Welcome friend! I love translated books and this is my first time reading a book translated from Telugu, a language widely used in Southern India. The epic of the Ramayana is well known throughout India and it is wonderful to read an interpretation from another part of my country. The Liberation of Sita is considered feminist literature and I loved it for so many reasons.
Volga | Goodreads
Valmiki’s Ramayana is the story of Rama’s exile and return to Ayodhya, a triumphant king who will always do right by his subjects.
In Volga’s retelling, it is Sita who, after being abandoned by Purushottam Rama, embarks on an arduous journey to self-realization. Along the way, she meets extraordinary women who have broken free from all that held them back: Husbands, sons and their notions of desire, beauty and chastity. The minor women characters of the epic as we know it – Surpanakha, Renuka, Urmila and Ahalya – steer Sita towards an unexpected resolution. Meanwhile, Rama too must reconsider and weigh out his roles as the king of Ayodhya and as a man deeply in love with his wife.
A powerful subversion of India’s most popular tale of morality, choice and sacrifice, The Liberation of Sita opens up new spaces within the old discourse, enabling women to review their lives and experiences afresh. This is Volga at her feminist best.
The Liberation of Sita – Review
I read The Forest of Enchantments by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni twice in 2023. It is a love story, one filled with perils, injustices and suffering, giving centre stage to one of the most famous goddesses in hinduism: Lakshmi, reincarnated as Sita. I did not realize until I read The Liberation of Sita, a short story collection about some prominent women characters in the epic how isolated Sita was through the Ramayana.
Volga’s stories fill in the gaps in The Forest of Enchantments and solidify not just Sita but also Ram as protagonists. Through four stories, touching on different characters – Surpanakha, Renuka, Urmila and Ahalya – Volga redefines the role these women played in the epic as well as how they influenced Sita and helped her be who she is. I loved that Sita met them at various points in her life, not always understanding their worlds to her until much later.
The First Story: The Reunion
In Ramayana, Surpanakha is portrayed as the reason Ravana steals Sita. Surpanakha wants to marry Ram and when Ram does not like these advances, Surpanakha is punished by having her nose and ears chopped off. Sita always looks back at this moment as something she wishes she had intervened in. In Volga’s first story, The Reunion, Sita and Surpanakha meet again many years after the war. Sita lives in Valmiki’s ashram now with her two sons. Surpanakha has set up a beautiful garden and home in the forest. The two reconnect and Sita learns how Surpanakha, who adored beauty, found peace after the horrific incident.
“Don’t look at how I am today and imagine that all this happened easily, Sita. I have become tough by facing upto the challenges life threw at me. I have been able to find happiness in trying to understand the very meaning of beauty. ”
The Second Story: Music of the Earth
The story of Ahlaya is well known outside of the Ramayana. She was lured to believe that lord Indra was her husband and later turned to stone for this. In The Forest of Enchantments, Sita meets Ahalya during her exile. In that book, Ahalya had taken a vow of silence and was still living with her husband. In Volga’s story, Ahlaya takes Sita under her wing. Ahlaya explains how there is no truth and untruth and when we take ownership of what happens to us and believe that there is an atonement of our mistakes, we are able to break the bonds of people’s judgements and pity. Ahalya’s biggest gift to Sita was to show her the power of self-authority.
The Third Story: The Sand Pot
To win Sita’s hand, Ram had to string Shiva’s bow that had been given to Janak by the sage, Parasurama. When Ram breaks the bow, an angry Parasurama appears and demands to know who did this. I did not know much about Parasurama, even less about his mother, Renuka. This was my first time reading about her. During her exile, Sita meets Renuka. She is a sculptor, an art form that has been denied to women. Sita and Renuka had an interesting discussion about the institution of marriage. In those early civilizations, the concept of having kids without marriage was frowned upon. Renuke prepared Sita for questions that came many years later from her children.
The Fourth Story: The Liberated
Urmila is Sita’s sister and Lakshmana’s wife. In The Forest of Enchantments, she fell under a long sleep while Ram, Lakshmana and Sita were on their exile. Her sleep allowed Lakshmana to be awake and vigilant in their time away. In Volga’s version, Urmila uses this time to deal with her grief. She was abandoned by her husband for his brother. She teaches Sita what she learned in her meditation, the reason behind her fury for being abandoned and how she was experiencing it in her body. She shares the joys of knowing herself and her mind and encourages Sita to belong to herself.
Interlude
All these stories are wisdom shared by women who have suffered and endured. Each of them reminds Sita to look within herself. To forget about the bonds that society prioritizes for a woman – wifehood, motherhood and daughterhood. As Surpanakha says in the first story and Renuka and Ahlaya reiterate in their own words in later stories, “the meaning of success for a woman does not lie in her relationship with a man.” She leans on these women she has met, who have been kind enough to share their life wisdom with her, to persevere and at the same time, carve out a path that works for her. Each of them had to look deep within themselves, get to know themselves, their mind, feelings and values, to endure the things that happened in their lives.
True feminism is not about bashing on the patriarchy and being mad at it. It is about taking ownership for our actions, looking within us and learning from each other. It is about lifting each other up as women, even if the other woman does not understand the experience we are sharing just yet. True feminism is about liberation and moving forward. It is feeling the anger and attaining peace with it, doing what works for us, not what others want for us. Sometimes, they may end up being the same thing and that’s ok. But when they are not the same, true feminism is having the courage to do what works with our values. To truly be who we are. Unapologetically.
The Fifth Story: The Shackled
I have never read the perspective of Ram on Sita and this is epic. Was he truly so heartless or was something else driving all his actions? Volga’s last story brings it all together. Ram talks about his destiny, the missions which he was born to fulfil and the ways in which he is tormented by his actions. He is weak in regards to Sita and he knows that. He also knows the role that Sita has to play for him to be successful. She pays a huge price for it while his suffering is hidden away behind palace walls. They all have to live with their choices and their values. That is the way of life.
The Liberation of Sita is a short and impactful book to expand one’s understanding on the Ramayana. I enjoyed it! Add it to your Goodreads for a feminist look at the epic.
Are you familiar with Hindu mythology? Let me know in the comments! 🙂
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