The movie is about every woman we see and meet. It lucidly depicts the lives of these ladies who toil and earn their fruits of labour for their children, or sacrifice a dozen dreams when they walk on to their husbands’ homes. It is about the woman who hides her tears behind a veil of strength and braces up herself to meet the world with a smile. Perhaps I see this uncanny resemblance of hidden power in every woman, in every girl child. For do not they learn the constraints of their gender a little too soon? In the young girl-mother who hides her face with her dupatta, reluctantly answering the questions the interviewer puts in front of her, I could see the dormant voice within her suddenly springing to new life. As her words gushed forth like a torrent born out of years of silent suffering, I could only hear the heartbeats resonate the experiences of my foremothers.
The movie captured it all- the streets bustling with young ladies out from their daily classes. They pause from their contented chattering and give us their piece of perception of this mythical lady who chose to bear the fires of the agni pariksha, in calm dignity. The girls do not like this injustice a chaste woman Janaki had to go through, curse to an inconsiderate man like Rama… on the other side of the picture, we see a middle class working lady idolizing Sita, in apparent awe and reverence. The mother of an entire tradition, she is the ultimate ideal for a patriarchal society.
But who chooses to look at the other side of this magnificent lady who can be very much looked upon as a single mother, a woman of utmost self-respect who did not bow down to the orders of a second text of chastity, a woman who bore in silence but spoke out without fear when the injustice had no sense and logic? It is in this context of unconventional questioning that the book reading stood out in its brilliant round of discussions. In search of Sita, the book that seeks to explore the representations of her in various local and folk traditions, seeks to take and alternative perspective of Sita. As Malashri Lal said, “Sita needs to be reinterpreted”. This in what the book aspires to achieve- to break the stereotypes surrounding her that is prominently created by a male-dominated society, and take a backstep to begin anew the search
for who she really was, really is.
Manjit baruah talked about the representation of Sita in the Assamese version of the Ramayana written by Madhav Kandoli. Indira Goswami talks, in her discussion with him, talks about how the women in this localized version of the epic are not shown as subdued, compared to the women in Tulsidas’s Ramayana. Besides, Sita is a powerful character in the palace. Besides, Sita is shown as having physical union with Ravana, her body described as the beauty of the Brahmaputra. Elaborating the differences in the various versions of it, Goswami talks about how the text changes according to cultural contexts. For instance, Tulsidas’s Ramayana was chiefly devotional while Kandoli’s was directed at the common people.
Another important and interesting aspect that received prominence is the fact that the Ramayana, first and foremost, was a piece of literature and not the dogmatic religious text that it later developed into. Subsequently, the Sita of literature is quite different from her appropriated image in religion. Manjit baruah pointed out how within historical frameworks, each Ramayana has a different interpretation to the logic of why something is happening. The discussion invited exciting and enthusiastic responses from the audience.
Sita as the abandoned child grew up to be a unitary woman whose silence most often makes her appear submissive. But behind this very garb of quietitude lay the heart of a tolerant daughter, wife and mother. Her independent mind made her choose her destiny, whether to be with her husband on a fourteen years long banwas, or choosing to submerge beneath earth once her efforts at nurture of her two sons went unrecognized and unrewarded.
She still reigns though, in the confines of every Indian woman, who has to survive amidst the clamours of an often uncivilized society where 18 dowry deaths take place every day.
~ Prerana Choudhury
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