The story Ramayana* is his entire life journey starting from his innocent youth, his mastery over skills in winning Sita, his role as dutiful and obedient son to adhere to his father’s words while aware of the flagitious intensions of his step mother. He gives up all the worldly richness and sets away to spend 14 years in jungle. Sita being his wife accompanies him followed by Laxman, Ram’s younger brother.

They spend quite an adventurous and romantic** life in the forest. Sita finds her world in her husband Ram and experiences an unspelled love for him. Everything works fine when one day, Sita gets abducted by Ravana while Ram is away to fulfill one of her impossible wishes. Ram does everything possible to get back his love. He gathers a huge army, builds a bridge across an ocean, does all that he could. Finally, he succeeds to kill Ravana and gets her back. With this they complete 14 years of stay in jungle and they return to their kingdom after which they should have lived happily ever after.

But the story takes turmoil instead, Ram’s story ends here and Sita’s story begins. This happens when a subject of Ram’s kingdom whispers “how could Ram trust Sita, who been with Ravana for so long”. Ram wants a test now, Agni-Pareeksha – A test to check purity of a woman, by entering into fire. Exactly this part of the story becomes hard to digest. This is where so many questions arise and is left unanswered.

• Did it serve right for a person like Ram ‘the so called God’ to come down to such a cruel act?
• Is he setting example for all men or rather his followers to commit such an act?
• Or is he doing right by following well set example from his predecessors?
• Ram must have done justice to his kingdom? But why not to his wife? Had he really loved her he wouldn’t have banished her at such a crucial moment. Continue reading “Sitayana – Sita’s Epic” →