you the proof of her purity. Command her. And these two children are your sons, twins born to Sita – this I tell you as the truth. Son of Dasharatha, I am the tenth son of Prachetas, and I don’t remember I have ever uttered a word of untruth. And I am telling you now – these are indeed your children, valiant both of them. I have performed austerities for endless years – if there is any evil in Sita, may I not get the results of that austerities. I have never committed a sin by word or deed or in my mind – may I reap the result of it only if Sita is without sin. Son of Dasharatha, when I found Sita near a waterfall in the jungle, I took her in my care only after ascertaining of her purity with every sense of mine and with my mind. She is pure in conduct, sinless, and worships you, her husband, as a god. And she will give you, who are afraid of what people will say, the proof of her purity for which I vouch, having known her very thoughts with my seer’s vision.”

And Rama made that announcement. “Great sage, I respect your words. And I know Sita is pure. But I will accept her only if she proves her innocence, now, here, in the middle of all these people.”

The assembly must have been shocked. The world must have been shocked. The gods in heaven must have been shocked. So heartless were those words.

Asking Sita to prove her purity again.

They say the gods themselves came down from the heavens to witness the scene.

But not a tremor passed through Sita.

She had already known the outcome of this meeting. Sita had finally understood her Rama.

I can see it all in my mind, Lakshmana, as though it is happening before my eyes.

Not a tremor passes through Sita. She does not look up. She does not break down weeping. She doesn’t rush to Rama and fall at his feet. She doesn’t beg to be forgiven.

She stands quietly for the end of the play to come. Which she knows would come soon. Very soon.

And she is ready for it. She has readied herself for it.

She has had sixteen years to prepare for it. Sixteen years to realize the nature, the true nature of the man she had married and to ready herself for the end.

Sixteen years is a long, long time. Especially for a woman who has been abandoned by her man. Abandoned by a man who is her life’s breath.

She does not react.

The world stands still.

The Adityas and the Vasus wait. The Rudras and the Vishwadevas wait. The Maruts and the Saddhyadevas wait. Varuna and rest of the gods wait. The sages and the Nagas wait.

It was now time for Sita to act.

She walks forward. And she does not raise her head. She does not look up.

She does not to look at Rama. She does not look at you or Bharata or Shatrughna. She does not look at the ministers. She does not look at the courtiers. She does not look at the sages. She does not look at the kings. She does not look at the rest of the crowd.

She does not even look at the sage who was a father to her for the last sixteen years of her life.

She does not look at her sons.

She looks at the earth at her feet. The earth from which she was born. The earth which had brought her forth.

At Mother Earth.

At her mother.

With eyes that were closing in prayer.

Her face lustrous.

And then her head slightly rises. With her eyes still closed. With power spreading all over her.

A woman standing in the pride of her being with her eyes closed and her head held up offering her final prayer to the source of existence.

You could have acted then, Lakshmana.

Her voice does not shake as she invokes the Mother Earth.

She says, “ I do not think of a man other than Rama even in my heart. If this is true, Mother Earth, accept me unto yourself.”

“With my words, with my deeds and with my heart, I constantly worship Rama. If this is true, Mother Earth, accept me unto yourself.”

“I know no man other than Rama. If this is true, Mother Earth, accept me unto yourself.”

Did you rush towards her, Lakshmana, when the earth at her feet split open and Mother Earth took her in her arms?

Did you?

Or did you look at Rama seeking his permission?

~00~

I fully approve of your last act of life, though, Lakshmana. I entirely approve of your offering yourself to the Sarayu.

But you should have done it earlier.

You could have walked straight from that court to the Sarayu. The moment Sita disappeared.

In which case I wouldn’t have minded at all that you did not come to me to take leave of me. Not one bit. You would have made me proud. And I would have forgiven your lifelong neglect of me. Your thousand cruelties to me which you were not even aware of in your slavery to your God.

And, the moment I learnt of it, I would have walked myself to the Sarayu. To offer myself to her. So that I could follow you. For ever and ever.

That one act would have sanctified you.

But you stayed back.

You would end your life only after you have offered one more service to your God. You would save him from the curse of Durvasa.

Rama had closed himself inside the visiting hall with the God who had come to visit him in the guise of a sage. You were guarding the door.

How appropriate!

You had instructions not to let anyone in. Nor enter the hall yourself. On penalty of death. That is the condition on which the God had agreed to talk to Rama.

And then Durvasa came. He demanded to be let in.

It was either him cursing Rama and the entire Ayodhya or you losing your life.

You chose to lose your life. You entered the hall and let Rama know of Durvasa’s arrival.

Rama had no more business left with the God when you entered the hall. Rama came out and met the sage. And offered him what he wanted. Which was nothing more than a good meal to end his austerities that he had been performing for a long time.

After Durvasa left, you wanted Rama to kill you.

For the glory of Rama. So that the world will not say he ever erred from his word. So that history will not say that Rama ever swerved from his pledge.

You wanted your life to be the last offering at the feet of your God.

Of course, Rama couldn’t do that. So a compromise was arrived at. Instead of killing you, Rama would abandon you. Reject you. For, for noble ones, death and abandonment are the same.

Rama wouldn’t take your life offered at his feet. But still you would make the offering.

How else could Lakshmana’s life have ended? All his life has been an offering at the feet of his God. His death too had to be an offering at the feet of his God.

Just once thing was required. Just one last thing. Rama’s permission to do so.

And he gave the permission. In the form of his rejection of you.

He knew rejected by Rama, Lakshmana couldn’t live one day.

And you walked towards the Sarayu.

With not a word to me.

No complaints, Lakshmana. You had forgotten me a long, long time ago. You had forgotten the vows you took walking round the sacred fire at our wedding. I don’t blame you. Your duty to your God comes first, of course.

And you fulfilled that.

~00~

But now time has come for me too to walk to the Sarayu.

I shall prepare a pyre there for myself since you will not prepare one for me. And I shall enter it. Quietly. Serenely. At the midnight hour. With no human beings around. With the moon and the night as my witnesses. And the Mother Earth. And the Sarayu, of course.

I am not entering that fire to follow you, Lakshmana. I do not want to be a burden to you in the births to come. I do not want to be an encumbrance to you – though I believe I wasn’t much of one in this life either. Serve your God, Lakshmana, Wholeheartedly. With no thought of anyone or anything else. Let me not stand between you and him.

I am not entering that fire to follow you, Lakshmana.

I will be on a lone journey.

Where I may perhaps meet others like me. Other lonely, abandoned, accursed souls.

I do not want to be part of that crowd that will follow Rama and offer themselves to the Sarayu tomorrow morn.

For I do not want to go to his heaven. I have seen the heaven he gave Sita. I know where your place will be in that heaven – at the door, as the doorkeeper. And as the one privileged to fan him on ceremonial occasions as he sat on his throne. And maybe to massage his feet when Sita is absent.

And I know where my place will be. In the darkness of some lonely antahpura, forsaken, abandoned, ignored, banished into a dungeon of unwantedness, left there to wait in misery and wretchedness for what I know will never come, without even hope in my heart.

I have seen Rama’s heaven on earth. And I want no more of it.

I do not want to follow Rama and offer myself to the Sarayu tomorrow morn.

I hope the winds will blow strong tonight. So that even my ashes will be scattered in the eight directions and nothing will be left of me.

Nothing of Urmila.

I would like to say – nothing of your Urmi.

But you never called me by that name.

It is the name Sita called me by. And Mandavi and Shrutakeerti. And my parents. And Kaikeyi.

Not you. For you I was always Urmila. No endearing names but just Urmila. Not even your Urmila but just Urmila.

By the morning of the morrow nothing of that Urmila shall remain in Ayodhya.

I hope not even her memory.

May God’s blessings be always upon you, Takshaka and Chhatraketu!

Goodbye, Lakshmana!

And if by haps in the infinity of time our paths cross again, pretend that you have never known me.

I do not want to meet you ever again.

Nor your God.

Particularly not him.

~00~

Sometimes I think of the curse of Valmiki to the hunter who killed one of the Krauncha birds – Ma nishada…

May you never attain peace in all eternity, Oh Nishada, for you killed…

And I feel I have known that Nishada all my life.

0O0

Urmila: The Sarayu Flows Silently Tonight 1

Once again you abandoned me without a word to me, Lakshmana. This time you knew you were leaving me forever. This time you knew it was your final parting. This time you knew there was no coming back. This time you knew it was a journey without a return.

You were going to die. To commit suicide. By entering the waters of the Sarayu. By offering yourself as a bali, as an oblation, to the Sarayu. As an ahuti, a sacrifice.

But the Sarayu would have known it was not to her you were offering yourself. The Sarayu would have known that she had no place in the life of Lakshmana, in the heart of Lakshmana. She would have known that you were offering yourself as a bali to your brother. To your brother Rama. To your God. That you were just using the Sarayu as the Brahmins use Swaha, to carry their offerings to the gods. Or more like they use Swadha – as a carrier of an offering of bali, of shraddha, of tarpana.

For, this time it was an offering of death. This time it was an offering of self through death. This time the sacrificer and the sacrifice were one.

All your life had been a sacrifice offered to Rama. An ahuti offered to Rama.

Your death too shall be a sacrifice offered to him.

So you were going to the Sarayu to offer yourself in a final sacrifice to Rama.

And you left without a word to me. Once more, you left without a word to me. To your wedded wife. To your life-partner. To your sahadharmini – to your partner in dharma.

I have heard from the acyharas, from the sages, from the brahmins, that a sacrifice offered without a wife as partner is not acceptable to the gods. Is not a valid sacrifice. It would be null and void.

Your sacrifice too was null and void, Lakshmana. As null and void as your life was. As wasted as your life was. For you made the sacrifice without me, Lakshmana.

God did not send men to the earth to be slaves to others but to be masters of themselves. But you chose not to be a master of yourself and to be a slave to another. It does not matter who the other was – but you chose to be a slave. That is what counts. You refused to live your own life. You rejected God’s gift to you. You rejected the dignity in which God created you.

And, in a final act of self-negation, of self-annihilation, you decided to walk into the waters of the Sarayu. To offer yourself as a sacrifice.

And you decided not to tell a word of it to me.

No, it is not that you decided not to tell a word of it to me. There was no such decision. You just did not feel a need to tell me. The very thought of telling me did not come to your mind.
You just did not think of me in those moments. You did not remember me in those moments. I was not in your mind. I was not in your heart.

I was never in your mind, Lakshmana. I was never in your heart, Lakshmana. I was never in your life, Lakshmana.

I never existed for you, Lakshmana.

True, you begot two children in me. You begot Takshaka and Chhatraketu in me. You made me their mother.

And for that you had to do that act with me – that intimate, physical act. But even in those moments I know I did not exist for you. It was just a physical act. An act whose only meaning was that it sowed seeds in a woman’s womb and brought forth children. It did not mean anything more to you, Lakshmana. It was a duty for you. A duty you were bound to perform. And you performed it as a duty, as something that could not be avoided but had to be done. The act did not touch you, Lakshmana, in any way. I did not exist to you even in those moments, Lakshmana. A female body existed, but I did not exist to you.

I know it because I saw it. I know it because I looked into your eyes in those moments and found that I did not exist for you.

A woman closes her eyes in those moments, I am told. Out of shyness, they say. And out of the intensity of emotions, out of the intensity of sensations, they say.

But I did not close my eyes. I kept my eyes open. Because I wanted to see. I wanted to see if I existed for you at least in those moments.

And because I wasn’t shy. I wasn’t shy, Lakshmana. It was ashamed that I was. Ashamed that I was doing it with you. Ashamed that I was doing it with you in spite of knowing that I did not exist for you. In spite of knowing that you did not love me.

That act is supposed to be an act of love – but I knew you did not love me and yet it was being done to me. I was ashamed. But not shy. There was nothing for me to be shy about. There was nothing for me to be shy about because I knew I was alone. I knew I was not with anyone else. You don’t feel shy when you are alone. I was alone. Very, very alone. Utterly and completely alone.

You were not with me.

I did not exist to you.

A body existed to you, a female body. Over which you had certain rights. Over which you had all the rights. More rights than I myself have. But I did not exist to you. You were not watching me. You did not see me. And so I wasn’t shy. I was ashamed – that I was. But I wasn’t shy, and so I did not close my eyes.

And as for sensations, as for the overflowing of passion, a woman does not feel these unless she is loved. Unless the act being performed is one of love. Unless the union is the flowering of the love of a man and a woman.

I did not see your eyes growing liquid with desire for me. Burn with desire for me.

Sensations did not overpower me. Passion did not overpower me.

I felt fear, though. Fear that someone can do this act too so mechanically. That was frightening, that thought. That realization. The mechanics of the act frightened me.

And that fear too helped me keep my eyes open.

And I looked into your eyes. With despair. And, I am sorry to say, with longing.

With desperate longing. With furious despair.

I wanted to see that I existed for you. At least in those moments. At least for once.

And I saw that I did not. That I did not exist. Not for you.

I saw it in your eyes. I watched the emptiness in your eyes. I watched the farawayness in your eyes. They say that in these moments a man becomes aflame with passion – obsessed with the act. Becomes intense. Becomes intensity itself. Becomes one with the act. Becomes the act itself. Ceases to be himself and becomes the act itself. I have heard that. But all I saw in your eyes was emptiness. Emptiness and farawayness. And I knew I did not exist for you. Not even then.
So I did not come to your mind as you decided to end your life. As you decided to make that final offering of your life.

And you did not tell a word if it to me.

You did not come to take leave of me.

I heard you were weeping. But of course those tears were not for me. They were for HIM.
Did you think of your children in those moments, Lakshmana? Did you think of Takshaka and Chhatraketu in those moments? I am sure you did not. You felt no need to take leave of them either. You did not feel the need to tell a word to them either.

They did not exist to you either. Just as I did not exist to you.

Those tears were for HIM.

Everything was for HIM.

For your Rama.

For your God.

~00~

Incidentally, Lakshmana, did you know that I used to wait for you? Wait for you in lonely nights?
Not in the initial days of our marriage – I was too young then. And I did not know what it was to wait for a man in lonely nights. But over the years. As I developed from a child into a woman. And the longings natural to a woman awakened in me. Took roots in me. Took possession of me. Recast my world, remade it. So that my universe started spinning around those longings. So that those longings became the meaning of my life, of my existence. I breathed because of those longings. I lived for the fulfilment of those longings.

Simple longings. Every woman’s longings.

In those days I waited for you, Lakshmana.

My friends used to tell me I was beautiful. That my body was made of moonbeams. Butter-soft. With a thousand spots waiting to be touched by a man. To be caressed. To be felt with his lips. To be adored.

Sita used to tell me I was as beautiful as she was. More beautiful than she was.

I was pleased to hear these words. But I wanted to hear them from you. Hear them from your lips.

And I wanted to hear them from you in a hundred other ways. With no words spoken between us. While your hands travelled all over me. While your lips travelled all over me. Sending tremors through me. Tremors of ecstasy.

And I wanted you to come to me and take me in your arms. I wanted to be crushed in your arms. To know what it would be to be crushed in the arms of a powerful man like you. To be smothered.

And I wanted to hold your powerful body in my arms as I lay in my bed. And to grow breathless with you in my arms. To gasp for air. And gasping, to melt. And melting, to float out of my body, to be free, to soar into the skies free from the bondage to the body. To ride the clouds.
To roam with you, free as twin birds, in the vast expanses of the endless skies. On the wings of love.

To ride the waves of the oceans. To rise to their crusts and then to plunge into their depths, and to rise up again.

And I waited. With the moon peeping into our room, I waited. As the night filled the world with its scent – a scent that I had only recently learned to recognize – I waited. While that scent filled me with restlessness. With despair. While that scent ignited fires in my body. In every limb. In my mountains and valleys. In my curves and smoothness. Fire that threatened to consume me. Fire given to those limbs, to those mountains and valleys, to those curves and smoothness, by the creator himself, so that his work of creation can go on, so that man and woman can be part of his work. So that they can sing his songs with him. Dance his dances with him. Celebrate his celebrations with him. Feel his ecstasies. Thrill in them. Be like him. Be him – for a few moments.

My heights and my depths cried out for you in those nights. My insides and outsides screamed out for you in those nights. My skin, my flesh, my breath, my heart, my soul, my entire being cried out for you.

In those nights I used to wait for you, Lakshmana. Wait with the purity of a maiden’s heart. Wait with longing. Wait with passion.

Wait with hunger. With thirst.

Wait in innocence. In ignorance.

Wait in vain.

You never came.

You never, ever came to me, Lakshmana. Never, ever.

I have heard that union with her man is every woman’s right. Once she becomes ritusnata, has had her ritual bath after her monthly periods, it is every woman’s right to expect her man in her bed.

My bed was always empty.

It is every man’s duty to go into his wife on those days.

I remained empty.

For you never came into me.

I remained impure because you never came into me.

They say that a woman into whom her man hasn’t come is inauspicious. I remained inauspicious.
You failed in your duty to me. You failed in your duty to the ways of the world. You failed in your duty to God.

Or perhaps you did not. For, to you the world was HE. Your God was HE.

Your Rama.

And you did not fail HIM.

As for me, I did not exist for you.

So you never come to me.

Not then.

Not for years.

And then you came…

Years later, after I had given up all hopes, after all sweetness had disappeared from my life, after my land had lain famished for so long, after I had given up all hopes of it ever bringing forth, you came to me then.

And when you came, you came empty.

Your heart empty. Your eyes empty. Your soul empty.

To do a physical act.

To pay back the debt to your forefathers – to free yourself from pitr-rna.

Did you ever know what it is to live an entire life rejected, Lakshmana? Live an entire life abandoned, lonely, devastated, Lakshmana?

~00~

So I was not really surprised when you decided to walk away from my life forever without a word to me. I was not really surprised when you decided to offer yourself to the waters of the Sarayu. To make that final offering of yourself to HIM through the waters of the Sarayu.
I wasn’t surprised.

Pained? Yes. I was.

I could still feel pain after a lifetime spent with you.

I was pained, Lakshmana, though I hate to confess it.

But I wasn’t surprised.

~00~

And I remembered the other time.

Strange days those were.

Days when strange whisperings went all around me all day long. Days when I heard strange whisperings late into the night. Whisperings that I failed to understand. But whose significance communicated to me at some level beneath my understanding. And made me uneasy. Dread each step I took. Dread each breath I took. For the air around me was poisoned. It was the air of conspiracy. The toxic air of conspiracy.

Bharata and Shatrughna were at Kekaya, as always.

I knew that the whisperings had something to do with them.

And in my ignorance I feared for them. For they were dear to me. Not just because they were my sisters’ husbands. Not just because they were your brothers. But because they were loveable people.

I particularly loved Bharata.

And I knew the whisperings had something to do with him in particular.

Everybody seemed to understand them. Everybody except me.

And one other person.

Bharata’s mother. Mother Kaikeyi.

She was the only one who seemed utterly ignorant of it all. The only one who was completely ignorant of it all. Who did not hear a single whisper. It was as though they fell silent around her. So that she did not even suspect their existence.

The walls that whispered to me did not whisper to her.

That is how Kaikeyi was.

Intoxicated with love.

She loved two people in the world.

One was her husband Dasharatha. The king.

Oh, how she loved him!

I often wondered how someone so young could love such an old man with such intensity.

The other was HE.

Yes, HIM she loved best of all in the world, after Dasharatha. Perhaps even more than Dasharatha. HIM – not her son Bharata, but HIM.

Kausalya’s son. Rama.

He had been her darling from the beginning. The centre of all her motherly affections. From the moment he was born while she was still carrying Bharata.

“Rama is my first son,” she used to say. “And Bharata, my second.”

And it was so. To Dasharatha’s youngest wife, Rama was her first son.

Dasharatha’s only accomplished wife. Before the beauty of whom the beauty of the other queens faded like the moon before the rising sun. Dasharatha’s brilliant wife.

Unearthly beautiful was the king’s youngest queen. Dasharatha often said that when he first saw her he thought she was perhaps an Apsara or a Kinnari, one of those heavenly damsels. Or perhaps Maya herself. So irresistible was her beauty.

And equally accomplished was she. The only queen who could ride a horse – in fact, the only woman I knew who could do that. The only queen who could drive a chariot. A woman who could sing – of how she sang! Who could do a hundred other things the other queens couldn’t even dream of doing.

She had driven Dasharatha’s chariot in a battle.

She, Kaikeyi, did not hear a single one of those whisperings.

Lost in her world of love for the king was she. Lost in her love for her Rama was she.

They said she was ambitious. I felt her only ambitions were to love Rama and Dasharatha and to be loved by them in turn.

It was said that Mother Kausalya and Mother Sumitra secretly resented her and her influence over the king. It was said they felt she owned the king. That she had bewitched him so completely that he was just a puppet in her hands. That she could make him do anything she wished. Just anything.

~00~

And then, one day I realized the meaning of those whisperings.

King Dasharatha had called for a meeting of all his important relatives and dependants.

I would learn later that he had left out our father King Janaka and the king of Kekaya – Kaikeyi’s father and Bharata’s grandfather.

In spite of the fact that none was closer to him in relation than these.

And in that meeting he announced his intention to do the abhisheka of Rama as the crown prince.

The abhisheka was to be done the very next day.

I wondered why there was such hurry.

Then I heard that the king had insisted that the abhisheka should take place before Bharata came back from his uncle’s place.

Again I wondered why.

I also wondered about the whisperings.

And then a vague memory came to me. Something that I had heard a long time ago and had forgotten.

In my early days in Ayodhya – or was it in Mithila? – I had heard a rumour that Dasharatha had married Kaikeyi with a promise to her father that her first-born son would be the heir to his throne.

The throne was Bharata’s by right. That was one of the conditions on which the old king had married the young princess who would be Bharata’s mother.

But it was as though everyone had forgotten this.

Including Kaikeyi. She never thought for a moment that anyone other than Rama would be the crown prince and the future king.

After all, that Bharata would be king was a promise made before the marriage. When Dasharatha did not have any male children. Kaikeyi’s future son was expected to be Dasharatha’s eldest born male child.

And then all the three queens had become pregnant after the sacrifice. After years of hopelessness. The yearlong life they and the king lived under the strict disciplines imposed by Rishyashringa and the sacrifice performed at the end of it had borne fruit. The gods were pleased.

And then the king did something which I have never been able to understand fully. When time came to distribute the payasa from the sacrifice, Dasharatha gave exactly half of it to Kausalya. The other half he divided into two equal parts, one of which he gave to Sumitra. One-fourth of the payasa was left now – meant for Kaikeyi. Suddenly Dasharatha changes his mind. Instead of giving that one-fourth to Kaikeyi, he divides that again into two equal halves and gives Kaikeyi only one half of it. The other half he takes back to Sumitra and gives her.

Kaikeyi gets one-eighth of the payasa. Had it been divided equally, she would have got one-third.

Kaikeyi was supposed to be the queen the king loved best. She was his youngest wife. The most beautiful. And undoubtedly the most accomplished. Which the king kept telling her again and again. Which the whole palace talked about – adding that Dasharatha was a slave to Kaikeyi.
Yet when it comes to receiving the sacred payasa from the sacrifice, she gets exactly one-eighth of it. Sumitra, one-fourth and one-eight. And Kausalya, exactly half of it.

I never understood why. I still do not understand why.

Or perhaps I do.

In any case I never heard that Kaikeyi complained about it. It was not in her nature to do so. Her love for Dasharatha was such that in its intoxication she missed many such details.
Playing the games of the palace was not part of her life.

And who knows, she perhaps never discovered the betrayal.

Anyway, soon the queens became pregnant.

And Kausalya gave birth first.

And Kaikeyi forgot all about the precondition of her marriage – the condition her father had imposed on Dasharatha. She loved Rama from the moment of his birth. It was as though she was his true mother, not Kausalya. She adored him.

But obviously everyone had not forgotten.

That is, the promise made to Mother Kaikeyi’s father.

Dasharatha hadn’t forgotten, for instance.

He was in a hurry to crown Rama before Bharata came back.

He said so. “The abhisheka should take place while Bharata is still away from the city” – these were his exact words. Then he added that while Bharata was a good brother, devoted to Rama and follows the path of dharma, one could never be sure when people’s minds changed.
No time to lose, he said. Let’s hurry, he said. Let’s have the coronation tomorrow itself.
Tomorrow! The very next day! Everybody was aghast. The abhisheka of a crown prince is not such a simple affair. It requires elaborate preparations. It requires sending invitations across the length and breadth of Aryavarta and beyond its boundaries, which will take months. The whole city, the whole country, has to be decorated. After all, no event is bigger than this. Not even the coronation of the king, in a way of speaking, for that is just a formality, a confirmation of what is done in this abhisheka. This is the event that decides the future king. That gives the right to the throne to one and only one individual. The event that makes him the future ultimate authority and all others his future subjects. Decides the future of the kingdom and its people.

But Dasharatha said no. Let us have it tomorrow itself, he said.

And he sent for Rama to give the news to him. Rama came, listened to the news and went back.
He did not object to the coronation. He did not object to the hurry. He did not object to anything that the king had to say. He just obeyed his father.

Rama – the always obedient son.

Rama did not object to his coronation as crown prince, in spite of knowing full well that the throne was Bharata’s. In spite of knowing full well that the throne had been promised to Bharata – to Kaikeyi’s future firstborn son – at the time of her wedding to the king.

He knew it – because he himself would later tell Bharata as much when Bharata met him in Chitrakoota. “Listen, my brother. A long time ago, when our father married your mother he paid your grandfather rajyashulka - he made a promise to your grandfather that her firstborn son would be the future king of Ayodhya.” These were Rama’s exact words to Bharata.
He knew it and he did not object to it. He knew it and he did not object to the hurry. He knew it and he did not say a word when the king told him that the coronation had to take place before Bharata came back.

He did not remind his father that the throne was Bharata’s.

Rama’s friends rushed to give the news to Kausalya. Mother Kausalya and Mother Sumitra went immediately to the shrine to give their thanks to the gods for making this possible.

They did not think of asking Mother Kaikeyi to join them. They did not ask Rama’s friends if they had given the news to Kaikeyi. They did not ask them to do so.

When Rama later came to meet them at the shrine, Kausalya would bless Rama on this great good fortune and say that both Kosala and Sumitra’s land would celebrate this, that her people and Sumitra’s people will be delighted at the news.

Not a word about Kaikeyi. Not a word about celebrations in Kekaya. Not a word about Kaikeyi’s people being delighted.

Obviously, they would not have been. For, they were waiting their Bharata to be anointed as crown prince of Ayodhya once of those days.

And Kausalya claimed that it is because of her prayers and the vratas she had been performing that the throne came to Rama.

Didn’t she mean that otherwise the throne would have gone to someone else?
To Bharata?

Kausalya too knew of the promise the king had made at the time of the wedding. She too knew of Bharata’s right to the throne.

And if Kausalya knew, then Sumitra too knew.

Rama had come to Kausalya to give her the news and had there met Sumitra too. He did not go to Kaikeyi to inform her either. Or to seek her blessings.

No one informed Kaikeyi.

And then, later, much later, seeing from the terrace of Kaikeyi’s palace the preparations going on all over the palace and the city, Kaikeyi’s old maid Manthara would ask a servant what was happening. And would learn that these were preparations for the coronation of Rama as yuvaraja. The abhisheka was to take place the very next day.

Manthara would rush to Kaikeyi with the shocking news. But to Kaikeyi no news was happier news. Ecstatic, Kaikeyi would remove one of her priceless ornaments and give it to Manthara for giving her the wonderful news. Manthara would of course fling it on the floor in fury.
Kaikeyi would not listen to a word of what Manthara had to add to the news. Not a word against Rama. Not a word against Dasharatha. Not a word against Kausalya. She would ask Manthara to shut up.

The frustrated woman would be humiliated again and again trying to convince something evil was going on in the palace. That an injustice was being done to her. That an injustice was being done to Bharata.

In the meantime, Kausalya and Sumitra would continue their prayers at the shrine. No enemy should stand in the way of the great fortune coming to Rama. No evil eye should fall on him. No shadow of darkness should fall on his bright future.

They had Kaikeyi in mind – specifically. Kaikeyi the enemy. Kaikeyi’s evil eye. Kaikeyi’s dark shadow.

Kaikeyi who was ecstatic at the news of Rama’s abhisheka. Whose heart was overflowing with love for Rama. Whose heart was pouring out blessings on him.

On Rama who had not gone to Kaikeyi to meet her.

He did not feel the need for it.

Kausalya and Sumitra still prayed to save Rama from the dark shadow while Kaikeyi battled against Manthara.

Eventually, Kaikeyi would go down. Fighting a losing battle over a long, long time, Kaikeyi would eventually fall.

And she would decide to claim the throne for Bharata.

I have no idea what exactly happened when the king finally went to give Kaikeyi the news. It was in the Kopa-bhavana where Kaikeyi had gone in a fury that the king met her and what went inside its chambers remained mostly unknown. But of course palace walls whisper and the whispers had two different versions of what went behind them to say.

One, that she reminded Dasharatha of the promise he had made to her father at the time of the marriage. The promise to make her future firstborn son heir to the throne of Ayodhya.

And the other, that she claimed from the king the two boons that he had promised to her years ago.

I remembered what I had heard of those boons.

Kaikeyi was with Dasharatha in the battlefield. The battle had been fierce. And Dasharatha had been seriously wounded. His charioteer was killed. Enemies were crowding on him from all around. With supreme skill, with skill unheard of in a woman, Kaikeyi drove the chariot through the enemy lines and beyond it, away from it, with the wounded king inside. There, far away, in safety, she cared for him and then, eventually, eluding the eyes of the armies of the enemies, she brought him safely home.

It has been said her only regret at that time was she couldn’t wield Dasharatha’s weapons herself and finish off the work he had left half done.

The king had then offered her two boons. She had said she didn’t need them. His love was enough for her. What did a queen of Dasharatha need boons for, she had said, if she had his love? But he had insisted and she had said, all right, but later.

I have heard that he had offered her other boons. At other times.

In bed. Delighted as he had never been delighted in his life.

I have heard Kaikeyi knew how to make a man happy in bed. As few other women knew. She was a mistress of the arts of Rati. Those sacred arts which could transform the ordinary and the routine to the extraordinary and wonderful. The arts of ecstasy. The arts of rapturous sex. The arts that would help the wingless to fly. The old to be young again. And soar into heights unknown, each height higher than the one before. The art that made every cell in the body rapturous. Created explosion after explosion. Made you feel the sky is within your closed palm. Made you feel you are floating in an ocean of ecstasy. Made you say no to heaven.

Another time was when he was captured in a battle by a border king and Kaikeyi led an army to release him from the enemy.

I have heard he had given her boons then.

She had always said she did not need them.

But on that day she asked him to grant her two boons.

That is what the second version said.

But I didn’t believe this version – this must have been the version spread by her enemies.

Because she didn’t need any boons. The throne was Bharata’s.

I believe that Kaikeyi asked for it, asked for the throne for Bharata, angered at the betrayal when she realised it. When she realized the meaning of the hurry to crown Rama as crown prince. When she realized how they had all kept her completely uninformed. And then she must have realized other betrayals. Like the betrayal with the payasa from the sacrifice. Dozens of other betrayals.

She must have asked the king to keep the promise he had made to her father at the time of their marriage.

But, yes, Kaikeyi must have used one of the boons – for sending Rama to the jungle.

~00~

At the end of the day king Dasharatha eventually went to Kaikeyi’s palace.

Some said he went there to give her the news of Rama’s abhisheka. Others said he was so charged up by the day’s events he sought Kaikeyi for sex.

In any case, Kaikeyi was not in her chamber. She was in the Kopagriha – where you retired when you were in a fury. The Pratihari told him so, though there was no need – the state he found Kaikeyi’s chamber in was sign enough. The chamber that had always so heartily welcomed him rejected him on that day. The always spotless room was a mess.

In the Kopagriha the king clung to her feet. He told her he had already made the public announcement, what could he do now? He spoke of his humiliation. And then he cursed her. A string of abusive words attacked her.

In the madness of his anger the king would give Kaikeyi up. Disown her. He would say she was no wife of his. I give you up this instant – he would say. He would say that when he died she would be denied the rights of a wife – she would not be allowed to offer him jalanjali.
And along with her, he would disown Bharata, too. For no fault of his. He would disown Bharata who was ignorant of the whole affair. Bharata who had long been away at his grandfather’s, at Kekaya. As though Bharata was only Kaikeyi’s son. As though he was not his son, too.
I wonder if the king would have been in such a hurry to disown Rama if he had been angry with Kausalya.

He cursed Kaikeyi calling her by evil names by the score.

And the next moment he begged her calling her a goddess and his heartthrob.

And then he cursed her again.

But Kaikeyi had made up her mind.

Eventually the decision was made known. To Rama. By Kaikeyi. In the presence of Dasharatha. Bharata would be crowned. Rama would go the jungle for fourteen years.

Sita decided to go with him.
She should have. She did right.

You, Lakshmana, too decided to go with him.

Should you have? I don’t know.

Would I have let you go? I don’t know.

Would I have insisted that I too come with you, just as Sita insisted on going with Rama? I don’t know.

All I know is that Rama went to Sita to give her the news of the change in the plans, just as he had earlier gone to give her the news of the abhisheka. And she insisted on going with him.
You, Lakshmana, never came to me.

You left for the jungle without a word to me.

You did not think it necessary to tell me a word before you abandoned me for fourteen years, to follow your brother to the jungle.

Not one word, Lakshmana.

Not one word.

So this is not the first time, Lakshmana.

This is not the first time you left me without a word when you walked away from life leaving me abandoned.

When you walked towards the Sarayu to end your life, without a word to me, it was not the first time.

Part 2 of 2

Book Review: It Happens By Itself

A Modern Man's Guide to Spirituality

At the age of nineteen, Isaac Shapiro had a very unusual experience, which he termed later as an experience of unconditional love. Through that experience and through the deep stillness it created in his mind, he had an intuitive understanding of the nature of reality beyond words and thoughts, beyond all that is passing. Shapiro’s glimpse of the truth was however passing – all it did was tell him that such an experience was possible and give him an urge to seek it. One of the results of the experience was that the young seeker left his home and homeland and began wandering through the world on a quest for answers to questions that troubled him. Eventually Shapiro reached Pune in India and met Papaji, a disciple of the legendary saint Shri Ramana Maharshi. What happened then brought the search to an end – for he learnt that the direct experience of ‘that’ happens not through searches but by a totally different approach.

It Happens by Itself is a book on the perennial wisdom of which Shri Ramana was such a great master. It is also an absorbing journey into the mind, insights, intuitions and experiences of its author, into the author’s ‘passionate love affair with Truth’. As we journey into the world of the book, we come across a great master of the perennial wisdom in his own right, a master whose unerring insight and sparkling wit shine through each page of the book.

Shapiro’s wisdom seems to spring not from any book that he had learnt but from a source that is always there in each one of us, at a dimension beyond knowing and not knowing, beyond the known and the not known, a wisdom that is as old as time and yet as fresh as this morning’s sunshine, the tender breeze that is blowing now. It has the irresistible charm and simplicity of an infant’s toothless smile.

The book consists of questions put to Shapiro during his ‘satsang’ sessions and his responses to them. These satsangs bring to our mind the satsangs that seekers from all over the world had with Ramana Maharashi himself where the sage of Arunachala answered questions less through words and more through his silences.

Shapiro is an adept at taking us into that wonder world beyond words and thoughts into the beautiful here-now that is always waiting for us behind the veil of the mind and the senses. And he does it using that ancient technique of dialogue, the deceptively simple technique that is immensely powerful in the hands of a master. As the introduction to the book says, “perhaps that makes it an ideal crucible for the genius inherent in the Self-aware to be inspired and expressed in the most dramatic, direct and practical words. In the course of their candid revelations about their deepest fears and hopes, the audience finds their conditioned reactions derailed by Isaac’s steadfast insistence that one Reality fits all and that there is no escape from it.” It is a pleasure to watch the miracle of emptiness unfolding during the sessions with Shapiro and then eternal fullness taking birth within that emptiness.

Shapiro’s responses to questions always challenge you. Sometimes they bring you to a sudden halt and force you to see the truth of things which have always been so obvious but which we have been missing. Take, for instance, the question: “Can you show me how to get there?” Promptly comes Isaac’s reply: “Actually, it is how to be Here, not there, because, where is “there”? Your whole life you have been running after thoughts and feelings. These thoughts and feelings are like a river, and you have been swimming downstream. Right now, sit quietly and take a moment to recognize the source of this river. Look and see where the next thought is arising from and to where it returns.”

During an interview of Shapiro by the compiler, Sinnige comments that many people spontaneously experience ‘freedom’ during their encounters with Shapiro and says he himself has experienced it. Here is Shapiro’s response to it: “People tell me this, and I can see actually when it happens for someone, and the mystery to me is I’m not doing anything. I’m simply keeping quiet in the truth of my own being, and then somehow people recognize this in themselves. And when it happens, there is such beauty in this person’s eyes. The whole face relaxes. A lot of times there is laughter and tears all happening at once, and this person is just reporting, ‘I’m home, I’m free, this what I’ve always been yearning for, looking for. I now know who I am, I’ve realized it.”

The book is a treasure chest of perennial wisdom. It consists of transcripts from twenty-two dialogues with the master with such titles as The Eye Cannot See Itself, Follow the Seeing Back to the Seer, It is Enough to be Yourself, Be Willing to Not Know, It Happens by Itself, Doubt is the Rebirth of the Seeker, Transcend Transcending and so on. Besides, it also contains an interview with Shapiro. Books like Shapiro’s It Happens by Itself have a very important place in telling us what the spiritual path truly is – especially in our world where spirituality is often confused with curing colds and backaches.

The cover design by Abhilash Chacko and art direction by Girija Nair make the book a delight to the eyes.

It Happens by Itself: Dialogues with Isaac Shapiro, compiled by Dick Sinnige, Editions India, An imprint of Stone Hill Foundation Publishing, Cochin, 2006. 185 pp, Rs. 275, ISBN 81-8958-0-6.

Book Review: Kootiyattam, The Oldest Living Theatre Tradition

Kerala, the tiny strip of breathtakingly beautiful land at the southern tip of India wedged between the Western Ghats and the Arabian sea, the land of the relentless tropical sun and roaring rains that come down in torrents from dark skies for six months a year scaring outsiders, the radiant land that tourist promotion deservedly calls God’s Own Country, is known today for several endangered heritages. Among these are botanical heritages like its tropical rainforests which abound in trees that are not to be found anywhere else in the world; zoological heritages like the world’s only lion-tailed monkeys, the flying lizards that leap from one skyscraper tree top to land gliding through the air on another treetop equally high after covering thirty meters in a single leap and the yellow-black hornbills with their amazingly huge beaks; and social heritages like matriarchy that has flourished in this land for over two millennia, many practices of which shock the patriarchal world outside it, but which anthropologists and sociologists from all over the world have been studying avidly for the last couple of centuries.

Yet another endangered species of this magnificent land is the oldest living Sanskrit theatre tradition, the oldest living theatre tradition of India, and perhaps the oldest living theatre tradition of the world: kootiyattam, classical theatre in its most ‘classical’ form, ritual theatre, theatre par excellence, theatre from a bygone era where the performance of a single act from a single play often continued for more than forty nights at a stretch, each night’s performance lasting for as many as six hours or more, theatre in which right from the beginning women did the roles of women when everywhere else in the world they were not allowed on stage and often not even among the audience.

Dr KG Paulose’s Kutiyattam Theatre: The Earliest Living Tradition is an exploration of the wonderful world of this magnificent art form that was once the hereditary privilege and coveted legacy of a few families and the performance of which was confined exclusively to traditional theatre halls annexed to large temples where admission was restricted rigidly to the upper castes and which UNESCO has declared as one of the 'masterpieces of oral and intangible heritage of humanity' in 2001.

Theatre in the west is believed to have begun around 700 BC with festivals that honored Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, sexuality and the celebration of earthly living. The early Greek theatre was, though, more pageant than drama, patterned after the traditional Egyptian pageants honoring Osiris, god of the male reproductive force like the Greek Dionysus and of many other things, including civilization. Drunken men and women danced through the streets of Greece during the Dionysian festivals, dressed in goatskins, goats being the symbols of sexuality, singing and dancing erotically, ecstatically. The word tragedy commonly used in the context of drama today comes from these Dionysian celebrations and means a goat song. There were usually competitions among participating groups and over time these celebrations evolved into the Greek theatre as we know it today. Initially, when theatre began being performed from a stage, there was only a single performer on the stage. Gradually the number of performers increased and by the time of theatre legends like Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, circa 500 BC, theatre in Greece had attained amazing standards of excellence.

In India, however, the roots of the theatre are traced to the time of the earliest Vedic rituals. Several Vedic rituals involved strong elements of drama, like the ashwamedha yajna that possibly evolved from what was once naramedhas, human sacrifices, part of which was ritual mating of either a priest or a king with a queen prior to his being sacrificed. It is said that the Indian theatre evolved from these ritualistic elements of the sacrifices. There is also a story that tells us that the gods once approached the creator and requested him to create a new form of entertainment for them and Brahma created the theatre in response to this request. What is beyond doubt is the great antiquity of theatre in India – the greatest ever Indian manual of the theatre, the Natyashastra of Sage Bharata, that gives us amazingly detailed, precise instructions about every aspect of the theatre itself is over two thousand years old and we have evidences that other manuals of antiquity existed long before that.

This glorious Sanskrit theatre that thrived in India for long, however, declined and subsequently met with its sad death due to political, social, economic, linguistic and several other reasons. While external reasons hastened its demise, it must be said that the Sanskrit theatre itself failed to realize regional needs and realities that had come into being over the millennia, to accept the challenges posed by these and to grow in response to them. That is, it died everywhere else except in Kerala, where its performances continued in the form of kootiyattam into which it had evolved there.

Kootiyattam, however, is not Sanskrit theatre exactly as it was, says Dr Paulose, It is “an amalgam of two traditions: the one represented by the national Sanskrit tradition and the other the regional.”

The name kootiyattam is a combination of the words kooti and attam, with the ‘y’ appearing in between to connect the two vowel sounds. Kooti means joined together and attam means dance and by extension, acting. The word kootiyattam, therefore, literally means dancing together or acting together. Kootiyattam is acting together in many different senses, one of which is that it is a form of theatre in which men and women act together on the stage.

In kootiyattam, female roles are handled by women and not by men. Men’s roles, of course, are handled by men. The women who act on stage in kootiyattam are nangyars – women of the nampyar [nambiar] community. The nampyar men too are part of the kootiyattam theatre, but they do not act on stage, instead they play on a huge earthen drum called mizhavu. The male roles are handled by men of another community called chakyars.

Nangyarkoottu is an allied form of kootiyattam, and is performed exclusively by women. Similarly chakyarkoottu is another allied form of kootyattam, performed exclusively by men.

What Dr Paulose does in his remarkable book Kutiyattam Theatre: The Earliest Living Tradition is to explore thoroughly all the different facets of this miracle of survival.

The performance of kootiyattam traditionally took place in koottampalams, which were sacred halls/stages inside temple compounds specifically dedicated to these and other similar performances. Here, the performing team acted out a play selected from one of the leading Sanskrit dramatists, the legendary Bhasa, whom even Kalidasa considered a role model for himself, being the most popular of ancient playwrights. In fact, if Bhasa’s works are available to us today, the credit goes exclusively to kootiyattam and allied theatres in Kerala – while the texts were lost without a clue everywhere else, the chakyars and nagyars preserved it among themselves. Apart from Bhasa’s works, Mattavilasa, a satire on the then Kanchipuram society by the Pallava King Mahendra Vikramavarma, Bodhayana’s Bhagavadajjuka, Kulashekhara’s Subhadradhananjaya, and Shaktibhadra’s Ashcharyachoodamani are also very popular, says Dr Paulose.

Interestingly, kootiyattam usually does not stage entire plays. A single act from a play is considered the complete play and this is acted out elaborately – so elaborately that sometimes it takes as long as forty nights for it to be acted out. Ashcharyachoodamani, when performed in its entirety, takes eighty-six days for a single presentation on the kootiyattam stage. Since the performance is so long, the text recedes into the background as the actor takes over and the actor’s emotive skills, ability to elaborate, verbal skills and histrionics dominate the stage.

As Dr Sudha Gopalakrishnan who had drafted the candidature file for Kutiyattam for the UNESCO recognition says “Another instance of elaborate depiction of verbal skills is ‘Mantrankam’, the third Act of Bhasa’s Pratijnayaugandharayana. A speech-oriented play with the Vidushaka as the only character on the stage, with detailed narration of the story and potential to outsource related material from a wide variety of other texts, Mantrankam takes about forty nights to complete its narration… The entire story of the Ramayana by integrating the three plays – Shaktibhadra’s Ashcharyachudamani, Bhasa’s Pratimanataka and Abhishekanataka – was in the repertoire of the kootiyattam artist. This cycle of plays, confined to the temples of Kerala, had twenty-one Acts and took a full year in its enactment, perhaps one of the longest performances in the history of world theatre!”

While kootiyattam is without a doubt an actor’s theatre, these performances are based on rules laid down by such texts as Attaprakarams and Kramadeepikas, which give instructions regarding the theatre’s rituals and conventions, stylisation in speech and movement, use of orchestra to enhance histrionic action and so on.

The book is in five parts. In part one, named The National Theatre, Dr Paulose discusses the evolution of the Indian theatre. This part begins with The Early Beginning where the author traces the roots of kootiyattam to the Indus valley civilization and the Vedas. In the other seven subsequent chapters that form the first part, Dr Paulose discusses Buddhism and Sanskrit Theatre; Evolution of the Natyashastra; Natyashastra and Kalidasa; Performance of Sanskrit Dramas; Author’s Text and Performance Text; Minor Plays; and Decline of National Theatre.

Part two, named The Kerala Scenario, consists of Tamizhakam; Tradition of Sanskrit Drama in Kerala; Innovations on Kerala Theatre; Presentation of Sub-texts; The History of Kootiyattam; Kootiyattam and Allied Forms; Kulashekhara in Retrospect; Localization of a National Theatre; and Cultural Levels of Colonization. As is clear from these chapter names, what the author does in this section is to analyse how Sanskrit theatre came to Kerala and what changes it underwent there so that even when it was no more a living and performing tradition in the rest of the country, it remained a vibrant art form in Kerala.

This part is also significant for the discussion of the allied forms of kootiyattam such as chakyarkoottu, nangyarkoottu and so on. Of special interest to us today is nangyarkoottu, performed exclusively by women – a nangyar is a woman of the nampyar community. Nangyarkoothu was developed by women, according to Dr Paulose, in answer to the tendency to sideline women characters that at one stage crept into kootiyattam.

Also discussed in this part are the contributions of Kulashekhara Varman towards the modification of Sanskrit theatre that made the subsequent birth of its transformed form we know today as kootiyattam possible. “What Kulashekhara did was evolving a method to harmonize the micro and macro levels of acting to please the elite and ordinary alike. While doing so he provided the actors ample space to exhibit their talents by exploring the possibilities of suggestion through imaginative acting… The innovations of Kulashekhara were helpful for Sanskrit drama to evolve as kootiyattam,” says Dr Paulose here. The most important contributions of Kulashekhara to Sanskrit drama, according to the author, is the introduction of an element called poorva-sambandha [retrospection wherein ‘every character at the time of his/her first appearance narrates his/her past up to the present point, thus connecting the present to the past’], dhvani-yojana [blending of suggestive sense or expansion of thematic and psychic meaning] and prekshaka-prayoktr-sambandha [spectator-actor interaction].

Part three, entitled Description, consists of chapters dealing with Sanskrit Plays Used for Kootiyattam, Bhasa and Kerala Theatre, Techniques of Kootiyattam, Transformation of Roles, Moments of Excitement, and Multiple Levels of Stage-Audience Relation. Part four deals with stage manuals and part five, the final section of the book, deals with the ups and downs that kootiyattam went through during the last century when, while on one side the ancient theatre was threatened with extinction for lack of support and other reasons, on the other it broke many of its elements that had become shackles rather than strengths and eventually grew to draw world attention and find a place as one of the precious 'masterpieces of oral and intangible heritage of humanity’ recognized by the UNESCO. This final section talks about the emergence of kootiyattam from the temple onto public stages, its subsequent bold spreading of wings to soar onto the world stage, contemporary efforts to popularize the theatrical art and so on.

A rich photo section is appended to the text which, apart from paying tributes to such legends of kootiyattam as Mani Madhava Chakyar and Guru Ammannur Madhava Chakyar, shows us what kootiyattam looks like today when it is performed by contemporary artists. A CD on kootiyattam too is part of the book. Dr Paulose’s book is far more than a book on this unique human heritage from the south of India. It is also an in depth study of Sanskrit theatre itself. The author of Kutiyattam Theatre analyses the differences between the prekshaka, the enlightened spectator or the connoisseur, and those who are referred to as nanaloka, or the general masses, as understood by the great masters of Sanskrit theatre. Speaking of samanyabhinaya, the author speaks of its six variations such as ankura and nivrtyankura. The scholarly author analyses in depth the differences between natyadharmi and lokadharmi styles of acting, the ten types of roopakas [plays] and the eighteen types of major uparoopakas, bringing home the depth at which our ancients had analyzed the theatre.

Speaking of the sanctity of kootiyattam and its kinship with yajnas, Vedic sacrifices, the author says: “The three wicks in the lamp [present on the stage throughout the performance of kootiyattam] represent the three fires in the yagashala. Removal of the three wicks at the end of the performance symbolizes the end of the yajna. When the actor gets attired he ties a red band round his head. Once he ties the band, …the actor has changed over to the character… When a chakyar [in the course of his performance] ridicules anyone including the royal persons, no one responds back. If anyone were to retort to the actor, he would take off his headgear and the performance will be stopped. Thereafter no performance will be held in that koottampalam without performing rites of atonement.

Kutiyattam Theatre is an invaluable book on a rare treasure of humanity made all the more valuable through the author’s hard work, great commitment and dedication and deep scholarship. The extensive, erudite notes and detailed quotations at the end of each chapter are great assets to the book and among its greatest strengths.

The book is beautifully produced by DC Books, Kottayam and the layout and formatting are splendid. However, one wishes the book had received more careful editing and proofreading – a book of such immense value deserves these. There are too many proofing errors in the text of the book that jar the pleasure of reading. The errors are only in the English part of the book, though. The Sanskrit, mostly quotations from classical texts given in Devanagari, is free from errors – my guess is that the learned author has himself read the proofs of the Sanskrit section.

Dr Paulose is an expert on Indian aesthetics, the Natyashastra and ancient theatre. His doctoral thesis was on Kootiyattam. Before ending a long career as an academician, Dr Paulose was the principal of Sanskrit College, Tripunithura, Kerala and Registrar, Sri Sankara University, Kerala. He is actively associated with Kerala Kalamandalam, the unique institution dedicated to the performing arts in Kerala that has made invaluable contributions to the promotion and development of art forms such as kathakali and kootiyattam. He is also the Founder-Managing Trustee of International Centre for Kutiyattam, Tripunithura, Kerala. His other works include Introduction to Kutiyattam, Kutiyattam: A Historical Study, Bhima in Search of Celestial Flowers, Bhagavadajjuka in Kutiyattam, and Improvisation in Ancient Theatre.

Note: Dr Paulose’s book uses diacritical marks throughout for non-English words. Since this review does not use diacritical marks, the transliterations of Sanskrit and Malayalam words here are at times spelt differently from the book.

Kutiyattam Theatre: The Earliest Living Tradition, by K.G. Paulose, DC Books, Kottayam, Kerala, 2006 pp 237+19, plus one CD. Hardcover edition. Price Rs 950/-

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Image courtesy rfdesigns.org depicting the stage presentation of Kutiyattam