A Good Woman

On the cover of In Search Of Sita: Revisiting Mythologies ,Raja Ravi Verma’s Sita sits on a rock,abducted and alone but not without spirit. It is that undying spirit of love,loyalty,duty and strength that writers Namita Gokhale and Malashri Lal wanted to pay homage to in their latest collaboration together. “The idea of the book came to me when I was in Sri Lanka,driving to Peradiniya from Kandy. As we drove past the botanical gardens,as unreal as it sounds,I saw an apparition of Sita,bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Raja Ravi Verma print,” says Gokhale who then decided to get in touch with her friend and professor Dr Malashri Lal,who she had worked with before. “I’ve always resisted being branded as a feminist,I think all human beings are equal. But there was something about the whole pathos of Sita and her life that struck me as a subject that needed more interpretation,” says Gokhale.

In Search of Sita : Revisiting Mythologies (Yatra/Penguin,Rs 399) is a collection of essays,poems,dialogues and traditional Indian prints of the Ramayana and of Sita. “The book does not follow any academic discipline. Sita belongs to everybody and the contributors have interpreted this elusive figure in their own way,” says Gokhale who feels that Sita brings out a sense of collective wounding across women in India. Among the long list of contributors are Lord Meghnad Desai whose essay Sita and Some Other Women from the Epics states that Sita has always been viewed as the Ideal Wife,but is not viewed as the Ideal Consort or Parent; Mumbai-based mythologist Devdutt Pattnaik’s Sita as Gauri ,or Kali writes about how Sita is both Gauri,the clothed goddess as well as Kali,the destroyer. Among the interviews and dialogues is one with the American animator Nina Paley who found herself relating to Sita’s plight in the Ramayana as she watched her own marriage end. Paley went ahead to make her own animated feature on the Ramayana,called Sita Sings the Blues ,mixing her drawings and 1920s blues singer Anne Henshaw’s magical voice to bring out Sita’s pain. While Letters from the Palace by Kumudini and Amit Chaudhuri’s An Infatuation (From the Ramyana) are pieces to look forward to,one of the highlights of the book is Aman Nath’s creative interpretation of Sita’s life through the Victorian Indian prints from his private collection. The Raja Ravi Verma print on the cover too,is from his collection. “The passion and reverence with which Varma depicted his iconic mythological and religious figurines created a new,composite archetype of Indian womanhood for the masses,” says Nath.