The country is experiencing lock-down in the awake of covid-19. Ongoing television shows have stopped as production a
ctivity has come to halt. So national television is telecasting the legendary epic Ramayana.
The epic story too acting as a palliation to people’s anxiety in the lock-down. The epic filled with moral quotient and expounds the idealistic way of leading life. My family too watching it with much avidity.
You may get both surprise and antagonize but I dislike this time revered epic. I am not an atheist. I too admire the lessons of brother-hood, the aplomb in Lord Ram’s character. Laxman’s loyalty, Bharat’s indisputable love and respect for their elder brother, a law abided and principled king Dasharatha, ardent and earnest disciple Hanuman and many characters that holds great virtues of life.
I still detest the story. The reason behind my detest is Sita’s never ending misery throughout the epic. Valmiki the writer has presented Sita a submissive woman who can’t spell a word without consent of her husband. And virtually she has no role in this epic beside standing by her husband being comply to him.
And Indian tradition regarded Sita as an exemplary daughter and paragon law abided wife, even every Indian family wants a Sita as embodiment of their daughter-in-law, no matter their sons follow the attribute of Lord Rama or not.
And my loath has not developed now. It has advanced Long back when I was a child. Those days television was not prevalent. We used to have puppet shows in the community and I used to watch them eagerly. And the climax when Sita sacrifices herself into the rift of earth, this impacted my innocence deeply and I used to sob literally. whenever I asked my grandmother about this persecution, she use pacify me by saying A woman has to sacrifice and my retort was always treated as valueless. Probably I was between 7 to 8 years old then but a lot of things was rankling in me and I just don’t want to take the seminal blindly. I too argue ardently on ‘’Agni-Parikhya’’ that Sita has asked to take to prove herself sanctimonious. In turn an answer I get chide and ordered to invest my mind in by-heart tables and learning imperceptible lessons of grammar. My retort had ever silenced. This too generated a sense of anger in me against its writer. I used to think and rethink why he has portrait Sita’s character to be so passive and oppressed? Why in this vast epic only females are subjected to shed tears be it Sita, Urmila, Ahalya, Mondadori or Sarama (Vibhishana’s wife) and they have no means to protest. Why the burden of family’s respect and dignity is only women’s concern? These question disquiets me since then.
The motive of these puppet shows, operas are to keep alive this epic in people’s mind. It’s a way to incorporate the com-pliancy character and all feminine virtues of Sita into every girl child, how they supposed to behave both in parents and at their in-law’s house.
This loath entrenched in my infantile mind and I could never release this out of my system. The greatest work of history of ancient India has never been an inspiration for me rather it stunts me like a syndrome. And since then I don’t watch Ramayana.
I know anyone who ever reading this either mocking or rising defiance in their adrenaline to my thoughts. Every one sneers. says I thinks out of the way. But I think in this way.