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Oppiliappan List Archive: Message 00120 Mar 2007

 
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Dear friends,

In this posting, the focus will be on the utter
Despair suffered by Sita-pirAtti in the
"sundara-kAndam". This particular theme cannot really
be studied without also examining at the same time,
rather closely, the dark side of the human mind -- 
the psychology of suicide.

While despair led Sri Rama to contemplate -- and very
nearly actually perpetrate -- mindless violence and
terror on the world at large (as discussed in the
previous post), Sita's despair drove her in the
opposite direction -- i.e. inflicting mindless
violence on herself to the very extreme end by  taking
out her life herself. 

                 *************

Chapter 28 of the 'sundara-kaanda' is a stunningly
poignant one in the whole of the canto. It depicts the
moving scene where Sita soliloquizes on her sorry
plight, her tragic fate in life, her utter sense of
helplessness, her terminal weariness in life and the
desire to end her misery once and for all. 

Ravana meets her in the Asokavana and in spite of his
best efforts to make her yield to his advances, is
rebuffed outright by Sita. Utterly enraged with her
rejection, the King of Lanka gives her a 2-month
reprieve in which to change her mind. "After that, O
Mythili" he tells her menacingly, "if you are not
mine, surely you will be none else's spouse either.
You shall certainly die here in Lanka".

Later, after Ravana leaves, and her 'rAkshasi'
prison-guards fall off to sleep at their stations, and
she is left all alone in the deathly desolation of the
Asokavana, it is then in the eerie stillness of the
night that Sita's heart finally cracks and sorrow
gushes out in a torrent. She laments. And the
following words come forth out of her like a grim mist
of hot and abundant tears that drops out of the
morning sky:

mOghA hi dharmascharitO mayAyAm
tathiaka-patneetvamidam nirartham
 yA tvAm na pashyAmi krushA vivarNA heenA tvayA
sangamanE nirAshA

"Separated from you, O Rama, reduced to bones, with no
blood in this royal body of mine, and having no
further hope of ever meeting you, I who am your chaste
wife, look at the desperate situation I'm in now! Of
what use now is our love for each other? The vow of
fidelity I observed, and the rule of monogamy that you
have been observing, O Rama, have both become really
meaningless and vain."

                 ************

Dukham bathEdam mama dukhitAyA mAsow
chirAyAdhi-gamishyathO dhvOw
Baddhasya vadhyasya tathA nishAthE rAjAparAdhAdiva
taskarasya

"Just as the waiting prisoner on death-row, before the
fateful day of his execution arrives, feels the hours
of the previous night drag too long and agonizingly,
so will it be unbearable to me too, this period of 2
months given as reprieve by Ravana to me! How shall I
survive these days? And why?"

             ******************

Ananya-devatmiyam kshamA cha bhoomow cha shayyA
niyamascha dharmE
pativratAtvam viphalam mamEdam krutam krutagnOshviva
mAnushANAm 

"Just as a good deed done unto an ungrateful man
proves to be of no use at all, so too does my vow of
chastity -- that which made me look upon you, O Rama,
as my God, that which made me willingly go to sleep on
the hard and bare floor in my present state of
imprisonment here and that which has kept me till now
on the path of duty as a chaste wife to you --- that
vow, O Rama, has now proved futile."

                  ************

Sa jIvitam kshipramaham tyajEyam vishENa shastrEna
shitEna vaapi
Vishasya dAtA na hi mEsti kaschit shastrasya vA
vEshmani rAkshasasya

"I really ought to have have ended my life long ago! I
should have hastened my end with a draft of poison or
plunged some sharp instrument into my breast as soon
as I was brought into Lanka. Why did I wait this long
in the hope that I might again set my eyes upon you, O
Rama! In this city of violent and heartless rakshasAs,
alas, what cruel irony, there was none however to
bring me either poison or sword that I could have used
upon myself."

                  **************

naivAsti dOsham mama noonamatra
vadhyA-hamasyA-priya-darshanasya
bhAvam na chAsyA-hamanu-pradAtumalam- dvijO
mantramivAdvijAya

"So I shall commit suicide this very instant. It is
not at all sinful for one like me to take my life.
Just as a noble person refuses to impart the Vedas to
one who is not a "twice-born", I am not going to
submit myself to the unworthy intentions of this
Ravana who has lost his senses over me."

                *****************

Bitter and tragic are Sita's words indeed. When one
reads Valmiki's account of this scene in the
"sundara-kaandam" one can't help shedding tears and
suppressing a lump that rises up in our throats.

Sita then continues:

?Hard must be my heart that preyed upon by misery and
though abandoned by hope, it still continues to beat
and endures when it ought to have shattered to pieces
already.?

?If I am not destined to look upon you ever again,
Rama, and if I must fade away without hope, disfigured
in body and spirit and utterly dejected, what good has
my unwearied practice of dharma done to me, or the
steadfast devotion of my soul to my husband? 

"Ah woe to me! I?ll perish in this woe-begone plight,
but you O Rama, at the end of the 14th year of exile
that shall soon arrive, having obeyed the paternal and
royal command to the letter, and with a mind
disburdened and self-complacent, O Rama, you will
surely return triumphantly to Ayodhya, take new wives
for yourself, bedeck them with rich jewels and live
with them happy and free from care... won't you?" 

"My heart surrendered to you while yet a little girl
from Mithila and dwelling in you all these years in
perfect joy and contentment -- tell me, what hardship,
miseries and indignities have I indeed not suffered
for your sake? And yet, alas, eveything has gone in
vain, and I must die forlorn and unwept. 

"Why should I drag this wretched existence anymore? I
can and shall end it now??

                 **************

The "sundara-kaandam" then narrates how Sita resolved
then and there to end her life -- under the
'sisumshpa" tree in the groves of the Asokavana....
using her long beautiful tresses -- coiling them
around her neck like a hangman's sephulcral noose....

                *************

What was the state of Sita's mind in those dark
moments of that fateful night in Lanka? What drove her
to suicide? When a man and woman are separated from
each other as Rama and Sita were, what happens to
their inner beings that it simply loses all sense of
purpose and meaning in life? Why? Can a man and woman
in this mortal world love each other ever so intensely
and truly as Rama and Sita did? Isn't the
sundara-kaandam truly a great love-story? What indeed
is the true nature of "pati-vratatvam", the vow of
conjugal fidelity? Is it really such a great human
ideal as the "sundara-kaanda" portrays it to be?..... 

Such indeed are the questions that naturally arise in
our minds after reading the great and tragic soliloquy
of Sita-pirAtti in the sundara-kaandam".

IN the next posting we will discuss those questions in
greater detail.

Regards,
daasan,

Sudarshan MK



Warm Regards,
Sudarshan

" A life is perhaps worth nothing; but nothing certainly is worth as much as 
life". 
(Andre Malraux)


                
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