When the epics shift from heroic to matter-of-fact

Belonging to a generation which grew up without idiot box and internet, I had to make the best of books that came my way. My favourite pastime is to spin stories from the perspectives of minor characters who flit in and out of great tales without saying much. I mean, imagine Mrs Hudson, the long suffering landlady, sharing her take on her eccentric lodger Sherlock Holmes. 

Urmila remains my hot favourite. This is what I hear in her silence. “I am Urmila. You may not recognize me at once, though I am very much there in the Ramayana. Overlooked. Passed over. Forgotten. That is the story of my life. Who remembers that I too am Janaki, daughter of King Janak, Maithili, princess of Mithila city, Vaidehi, treasure of the Videha kingdom?

It was Sita, Sita, Sita, all the way! She was the light of father’s eyes, even though he found her in a furrow. I, his birth daughter, born soon after ‘Sita’s sister’! One step behind, that’s where I was.  She in the sun, I in the shadow.

Trained in archery as a royal princess should be, in the blink of an eye I could topple any target - motionless or moving.  No one gave my skills a second thought. However, when Sita lifted an old box holding a crumbling bow, she became the stuff of ballads. Worm-eaten box became mammoth in size, and worthless bow became massive in weight. I honestly think father Janak believed this myth. Why else would he announce a bride-winning competition, where only the man who could string that mouldy old bow could marry his precious daughter?

At last! Sita leaves home! I get some space to myself. That’s what I thought. But before I knew it, Sita and I were married to brothers. She to the firstborn, Ram, Prince of Ayodhya, I to his younger brother. Ram married Sita, not because he strung up that bow but because, as soon as he stepped into our court, he fell in love with her at first sight. (At least, that’s what Tamil poet Kamban tells us). Lakshman married me, because he was thrilled to marry his brother’s, wife’s, sister! Not that I had much to complain about in Ayodhya back then. Though my husband’s mother Queen Sumitra did remark, “I never thought my daughter-in-law  would compete with me in insignificance!”

Wedged between prime queen and royal favourite,  she was conditioned to being sidelined.

My husband? All his time was spent in hanging around brother. Still, it was a bolt from the blue when, without a single word or second thought, Lakshman decided to follow his brother, and his wife (yes, my own sister Sita!) to serve them during their 14 years of forest exile. No question of my joining the trio. Lakshman said, “Who will take care of the old folks at home? You!”

It happened so suddenly. Looking  into the mirror Sita was lost in daydreams. Nothing new. Right from our childhood I was used to seeing  Sita in front of the mirror, trying out new ways of doing her face and hair. But on that day, I grant you, she had cause. She was trying on jewel after jewel, picking up and discarding garments, trying to decide what she would wear the very next morning, at the magnificent ceremony where her husband would be installed as the Crown Prince of Ayodhya. Bang in the middle of this euphoric moment, Ram walks in, to say quite nonchalantly, “Oh, by the way, the ceremony is cancelled, I have been exiled to the forest for 14 years. I’m leaving right away. You may wait for me.”

Who knew that shy, timid, mild-mannered, sweet-tempered Sita could raise such a storm of protest?  She accused Ram of breaking his marriage vows and deserting her. “How can you be so cruel, harsh, brutal?” she said. “I will die if you leave me behind! It is the wife’s duty to follow her husband always, it’s written in the shastras you know! I will come!”

But she didn’t say, “What about Lakshman deserting his wife? What about my sister’s duty to follow her husband? What about taking Urmila with us?”

Well,  I’m stuck here in this ghostly palace filled with senior citizens, pounding herbs for my husband’s diabetic mother, and compounding a tonic for my sister’s arthritic mother-in-law.  

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist