Review: Sita's Ascent

Last week's Sunday Guardian has my review of Vayu Naidu's Sita's Ascent.

Suddenly there's a lot of Ramayana- related writing going around. There was Zubaan's anthology of speculative fiction about the Ramayana called Breaking the Bow. (I'm sad to say I've only read one story from it but will get around to it eventually). I'd been meaning to get Arshia Sattar's translation of the Valmiki Ramayana for some time now and used my mother's birthday recently to get it and her book of essays as well. Most recently - like, this morning - I finished Samhita Arni's The Missing Queen.

I feel I shouldn't mix up a straight review post with my thoughts on Arni's book, which were decidedly mixed; but I guess, I hope, I'll get around to it. Eventually. (Why does this sound like something I've said before? Oh wait.)

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In her endnote to Sita’s Ascent, storyteller and performer Vayu Naidu explains that one of her aims in writing the novella was to explore the ‘function of memory as a metaphor for ‘re-membering’ a dismembered story because it is told to us infrequently and in parts’.

As anyone growing up with stories from the epics knows, every telling is a new one – not just a remembering and a reclaiming, but a re-visioning. In Sita’s Ascent memory is the primary hallucinogen, unlocking the past in a dream-like manner.

The story begins with the pregnant Sita being delivered to Valmiki’s ashram by Lakshmana. She thinks she’s on a visit, and though Lakshmana knows better, he chooses silence. In the shock of abandonment, Sita begins to fail until Valmiki pulls her out. Sita begins to live in the ashram and Lava and Kusa are born and grow up, the older people pass on the baton of remembering as if they were runners in a relay race.

Naidu has clearly immersed herself not just in stories from the Ramayana but also in the critical texts about the epic, and in ways of writing about epics. It is easy to see in the structure of the book – each chapter given over to one character – the form of the older Yuganta by Iravati Karve. In the sourcing of stories, Naidu cites Paula Richman’s Many Ramayanas, especially Velcheru Narayana Rao’s essay on the Telugu songs about the Ramayana sung by women in Andhra Pradesh. Naidu writes as one who is fully aware of the multiplicity of narratives and perspectives.

And yet, oddly, the multiplicity of perspectives does not always produce a variety of psychological responses in the narrators. Sita’s love, her well-managed anger and infinite capacity to endure comes across less as steadfastness and more as passive acquiescence. Surpanakka’s anger is entirely avoided because what she recounts is Sita’s swayamvara and Ravana’s failure at it. In Naidu’s narrative, she is Ravana’s sister first and always; never the desirable and desiring woman punished for her outspokenness. If there is some kind of push-back, it comes from Urmila, who rebels by disguising herself and escaping from the palace to live with Sita in the ashram.

The question I find myself asking is, can a retelling of the Ramayana in the 21^st century entirely ignore feminist critiques of the epic? There are, after all, demonstrable ways to write against the grain of the central and indisputably patriarchal narrative: just to take the example of one writer, Volga’s story ‘Liberated’ (‘Vimukta’ in Telugu) reinterprets Urmila’s years of supposed sleep as one intense, solitary meditation out of which she emerges liberated and strong; in another story, ‘Reunion’ (‘Samagamam’ in Telugu) Surpanakha and Sita meet in the forest and find deep empathy for each other.

Given how vividly these characters recall the past, it is surprising how little they examine the reasons for the actions of the people involved. The one exception is Lakshmana. In an incident drawn from the Velcheru Narayana Rao essay, Naidu has Lakshmana fall into an ecstasy of laughter when he sees the goddess Nidra approach him in court. As he laughs, Lakshmana watches and calibrates everyone’s reaction to him – each person imagines Lakshmana is laughing at him and begins to examine his conscience.

Not just this incident, but the guilt Lakshmana feels in having precipitated the entire war by attacking Surpanakka, his self-pitying and horrific justifications – ‘I had been provoked’ – then and later, when he draws the lakshman rekha around Sita – ‘I had never seen her eyes flash fire and her mouth utter such filth. Did she say that to provoke me? – are chilling, but give us psychological depth where we have grown used to archetypes.

A part of the problem lies in the choice of medium. I can see how the impressionistic narrative structure would work as performance and storytelling. As a novella, though, the tone is sometimes disconcertingly casual and colloquial, sometimes mystical and mostly slanted towards the now-tired tropes of the bhakti tradition.

Which is why the actual event of Sita’s ‘ascent’, her final refusal to undergo another test of chastity/purity/loyalty is elided over entirely in this book: when Lava and Kusa finish recounting the Ramayana to the man they do not yet know is their father, Naidu considers the story resolved – ‘The leaves shivered and there was a stream of light where she stood. There was no pain or need for reconciliation. Sita had ascended time cycles.’

If that isn’t a cop-out I don’t know what is.

In another recent retelling of another epic, Amruta Patil’s Adi Parva: Churning of the Ocean, the narrator is the river goddess Ganga who is surrounded by a sceptical, disruptive, bawdy audience. To them she says early in the narrative: ‘Much is made of unflagging optimism – that blind, bouncy state which understands neither cause nor effect.’

I wish any one of the narrators in Naidu’s book had a grain of this kind of self-awareness. It would have raised the book from a tolerable and not unreadable tale to one worth returning to, as any epic worth its salt should be.

Delhi University takes Ramanujan's essay on the Ramayana off their syllabus

I'm a day or two late with this  (but hey - the essay is off the syllabus forever, so what's the rush?) but news is that Delhi University has taken Ramanujan's essay, 'Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation' off its syllabus.

Manan Ahmed has a lovely post about his first encounter with the text of Ramanujan's essay and concludes thus:

So, when I hear that the Delhi University has removed the essay from History syllabi, I feel the urge to grab my print copy, a chair, walk to the busiest intersection on campus, stand on the chair and start reading out loud his essay. Every word. Make them listen. They will be transformed. 

I empathise with the 'shout it from the rooftops' impulse, but tend towards Nilanjana Roy's view that it's easy enough to disseminate the essay - see how we've all linked to it? - but what is to be done about academic institutions, which ought to encourage and indeed, demand debate and discussion and the free exchange of ideas, but instead are always too ready to play the camel just before the last straw is placed upon its back*.

Note: I could wish that newspapers wouldn't call the essay 'controversial', even if they somewhat question the use of the word by putting it in scare quotes. It's many things - erudite, eloquent, clever - but it's not in the least controversial.

What is controversial is the wingnuts' demand that it be taken off the syllabus, and the Academic Council's slightly tubelit decision to comply.
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* Um. What she said is:


"The damage might seem limited: what prevents a handful of history students from finding Ramanujan’s essay on their own, reading it and discussing it if they so choose? But the real damage is caused by the act of censorship, by the precedent the University sets when it says: this idea is dangerous, or controversial, or too explosive to be discussed. You expect academics and scholars not just to defend free speech, but to defend the work of a man who was probably one of the greatest writers and thinkers in contemporary Indian literature. You also expect them to stand up for the tradition that insists there were always many Ramayanas—that the oversimplified, often chauvinistic version of the epic that the right-wing has often put forward is not, by any means, the only one."

Two Minutes Older: Rama on the Sea Shore

Can't believe I forgot to post today's column! Apologies!

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I have to confess I’m a Rama sceptic. I prefer the Mahabharata to the Ramayana. I say this with head slightly hung, because there’s no real basis for this prejudice. I haven’t read anything except Rajaji’s version for children, Chinmayananda’s Bala Ramayana, a few Amar Chitra Kathas and stories my grandmother told me when I was a child. I’ve never attended Ramkathas or Rama Navami lectures. Despite having read A.K.Ramajujan’s illuminating essay, Three Hundred Ramayanas, I have never been tempted to re-read the epic.

All of this is why I find myself still amazed that for months now I have been listening to a new version of the Ramayana. Shanta Rameshwar Rao is an educator and a writer of children’s stories. One day, she told me she’d written a version of the story for children and wanted to test drive it with a few interested people. Since I was avoiding telling my son any Rama stories, I was conscious of the gap in his education – which included addressing the less-than-perfect aspects of Rama and the epic itself. I thought this was a good opportunity to introduce him to the story while also passing the buck to someone more competent.

Since Shantamma began reading her version last December, the audience has changed, grown or been reduced, but my son and I have been steadfast listeners. Last Saturday, we reached the point in the story when Rama prepares for war. Hanuman has returned from Lanka, confirming that he’s met Sita and given her the ring. But the chapter begins in a very unwarlike way: Sugreeva is lying drunk and dreaming in his room and Lakshmana has to wake him and remind him of his promise to help Rama.

The most interesting moments in this chapter, though, describe Rama at the sea shore. Standing there, facing the sea, Rama is conscious of his godhead. He imagines he can wave his hand and command the sea to retreat so that his passage to Lanka is clear. He is all arrogance at first and rage afterwards when he realises that the sea will not obey. Sugreeva tells him he needs to pray and Rama performs penances. Still the sea is indifferent. Furious, Rama shoots into the sea the powerful arrows Vishwamitra once gave him.

The sea boils and throws up agonised and dying sea monsters – rare, wonderful creatures, described in loving detail. They come up, airing their strange eyes and tentacles and expire on the waves. It is Sugreeva, drunk and unkingly at the beginning of the chapter, who tells Rama that the sea cannot be commanded, that it is a force of nature, an entity without which we cannot survive and that all life forms are connected. He suggests that Rama, in all humility ask Samudra for help in crossing his domain.

This a penitent Rama does and in the most magnificent part of the chapter, Samudra rises from his underwater throne to greet Rama. He is an awe-inspiring figure, decked out in pearls and corals. Rama apologises for the destruction he has caused and Samudra blesses him and agrees to help him cross into Lanka.

Yes, this is a 21^st century, environmentally conscious version, but it’s not preachy and is unafraid of complexity. Rama’s behaviour is not only shown to be inexcusable, it is given to Sugreeva – the flawed, weak king he supported against Vali – to point out his failings to him as they stand on the seashore. We question Rama’s godliness, even his awareness of it, and what it means to be godly when it shows itself in erratic and destructive actions.

Uniquely, Shantamma takes us underwater, to briefly see the world above from a different perspective. It is a moving but clever section that makes one wonder at the actions of the entire human race.

Listening to her read, I understood the attraction of Ramkathas and the great pleasure there is in listening to stories told or read aloud, in simple language that masks great depth and interpretative power. I now appreciate the skills of the narrator who can assess the mood of her audience and interpolate her own narration with witty asides, so that one is involved and interested to the end.


(An edited version of this in Zeitgeist, the Saturday edition of The New Indian Express.)