Helplessness

courtesy Indian Express

Looking out of the window of my friend's car,               

At the grey march of the mountains in the distance,                                    

The green vines planted in long  straight rows,                                  

Wind ruffling my hair, soft music on the radio,                                               

A hard -bound  book of Ondatje’s poetry in hand                           

The lines like the delicate gait of a black wood stork                    

Leaving claw prints of blood and loss, on creamy pages                                             

When the news reader  announces  on the French radio,                         

In the bland, matter-of -fact voice of a news reader:                                  

¨Twenty children in Bihar, dead due to food -poisoning                                              

And thirty others hospitalized. The free lunch served                                  

In the canteen suspected of containing insecticide.¨                                      

There is no poetry here, no rhythm or rhyme                                                

Just a blunt statement  of the ultimate betrayal ;                                         

Death meted out through the promise of life,                                               

To the innocent, needy and powerless.                                                    

I exclaim in blind anger to my friend,                                                                   

"This is the difference between your country and mine                              

In ours, people’s lives  are counted in numbers                                                            

Twenty, a hundred, what difference does it make ?                                   

In yours an accident on the highway is announced                                      

Over and over, as if it’s of primordial importance !"

                                      

Who am I angry with ? Him the son of  a rich country ?                            

Myself  'cause I am exiled in one 'n enjoy the privielege ?                        

I have never been an activist, here or back home                                        

Never taken part in rallies, nor raised my voice in anger.

Is that why I am angry ? At my self-imposed impotence ?

Arunima Choudhury

The Lakshman Rekha

I have recently caught myself thinking about the Lakshman Rekha. When Lakshman went to look for Ram, he drew a boundary line in front of the hut and expressly asked Sita not to cross it. Staying within the boundary line would keep her within the circle of protection created  by her husband and brother-in-law and stepping outside it would expose her to the dangers of the  wild. Unfortunately, Sita urged by the kindness of her heart does step out of the Lakshman Rekha and is abducted by the evil Ravana, which sets the ball rolling for the great war that follows. So if Sita had not disobeyed her brother-in-law, we would have had another, maybe less thrilling version of  the Ramayana, watered down to Ram  spending fourteen years wandering around the forest with Sita and Lakshman, and eventually returning to Ayodhya to claim his throne. The fabulous leap of Hanumana over the ocean from Rameshwaram to Sri Lanka, the bridge of stones built by an army of monkeys and bears, the magical plant that Hanuman finds to restore Lakshman to life, all would have been unwritten story.

Now just for fun what if we imagine that Sita out of sheer curiosity wanted to step out of the circle of protection created by Ram and Lakshman and explore the dangerous world which lay beyond home and hearth? What if that is why she sent Ram to bring her a golden deer in spite of him telling her again and again that golden deers were unnatural and that he feared the trickery of a black magician? ? What if she chose to disbelieve Lakshman, who along with her heard Ram crying out in distress from afar, but unlike her had complete faith in Ram's invincibility and was convinced that it was an illusion, while Sita prodded Lakshman to go after Ram accusing him of being a coward and coveting her in secret. Of course, she had not bargained for Ravana.  But she had stepped out of the limits imposed by the patriarchy and had to pay her due. And she keeps on paying even when Ram eventually rescues her from Ravana’s clutches fourteen long years later.

To quote Valmiki, the author of Ramayana: “The heart of King Rama, as he saw Sita, (the beloved of his heart) near him, was torn for fear of public scandal.” (Book VI : Yuddha Kanda - Book Of War.) So Rama, God incarnate who was so heart-broken at losing his wife that even the animal world moved by the intensity of his distress joined ranks with him against Ravana, addressed the beloved of his heart thus:

"Let it be known to you that this endeavor in the shape of war, which has been successfully carried through, due to the strength of my friends was not undertaken for your sake. … This was done by me in order to keep up my good conduct and to wipe off the evil-speaking from all sides as well as the insinuation on my own illustrious dynasty." (Book VI : Yuddha Kanda - Book Of War.)

and

"You, with  suspicion arisen on your character, standing in front of me, are extremely disagreeable to me, even as  light is to one suffering from  poor eye-sight." (Book VI : Yuddha Kanda - Book Of War.)

and

"O Sita! That is why, I am permitting you now to go wherever you like. All the ten directions are open to you, my dear lady! ....(Book VI : Yuddha Kanda - Book Of War.)

Poor Sita! What didn’t she do when she stepped out of the Lakshman Rekha? Now I wonder why Sita is presented to us as the model of an Indian  woman’s aspirations when the major part of her life was a series of misfortunes. Though she is not weak, because resisting Ravana for fourteen years must have taken enormous passive strength, she never rebels against the role allotted to her,  that of a perfect wife, except at the end when she commits suicide by asking mother  earth to swallow her up. After having proved her mettle for fourteen years, she has to prove her authenticity and chastity as a model wife again by stepping into fire and emerging unscathed. And even that does not earn her her husband’s protection and esteem for long . When she is the queen of Ayodhya and pregnant, a washerman abuses his wife who did not come home at night saying that  that he is not like Lord Ram who took back Sita even though she had stayed with another man for fourteen years. This incident reaches Ram’s ears who instead of defending Sita’s honour asks Lakshman to take Sita and abandon her in a hermitage. This is apparently to maintain the morality of the kingdom.  What morality can there be  in a kingdom where a woman’s position is so insignificant that an illiterate washerman’s unthinking words can be the cause of banishing one’s pregnant wife. 

So why right from our childhood are Ram and Sita presented to us as the model couple and Sita as the perfect woman? What can be more ignominious than Ram’s treatment of Sita? And why does Sita accept and keep on accepting being humiliated and abandoned with such meekness?   The answer could be, “But if she had not stepped out of the Lakshman Rekha, none of all this would have happened. Or, the Ramayana is after all just a story, or, it was another era, you cannot apply all your new-fangled ideas in that context.” And I would counter-question these answers by asking, “If the Ramayana is just a story why is it presented as an eternal truth, existing out of time and space? Why have we deified imperfect mythological figures as beings  we have to emulate? Why is such a big deception being perpetuated through the ages and by whom? 

Many modern women and men may say that Sita as a role model is outdated, outmoded. But that is not true because the Ramayana holds as much sway over our imagination as it did a hundred years ago, otherwise why would a Bombay High Court Judge in the year 2012, in the context of a divorce case, opinionate that married women should follow the example of Goddess Sita and give up everything to follow their husbands as  Sita did. That a panchayat leader says this would be  understandable, but a High Court Judge!

As women we have choices either to stay within the Lakshman Rekha or not. Many women in spite of being enclosed in suffocating boundaries do not step out for various reasons;  perhaps because they do not have a choice, or perhaps  because the known is infinitely more reassuring than the unknown. Others do and face retribution and   are scathed in the process. But there are   others who confront and vanquish the multi-headed Ravana who is an apt metaphor indeed of the dangers of the world. So this Lakshman Rekha instead of being a circle of protection is actually a circle of restriction. And stepping out of it is stepping into freedom, though that freedom may be fraught with dangers. Now is it worth it, is a question, which, of course, every woman  who wants to step out must ask herself and the answer is not always obvious. 

Arunima Choudhury

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