Araja: When a Girl Is Raped

Women’s safety is a major issue across the world today. India has become notorious as one of the most unsafe places for women. Our print and electronic media are filled with news of rape and other forms of violence against woman, at least some of which shake the very conscience of the nation. We wake up every morning to hear reports of very young children being subjected to sexual atrocities. In such times, this story of a young girl raped brutally and destroyed by a power-intoxicated man and the consequences of that dastardly act that ancient India tells us can perhaps function as a warning to all of us.

The story is of Araja.

Araja could be her name. It could also be a description of what, or how old, she was. The word arajaa means one without impurity – from the word rajas, meaning impurity. Rajas could also mean many other things, including a woman’s monthly period, which would make the word Araja mean a girl who has not yet reached puberty. A prepubescent girl.

She was the older daughter of Shukracharya, the elder sister of Devayani famous in stories that relate her to Brihaspati’s son Kacha, to the asura emperor Vrishaparva’s daughter Sharmishtha and to Emperor Yayati. When the story happened, Devayani could have been just a child, or maybe she was not yet born.

On that day young Araja was all alone in the forest close to her father’s ashram. The spring had touched the forest a couple of weeks ago and its magic had transformed every tree. The wild mango trees seemed to be dancing in the wind that was pregnant with the fragrance of champaka flowers. Both the bakula and karnikara trees filled the not very dence forest with their intoxicating scents.

Araja loved the palasha groves and bamboo thickets where she sometimes spent hours. On the bank of the small stream that flowed singing a song that only the birds and wild animals understood, there were several thickets of ketaki bushes, their stems full of thorns, the trees avoided by all because of the snakes that abounded in the thickets when the divine fragrance that emanated from their golden leaves could be smelt half a mile away and drew people irresistibly to them. Here and there stood a bilva and peepal from which it was Araja’s proud job to collect leaves for the sacred rituals her father seemed to be always practicing. A young peacock followed the adolescent girl wherever she went, every now and then pausing in its walk, raising its head high and sending its long call to the heart of the forest – the peacock lived in the ashram, along with several deer and numerous other animals.

Young Araja was lost in the sweetness of the call of a cuckoo perched on a jambu tree when she was suddenly awakened by the awareness of someone close to her – a stranger.

The man was tall and handsome, powerfully built, very obviously a royal personage if not a king. His eyes were on her – and she realized, less on her face and eyes and more on her hips that had recently started spreading out under her clothes, her naked thin waist and on her chest that had just started budding. Araja pulled her clothes more tightly to her, which only seemed to interest the man more – a smile suddenly started spreading across his face.

He asked her who she was and why she was wandering alone in the forest.When she told him she was the daughter of Shukracharya, the place was safe because it is not too far from her father’s ashram, and she was collecting sacred leaves and flowers for his worship, his eyes glowed. With his smile broadening further, he told her Shukra was his royal priest. “I give him profuse dakshina and it is on that dakshina that the acharya lives.”

Araja stared at him, not liking his tone. She did not like anyone slighting her father. Her father was no ordinary priest – he was the chief priest of the asuras and even the gods feared him. As for the dakshina, her father’s powers were such that if he wanted he could command the god of wealth himself to give him as much of it as he wanted.

“I am King Dandaka, youngest son of Emperor Ikshwaku, grandson of Manu, great grandson of the first king on earth, Vivaswan, and all that is in this vast land south of the Vindhyas belongs to me. And that includes all the people who live here too.” He paused for a moment and added with a smile, “So, little girl, you are standing on my land this very moment and you belong to me too!”

Araja did not say anything. She did not feel like talking to such an arrogant man. She had met many kings in the past, they came to her father’s ashram every now and then, in their powerful chariots, but they were always humble, particularly around the ashram and before her father. They invariably stopped the chariot some distance away and alighting, came walking, usually barefoot, to her father, Most of them dared not even sit in his presence even when he insisted and almost all of them touched her father’s feet with their crowned heads, calling him their guru.

“You are very beautiful,” said King Danda. “My royal apartments are full of pretty women but I do not think anyone of them has the beauty you have – at least not as much as you would soon have, once your body blossoms fully. You are only a bud now, but I love buds more than flowers.”

The king stood appraising her with his eyes.

“I love you, pretty girl. Watching you, I am not able to control my desire for you. It is as though if I do not have you, I would explode.How about becoming my queen? I have hundreds of them in my inner apartments. The king has an exclusive right over all that is best within the kingdom. So that is where a precious jewel like you belong.”

The king spread out his arms and invited the confused little girl into them. She stood unmoving and then he started taking steps closer to her.

Araja started shivering in dread. “Don’t you do anything to me, rajan,” she said. “I am your guruputri and like a sister to you.”

His steps only became steadier as he laughed aloud at her words, his mirth spreading them in the wind.

“Let me make you mine,” said Danda. “Now. This very moment! You fill me with such desire.”

“If you need me you must ask my father,” said Araja. “I belong to him, and to anyone he gives me to. If your intentions are good, wait, the ashram is close by, ask him. But if your intentions are not good, remember, my father is the guru of all the asuras and before his awesome power, the world of the devas and asuras and the whole earth trembles. Don’t do anything foolish, I beg you, rajan. Touching me without my father’s permission will destroy you. Just because you are the king of this land, don’t think you can do anything. He can reduce you to ashes in a split second with his ascetic power.”

Her voice rose in the urgency and despair of her speech and became almost a yell. A strange dread that she had never known before possessed her. She wanted to scream and yet no sound came out of her mouth. She wanted to turn around and run, but her limbs would not move. All on a sudden, it was as though it was all a nightmare, she was in a nightmare, the surroundings of the ashram were part of some unspeakable horror she was experiencing in a horrid sleep . How else could something as horrible as this be happening to her – that too so close to her father’s ashram where all her life she had known no fear, where even dreaded animals became peaceful because of the spiritual power of her father, where every tree and bush was her friend?

She fought desperately with her dread and with a tremendous effort of will pulled her body out of the stupefaction in which it was frozen and turned around and ran. It was then that Danda caught her by her hair and pulled her to him. She pushed him away with all her might, but the little girl was no match to the raw male power of the mighty king in his mature age.

Her fight intoxicated him. Fresh energy shot through all his limbs and he held her tightly to him by one hand, still clutching her hair by the other hand.As she pushed at him with all her little strength, he slapped her hard on her cheek, releasing her hair at the same time, the blow sending her to the ground.

The next moment he was on her, pulling her clothes away from her, kissing her lips, kissing all over her face, kissing her shoulders, kissing the buds of her breasts in the frenzy of his lust that had suddenly grown insane. A violent scream that rushed out of her could barely leave her as he, now lying on top of her, smothered it with his left hand, while spreading her legs with his right hand. She tried to clutch her legs together, but he was already between them and thrusting violently.

A blood curdling scream arose from the depths of her being as he held her pressed down to the ground and tore into her, violating her brutally.

The forest stood still. The birds and animals had stopped breathing. The trees no more danced in the wind. Even the nearby stream seemed to have ceased to flow.

Then the peacock raised its head and cried violently. The monkeys perched on trees nearby started screeching. An owl, woken up from his sleep, hooted ominously, his deep voice booming. Form the distance came peals of laughter – hyenas.

And the next moment the whole jungle exploded with a thousand angry, fierce sounds. Elephants trumpeted furiously. The roar of a lion filled the forest. The stream rushed forward with violence in its movements. A hundred sleeping owls suddenly woke up and filled the jungle with their blood curdling hoots. A hundred peacocks raised their head and opening their beaks wide, began to cry without stopping. The vultures perched on a dry tree screeched, and spreading their wings took off into the air, their shadows falling over the king and the young girl. A dark-furred giant bear stood on its back legs, a shocked expression in his eyes, and watched, his mouth open.

The whole forest was shocked and protested in ferocious anger. Everything that was sacred in the jungle was shorn into shreds. Like a violent whirlpool, the jungle was at once restless and still.

The girl kept screaming.

And then King Danda was finished with the tender body of the young girl, his lust satiated for the moment. He let go of it, discarded it, fouled and bloody, like the leftover meat that a lion abandons and walks away because he has had his fill.

The jungle had grown silent again. Not a sound anywhere.

In the middle of that silence, the young girl tried to get up and sit down but failed collapsed on the ground. It was as though her body no more belonged to her. And perhaps it did not – she no more felt any ownership towards it. It was no more her body. It was a body that used to be hers, a body that had belonged to her all her short life until now, but no more. She felt totally alienated from it, wanted it no more, it had become a repulsive thing for her, abhorrent, she wanted to get away from it, discard it right there in the middle of the jungle and walk away, which of course she could not. She did not want to carry it into the sacred ashram that was her home, at least used to be her home. She felt polluted and felt if she entered the ashram she would pollute it too. For she was a disgusting, repulsive thing now, gross and sickening, loathsome.  

It was a group of young disciples of the Acharya who had come there running that found her there, and from the words that she wrenched out of herself learnt what had happened. “King Danda…. King Danda…King Danda… He…He…Me… Me…”

Her eyes were on her blood-soaked clothes that remained stuck to her thighs.

Shukracharya’s body shook violently when he heard the words of his young disciples. His eyes spat fire. He ran to where his young daughter lay, hardly in touch with the world, her lips whimpering words that no one could make out, her eyes unseeing. Her body convulsed every now and then, becoming taught like a bow stringed and pulled, and then, after the convulsion, totally spent, without any energy, more dead than alive.

The only man in the world whom even the mighty gods dreaded stood in helpless fury as he watched his young daughter lying bathed in blood. He had failed. He was supposed to be the protector of the asuras, those men of boundless power who ruled much of the earth, at one time the whole earth, and he had failed to protect his own daughter! Shukra who wielded power beyond imagination, who could bring the dead back to life, who could change young men into old ones and give eternal youth to whom he wanted, who could command the earth and the heavens, storms and rains, at whose command mountains moved and oceans dried up – there was nothing he could do for his own daughter, the little girl whom he loved more dearly than his own life.

Time couldn’t be turned back.

The earth under his feet was scorched by the fire of anger in him. Each teardrop that fell from his eyes became fire as it touched the earth and rose up in flames. He wanted to destroy the whole earth.

Using the years of tapas he had practiced, using his superhuman powers, Shukracharya mastered himself. No, he will not destroy the earth. For the sin of one person, he will not destroy the whole vast earth, the mother of all beings. But he would destroy the king, destroy his land. All that is on that land would perish. It is the law, the eternal law. When a king commits sin, the whole kingdom is destroyed. Just as one part of everything, good and bad, that the subjects do goes to the king, the subjects too pay for the kings sins. The part of the earth of which he is the master too suffers with him and his people for his sins.

King Danda was doomed. His kingdom and all its people were doomed for the sin he had committed. And the very land shall pay the price.

“I, Kavi Ushana, Acharya Shukra, the guru of the asuras, curse you, rajan, on the strength of the life of tapas that I have lived all my life,” said the great ascetic, the maha-yogi, filling his palm with water from his kamandalu, “Know that for the next seven days fierce winds will blow through your entire land. Burning winds shall blow for seven days without relief, raising duststorms across your kingdom. Trees will be uprooted, mountains will split open, rivers will dry up, the earth will crack open, opening up deep ravines everywhere. No tree will remain in its place, not a mountain, not a river, not a lake, nothing. No living being within the kingdom, be it human, animal, bird or whatever, shall be spared. Everything will be choked to death by the wind and the dust it raises. There will be no air to breathe for any living being. The dust storm will blow nonstop for seven days, at the end of which dust will settle on everything. The entire kingdom will be buried in dust for ages, nothing living shall breathe in your kingdom. Nothing will grow – no trees, no bushes, not even grass.  Yours will be the kind of land the earth has not known in the past. For ages it will lie choked by dust. Nothing will walk or crawl upon it. Even birds will dread to fly over it. There will be not a drop of water to drink for anyone, no air to breathe, the earth shall scorch, scorching the dust above it. And when your kingdom comes back after ages, it will be known as the Dandaka forest, where daylight will dread to enter. Filled with monstrous trees and animals, with marshes and creatures of the marsh, man will avoid it by miles.”

And that is how it was. That is what passed.

All over Danda’s vast land, hell fire rose up from the earth. First the grass and plants and then the tress and vines caught fire and burnt to ashes. All the rivers and lakes and ponds began drying up, killing everything in them. The mountains shook and crumbled. Dust rose up from the scorched earth. Fierce dust storms began howling through the kingdom, moving at speeds no one had ever known, a hundred miles an hour, two hundred miles an hour, three hundred miles an hour. People couldn’t see anything because of the dust, couldn’t breathe because all they could breathe in was dust that choked them with every breath. People took shelter inside their homes, but soon the houses crumbled, killing them with it. Birds and beasts and all that crawled on the ground perished as did all life in water.

Seven days of pure hell! An unending eternity of hell!  By the end of which a vast land that was filled with magnificent cities, luxurious homes and rich palaces had been wiped out for ever and ever. The lush vegetation of the kingdom of Danda, its thick forests, farms, gardens, rivers, lakes, were all a thing of the past. All that remained was a kingdom of dust, an endless desert of dust, with no life in it.

The kingdom of Danda no more existed.

A woman raped by the man whose duty it was to protect her, and a kingdom wiped out from the face of the earth.

Centuries passed and slowly life, irrepressible life, began claiming the land back once again. Grass sprouted here and there, then small plants and trees, then insects, birds and beasts… Slowly life came back after long ages and the land began to be occupied again. By rakshasas. And then by a few ascetics here and there who mostly ended up as food for the rakshasas.

This is the Dandakaranya of the Ramayana fame – into which Rama was exiled for fourteen years by his angry stepmother Kaikeyi.

To me here, in this story, Shukracharya is not just the father of Araja and a great ascetic but the very hand of the power that controls the universe and rightly rewards us for our actions, good and bad – call it niyati, call it dharma, call it destiny, call it God.  

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Sita in a Bhojpuri Song

An exquisite Bhojpuri folksong on a Ramayana theme:

Dheere chal, ham haaree, e raghubar.
Ek ta chhutelaa mor naak ke nathiyavaa;
Dosar chhutele mahtaaree e raghuvar.
Dheere chal, ham haaree, e raghubar.
Ek ta chhutelaa mor gare ke hasulia;
Dosar chhutelaa jheen saaree e raghubar.
Dheere chal, ham haaree, e raghubar.
Ek ta chhutelaa nagar ajodhyaa;
Dosar chhutelaa mahtaaree e raghuvar.
Dheere chal, ham haaree, e raghubar.
Ek ta chhutelaa mor god ke god-haraa’
Dosar chhutelaa jheen saaree e raghuvar.

Walk slow, Oh Rama, I’m tired.
For one thing, I have left behind my nose ring
And for another, Mother Kausalya.
Walk slow, Oh Rama, I’m tired.
For one thing, I have left behind the hasuli of my neck
And for another, my thin sari.
Walk slow, Oh Rama, I’m tired.
For one thing, I have left behind the city of Ayodhya
And for another, Mother Kausalya.
Walk slow, Oh Rama, I’m tired.
For one thing, I have left behind my anklet
And for another, my fine sari.

No other woman has touched the Indian psyche as deeply as Sita has, nor is any other woman enthroned there with as much love as she has been. While feelings for her are uniformly the same in men and women, women naturally identify with her more easily and feel her joys and sorrows, her pains and sufferings, longings and disappointments, far more intensely than men do. To them, whether they are women of the past or of the present, from among the poorest of the poor or the richest of the rich, from the most advanced communities or from the most backward, educated or uneducated, young or old, her joys and sorrows, pains and sufferings and longings and disappointments are theirs.

While they thus identify with her and relive her life experiences, quite frequently they also transform to her their personal and collective life experiences. Thus we find women giving words to their feelings and emotions, their woes and afflictions, their sense of wretchedness and loneliness and a million other things that are part of every woman’s life, in songs, paintings and dances all over the land. Quite often these giving and taking get so mixed up, it is difficult to find out what Sita’s feelings are and what the feelings of the woman who sings these songs, paint these paintings and dance these dances are. Perhaps it is not necessary either, because Sita is not a woman who lived several thousand years ago in an India that is dead and gone, but is every woman who was ever born in this land, every woman who ever lived in this land, and every woman who lives here today. Or rather, she is every woman who has ever lived anywhere. Sita is, simply put, everywoman.

One of the most moving, one of the most delicate, beautiful Sita songs that I have ever come across is one in which she speaks of her pain as she leaves Ayodhya with Rama to live in the jungle for fourteen years.

In Valmiki’s Ramayana, Sita on this occasion appears as a very strong woman: strong in every sense of the word. That the crown of yuvaraja has been taken away from her husband does not affect her in the least. In fact, when Rama gives her this news, he is shaking all over, under the force of the fury he has suppressed, his body is covered in perspiration, for such is his disappointment at the crown being snatched away from him. She tells him that going to the jungle and living there has always been her dream, and, in fact, when she was a little girl, astrologers had predicted this. Sita is without any doubt the stronger of the two here when she tells Rama that she shall walk in front of him, crushing the sharp blades of grass and the thorns on his way with her feet and thus making his path smooth for him; when she says that she shall expect nothing from him while they are in the jungle, not even conjugal pleasures – for she assures him she is going to live in the jungle as a brahmacharani, giving up all pleasure of the flesh. No amount of persuasion from Rama asking her to stay back in Ayodhya can persuade her. She tells him she knows where her place is, when he goes to the jungle it is with him in the jungle, and nothing in the world can stop her from going with him. The fears of the jungle, the inconveniences that Rama so eloquently paints before her do not affect her in the least. And when Rama still refuses to allow her to go with him in spite of all she says, she questions his masculinity itself, thus forcing him to take her with him. It is indeed a very strong Sita that we see here.

Yet deep inside, we never miss the feeling that behind all this show of bold strength, there is a woman who is tenderness itself, who is vulnerability itself. We feel that along with this diamond-like Sita that we see, there is also a lotus-like Sita, tender and delicate, whom a passing wind can destroy.

In fact, we do not have to wait long to see her. We see this Sita in her helplessness and confusion at the time of the leave taking, which Valmiki paints with superb poetic skill.

Unable to change Kaikeyi’s mind, a frustrated and furious Dasharatha announces that he will send all his wealth, all the grains stored, his army, his priests, all with Rama to the jungle. Kaikeyi objects to this. When further attempts to change her mind fails, Dasharatha, tired and wailing now, announces that he will follow Rama to the jungle, and all the people of Ayodhya too will go with them, leaving the kingdom for Kaikeyi and Bharata to enjoy alone. It is then that Rama announces this will not do, he has already given up all the royal comforts, he has decided to live on the simple fruits and roots of the jungle, like ascetics, and therefore he has no need for the army and other things Dasharatha has been talking about. He then asks for valkalas, cloths of grass or bark that ascetics wear, to be brought in so that he can wear them to the jungle. Kaikeyi herself goes and brings a bunch of these and Rama picks up and wears a set, followed by Lakshmana. Sita looks at the cloths still left for her wearing and gets a fright, ‘as a deer at the sight of the snare.’ She takes two pieces of cloths made of kusha grass and then becomes completely embarrassed, for she does not know how to put them on. With her eyes full of tears, she asks Rama how the ascetics wear them. In her mortification, her mind ceases to work properly, she does not know what do, and she gets vexed repeatedly. Thoroughly perplexed now, she puts one piece of the valkala around her neck and waits with the other in her hand.

If the strong woman who fights boldly for her right to be with her man as he goes to the jungle is Sita, this helpless, vulnerable woman unaware of all life other than the royal life she has been used to from her birth, the woman who gets easily mortified in embarrassment and whose eyes readily fill with tears, too is Sita.

It is this Sita that awakens the fury of a sage like Vasishtha, fills his eyes with tears and makes him shout at Kaikeyi for her cruelty and tell her that Sita would not go to the jungle, but would, instead, sit on the throne in place of Rama and rule Ayodhya.
And it is this Sita that makes every woman in the palace of Ayodhya weep for her in uncontrollable anguish as she prepares to leave for the jungle with Rama.

A tender, beautiful scene takes place in the midst of all chaos, as Sita gets ready to leave for the jungle. Kausalya comes forward and gathers her in her arms and holds her tightly to herself.

For this wonderful woman of unsurpassed beauty, strong and vulnerable at the same time, adored by all, has an equally wonderful place in the heart of her mother-in-law too.

In the Indian culture, as in most other cultures, a woman leaves her home and her people and goes and becomes a member of her new family when she gets married. Because she comes from another home, has often been used to a different way of living, and because she comes to take the central place in her man’s heart, there are frequently rivalries between her and her mother-in-law. Classical literary works as well as folktales and songs are full of such rivalries.

However, in the Ramayana, we see this rivalry totally absent between Sita and her mother-in-law Kausalya. The folksong also sings of the beautiful relation between these two women, one worshipped wherever Indian culture has reached as the mother of the God-incarnate and the other as his wife.

On her way to the jungle, Sita speaks again and again of how she misses her mother-in-law. She is tired and asks Rama to tarry, to go slow. What has drained her of energy, exhausted her, is not the walk really, for it is not about the distance they have covered she talks about, nor is it about the difficulties on the path. There is no talk about the heights she had to climb, nor about thorns on the way, or stones, or other difficulties. What has really tired her is what she has left behind. And of all that she has left behind, what she misses more than anything else is the love of Kausalya. For, she says she misses the nose ring she has left behind in Ayodhya, she misses her hasuli, the neck ornament she has left behind, she misses her anklet, she misses her thin sari, she misses Ayodhya itself, but each thing she misses reminds her how she misses Kausalya, of whom she speaks again and again.

In a land where women dread their mothers-in-law more than anything else in the world, and perhaps rightly too, this Sita song is a tribute to a mother-in-law who lavished her love on her daughter-in-law.

The song is also eloquent about another side of Sita about which Valmiki does not tell us much: Sita as a young woman brought up in comforts, with such a young woman’s, or perhaps every woman’s, love for the fine things of life, particularly for fine clothes and ornaments. A nose ring, an anklet, a hasuli, a fine sari… True, the love for these things that women show often puzzles men, but the love for such things too is perhaps part of being a woman, and is found universally in women, whether it is a result of cultural conditioning or her natural inheritance. The song also tells us that the powerful Sita, who in spite of her total and complete love for Rama, defies him and leaves him behind to enter the earth and disappear from his life forever, unwilling to accept injustice and humiliation at his hands, is also an ordinary woman, with all her strengths and weaknesses.

Perhaps it is this, more than anything else, that makes Sita ‘everywoman.’

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Rama: A Study in Self-Mastery

[This study is based exclusively on the Valmiki Ramayana. Other tellings of Rama’s story, which frequently differ from Valmiki’s narration, have not been taken into consideration.]

It was the Greek Historian Xenophon, I believe, who said, “A king should not only prove himself better than those he rules, he should cast a spell on them.” That is, cast a spell on them by the excellence of his thought and action, by the totality of his commitment to his vision and mission, and by the quality of his living and being. A close look at Rama’s life shows us that he, a man from a period much earlier than that of Xenophon, fully believed in this. That is one of the reasons why his life gives us so many invaluable lessons even for our age separated from his from a few millennia.

One of the most important lessons Rama’s life gives us is in self-mastery, at which he frequently falters, as all human beings do, but invariably triumphs. To look at how Rama falters again and again and eventually masters himself every time is as fascinating to do as it is rewarding. Rama’s failures and triumphs are invaluable lessons for all human beings, and particularly so for men and women in leadership positions who are expected to lead by example and set role models for others to follow.

The most beautiful example for this could be found in the Ayodhya Kanda of the Ramayana.

On that fateful Pushya morning when he was supposed to be installed as the crown prince of Ayodhya, the first major crisis of his life takes place. The previous evening he had been called twice to his father, King Dasharatha, the first time to be informed that he would be crowned the next day and the next time, to give advice regarding his role as a crown prince of the Ikshwakus, who have been kings for generations and have produced several legendary kings. The first meeting is very formal and takes place in the assembly. The second one is informal and intimate, and takes place in the antahpura [inner palace apartments].

On the day his coronation was supposed to take place, early in the morning Sumantra, the minister, comes and informs him that he is wanted at Queen Kaikeyi’s palace, where the king is waiting for him along with the queen. Rama believes it is with regard to something in connection with the coronation – perhaps Kaikeyi is not able to contain her joy at the news. He goes there, accompanied by his brother Lakshmana and several friends. He leaves his friends behind as he goes to the queen’s chamber – we are not sure whether he takes Lakshmana with him or not. There is no reason for him to leave Lakshmana outside: the two brothers are inseparable and he is going to meet his father and step-mother, who has all along been as loving and close to him as his own mother. However, the text perhaps implies that he went in alone into Kaikeyi’s chamber.

The sight that meets him there is disturbing. Both the king and the queen are seated together, but Dasharatha’s face is marked by deep sorrow. He utters just one word – Rama, his beloved son’s name – and becomes silent. The king in his grief is terrible to look at. Rama wonders what could be the reason for his father’s misery and we see Rama upset for the first time in the Ramayana. Describing him the Ramayana says he was agitated as an ocean on the full moon night – babhūva samrabdhatarah samudra iva parvani. [2-18-7]

He asks Kaikeyi what has happened – his main suspicion is that he has done something that has made his father unhappy with him. Or maybe, the king is not well. Kaikeyi assures him he has done nothing wrong, nor is the king suffering from any ailment. The king’s problem is, she tells Rama, that he made a promise to her a long time ago and now he does not want to fulfil that promise. She also adds she would tell Rama about it all if he promises to do whatever the king wants, whether it is good or bad.

The very idea that he would not fulfill a wish in Dasharatha’s mind is shocking to Rama and he tells Kaikeyi as much. He tells her he shall jump into fire at one word from Dasharatha; he shall eat deadly poison, if that is what he wanted, or drown in an ocean. He vows that he would do whatever the king wants. He assures her “Rama does not speak twice.” Ramo dvir na abhibhashate. His words, once spoken, are final. He would stand by whatever he says once.

Kaikeyi now tells Rama that Dasharatha had long ago given her two boons and using them she has demanded that Bharata should be crowned as the crown prince in Rama’s place and Rama should go on an exile to the Dandaka forest for fourteen years. She asks Rama to now fulfil the king’s promise and save Dasharatha’s truth. She wants Rama to leave for the forest that very day.

Hearing those harsh words of Kaikeyi, the Ramayana tells us, Rama did not become unhappy: na caiva ramah praviveśa śokam [2-18-41]. This is in the last verse of chapter 18 of the Ayodhyakanda. Again in the first verse of the next chapter, the epic repeats: hearing those words unpleasant like death, Rama did not become distressed. [Tad apriyam amitraghnah vacanam maranopamam, śrutvā na vivyathe ramah. 2-19-1] Instead, he tells Kaikeyi, “All right, let it be so. Obeying the king’s orders, I shall go from here to live in the forest, clad in a piece of bark and wearing matted hair.” In the next verse, he asks Kaikeyi” “But why doesn’t father talk to me happily as he always does?”

In spite of the Ramayana repeatedly telling us Rama was not upset by what he was told, we see that Rama is deeply distressed. Those are the words of a deeply upset mind, for his father has no reason that morning to talk to him happily as he always does.

However, the epic again assures us Rama did not lose the equanimity of his mind. As he made up his mind to go to the jungle, giving up the earth, according to the Ramayana, there was no disturbance in his mind, as in the mind of a man who has gone beyond all worldly things. [Na vanam gantukāmasya tyajatah ca vasumdharām sarvalokātigasya iva laksyate cittavikriya 2-19-33]

According to Valmiki Ramayana, was Rama then affected by the news or not? Did he lose mastery over himself when he received the news or not?

These two are really two different questions and not one question put in different words.

As to the first question we can categorically say yes, he was. He was definitely affected by what Kaikeyi had told him. He was even a little unsettled, as the question he asks about why Dasharatha was not happily talking to him shows. If that is not enough, here is confirmation from the Sanskrit epic itself. In verse 2.19.33, we saw how the Ramayana tells us there was no disturbance in Rama’s mind. But in verse 2.19.35, the poet-sage clarifies the position when he describes in what mental state Rama entered his mother Kausalya’s palace after leaving Kaikeyi’s palace as he went there to give her the bad news: The Ramayana tells us, “Holding his sorrow in his mind, keeping his senses under control, a master of himself, he entered his mother’s palace, to give her the unpleasant news.“ [Dhārayan manasā duhkham indriyāni nigrhya ca, praviveśa ātmavān veśma māturapriya śamsivān. 2-19-35]

This verse makes the answers to the two questions above very clear. Was he affected by the news or not? The answer is, yes, he was, to the extent that he became sad and there was at least the threat of his losing control over his senses, if he did not actually lose it. [In Sanskrit literature, the senses are usually ten: the five sense organs like the eyes and ears, and the five organs of action, like the hands and legs. Sometimes the mind is counted as an eleventh sense organ]. But did he lose control over himself? Not really, and if he did, it was only very temporarily. For when he enters his mother’s mansion, we find he is able to hold his sorrow in his mind, his senses are in full control and he is a master of himself.

Self-mastery is not never losing control over oneself. It is not never being affected by bad news or sad events, or good news, for that matter. True self-mastery is when you are able to hold yourself together in spite of being affected by these. And that is exactly what Rama shows.

Rama is a very deeply emotional individual. I think of all our epic heroes, he is the most emotional. And people with emotional depth are easily affected by the events around them. Rama is repeatedly affected by the events around him, by all major events in his life. But every time he gives in to his emotionality, he controls himself and becomes a self-master again.

That is exactly what he does before his mother Kausalya. Kausalya in Valmiki’s Ramayana is like Dasharatha – extremely sentimental and weak, unable to take stress, and prone to faint under strain. Besides, she has suffered much in life because of the king’s affection for his younger and clearly more talented and attractive wife, Kaikeyi.

When Rama enters his mother’s palace, Valmiki tells us, he is a master of himself, in spite of being deeply distressed. On the way to the inner chambers of Kausalya’s palace, Rama meets in the outer sections of the palace “a very elderly, revered man, seated at the door” [probably the kanchuki, officer in-charge of the women’s quarters], numerous other men around him, groups of honored Vedic scholars, and several young and old female guards. None of them suspects either from Rama’s face or his manners that anything dreadful has happened.

When Rama sees Kausalya, she is engaged in a ritual worship for his welfare. Such is Rama’s mastery over himself by now that his mother sees nothing amiss in spite of the fact that Rama’s coronation has been cancelled, he has been ordered to go on an exile into the dreadful Dandaka forest for fourteen years, it has been decided the crown of Ayodhya would go to Bharata instead of him and Rama is deeply distressed [bhrśam ayastah] about all this. Rama greets her, she gathers him in her arms and speaks words of blessings. She then invites him to take a seat and offers him food. She still has no clue about Rama’s inner condition because of his supreme control over himself – she gets to know of what has happened only he himself tells her of it.

The news devastates Kausalya when she hears it. She swoons and collapses. Rama gathers her from the floor and raises her up. Kausalya laments that she has never known joy in her life, has never once known the joy an eldest queen should know. She tells him she was living under the hope that once Rama became the ruler, she would be able to know the joys she was denied during the day’s of her husband’s power. She says the other wives of the king have constantly been insulting and humiliating, even when he, Rama, was around, and if he went away she would certainly die. In the palace, she wails, her status has been that of the servants of Kaikeyi, or even worse.

Rama loves his mother deeply. He sees her misery and it powerfully moves his heart. But that does not make him lose his control over himself – he knows it is not weakness that would give his mother the strength she now needs more than at any other time in her life. It is Lakshmana who loses his hold over himself and gets into a violent fury.

In his fury Lakshmana says many unforgivable things. He wants Rama to capture power by force and says if anyone stood in his way, he would make the entire Ayodhya devoid of people [nirmanu'yām ayodhyām kari'yāmi. [2.21.20] He says he would slay anyone who took Bharata’s side or desired his welfare. As for his father, Lakshmana says if he turns an enemy goaded by Kaikeyi, then he should be either imprisoned or if necessary, killed. He swears his loyalty to Rama and tells Kausalya that he will kill Dasharatha who has become obsessed with Kaikeyi and has turned stupid in his old age. Kausalya tells Rama he has heard what Lakshmana has said and if it appeals to him, he should act on it.

Rama is now a master of himself, unlike Lakshmana and Kausalya, however devastated he is deep within himself. He tells his mother he would follow the path followed by other great men in the past, who have obeyed their father even when what had to be done was great evil, like Sage Kandu who killed a cow [one of the gravest sins in Rama’s society] in obedience to the wish of his father; even when some of them met with great calamities in obeying their father, as happened to the sons of his ancestor King Sagara. He admonishes Lakshmana and asks him to forget the ideas suggested to him by the evil kshatra greed for power, and follow the path of dharma as he himself was doing. As for himself, he wouldn’t give up dharma for the sake of something as small as a throne. He blames all that has happened on daiva, Divine will. Or else why should Kaikeyi who has never once in the past made any distinction between him and Bharata, now do what she has done, he asks.

Eventually, after a lot more arguments among them, Kausalya gives Rama her blessings to go to the forest and agrees to stay back in Ayodhya awaiting his return, giving up her demand that he take her with him.

The strain of keeping himself in control, however, takes its toll on Rama soon. The imperviousness that he maintained before Kausalya deserts him as soon as he leaves her apartment. He would be very different when he enters his wife’s chamber.

Rama is a dreadful sight when Sita first sees him after he had left early that morning. She has no idea of the new turns events have taken. But one look at him, Sita starts shivering. The Ramayana tells us here that at the sight of Sita, Rama could no more retain his control over his sorrow and his grief came out in spite of himself. His face loses all luster, he is perspiring all over. This is a man who has failed in keeping his sorrow in check, who is no more in control of himself.

We see something of tremendous beauty here. Before his father, who is deeply sentimental and psychologically weak, Rama keeps his mastery in spite of being deeply affected. In front of his friends, who look up to him as their leader, he maintains self-mastery. He maintains self-mastery again in front of his mother, to whom it is his duty to give strength in her moment of crisis – for the crown being withheld from Rama is a greater tragedy to her than to Rama himself; she has been all her later years with the single hope that one day he would become king and she would reclaim the position she had lost when Kaikeyi became the king’s favorite wife. But in the presence of Sita, his wife, who is emotionally as strong as he is, if not more, he allows his emotions to overpower him for the first time.

During this breakdown, he would tell Sita a lot of things that would never occur to him if he were a master of himself. After informing her about what happened in Kaikeyi’s chamber, he tells her he is going on exile and she should stay back at the palace. He then gives Sita instructions about how she should conduct herself from then on. He tells her she should never talk of Rama in Bharata’s presence! Because men in power do not endure other people’s praise, she should never extol Rama’s virtues in Bharata’s presence, particularly so while talking to her [girl] friends! Now that Bharata is in power, Sita should always try to please him!

After this breakdown in Sita’s chamber, he would once again regain command over himself. This time he would maintain his mastery over himself until after he has left Ayodhya, crossed several rivers, and has finally crossed the Ganga and is in the forests beyond it. There, for the first time alone since he received the order of exile from Kaikeyi, with just Sita and Lakshmana with him, in the loneliness of the jungle, with night cutting him off from the rest of the world, he would again let go of himself and breaking down, wail aloud, filling the forest with his grief and sorrow.

But before going to that, let us see how he maintains, with a supreme effort of will, mastery over himself throughout the rest of the agonizing day and the following days and nights until he reaches the forest across the Ganga.

In Sita’s chamber, Rama has to give in to Sita’s demand to be taken with him to the jungle. All his arguments against it prove futile. Sita proves here she is a woman of iron will and gets her way. Sita has no grief over the loss of the kingdom, but that she would have to live separated from Rama is intolerable to her. In her agony at the thought of being forced to live in Ayodhya, of being denied Rama’s company and the opportunity to serve him as his wife, she momentarily loses control over herself and insults Rama, questioning his masculinity itself, but Rama himself never loses his hold over himself. Later he agrees to take Lakshmana too with him.

It is as a master of himself that Rama does the many things he has to do before he leaves for the jungle on the same day as desired by Kaikeyi. He distributes wealth among brahmanas; gives diamonds and ornaments to Guru Vasishtha’s son Suyajna and his wife and to lots of brahmacharis, friends and servants. He also distributes his remaining wealth among the poor, the old and children.

And in the middle of sorrow that is engulfing all of Ayodhya, Rama amazingly becomes light-hearted and has some innocent fun at the cost of a brahmana. The brahmana lives in the jungles near Ayodhya. He is old, yet such is his lifestyle that he glows with spiritual power. The man has a young wife and several children and, unable to find food for them and for himself, he used to always roam around jungles with digging tools in his hand searching for roots and gathering fruits from trees and bushes. His wife very reluctantly addresses him asking him to go to Rama seeking some cows. Rama smiles amused at the wiry old man’s sight and shows him a huge herd of several thousand cows. He gives him a staff and asks him to hurl it as far as he can and tells him that all the cows within the fall of staff will be his. The brahmana tightens his dhoti and hurls the staff with all his strength. Such is the brahmana’s strength that the stick falls on the other bank of the Sarayu. Rama happily gives him all the cows that stood within the fall of the staff. Still smiling, he apologizes for asking the brahmana to do what he did. He says he did what he did to see how much spiritual energy that wiry body of his contained. He tells him that all his wealth belongs to brahmanas and the needy and asks him to ask for anything else he needed.

This is a young man who has just lost his kingdom, snatched away from him moments before his crowning, and has been given an order of exile for fourteen years.

Rama now goes once again to Dasharatha – to take leave of him. Dasharatha begs him to stay for one more night – but Rama knows that is no solution to his father’s problem. By staying back he would only increase Dasharatha’s agony. He refuses.

There are moments when, during this meeting of the father and son, in spite of his self-mastery Rama’s pain and despair show through his words. For instance, while telling his father that the only desire in his mind is to see that his, Dasharatha’s, words [to Kaikeyi] are not broken, Rama says: “I have no desire for the kingdom, nor for the earth, nor happiness; I do not desire any of these pleasures, or heaven. I do not even want to live.” This is not what he will say two days later, when he is away from Ayodhya and alone with his wife and brother in the jungles beyond the Ganga. Rama’s pain and sense of loss come through in his other words here too – for instance, when he repeatedly says how happy he would be surrounded by quiet animals and listening to the chirping of birds in the jungle; how contented he would be eating the fruits and roots of the jungle and seeing the mountains, lakes and rivers.

Of course, it is possible that Rama is, reversing roles, trying to console his father, rather than Dasharatha doing so to his son. Even in this moment of crisis, he knows fully well his duty as a son: be the old father’s strength in his moment of debilitating weakness. He not only shows strength and courage, thus imparting to Dasharatha these, but also reminds his father it is his duty in this moment of crisis to give strength to those around him.

In spite of Rama’s brave words, the father senses his son’s feelings and faints.

Rama’s self-mastery is clearly visible again during the scene when the princes give up royal clothes and change into ascetic clothes in preparation to going on exile to the Dandaka forest. In a touching scene Sita too tries to wear ascetic clothes following Rama and Lakshmana, fails and stands confused and embarrassed. Rama comes forward and helps Sita wear the clothes. This is a scene that would break anyone’s heart – while Rama has been ordered to live in jungles for fourteen years as an ascetic, there are no such compulsions on Sita. She is doing what she is doing out of her love for Rama. The whole royal family watching it breaks down but there is one man totally unshaken by it: Rama. The women of the antahpura beg Rama not to take Sita with him, but to leave her in the palace, but Rama without paying any heed keeps helping his wife wear her new clothes.

Such is the poignancy of the scene that old Sage Vasishtha, a man of full self mastery, too loses his control over himself and, tears flowing down from his eyes, shouts in rage at Kaikeyi, calling the queen evil and wicked. He tells her they [that is, he and others] would put Sita on the throne, for that is where she belongs as Rama’s ‘half’, since a wife is a husband’s half. He tells Kaikeyi that if Sita goes to the jungle with Rama, then the whole city of Ayodhya too would go with them to the jungle. He warns Kaikeyi that even Bharata and Shatrughna would leave Ayodhya and go and serve Rama in the jungle. It is Sita who now speaks and insists that she too would dress like her husband and continues wearing ascetic clothes. During this poignant scene, Rama never loses his self-mastery once.

Dasharatha now insists that Sita would not wear ascetic clothes and would go in clothes of silk. Kaikeyi does not object.

Eventually the scene of actual leave taking comes. Rama, Lakshmana and Sita board the chariot. As Sumantra, the minister, driving the chariot urges the horses forward, a sense of loss spreads over the populace watching it. The whole city goes into a swoon. When they recover, the entire populace of Ayodhya run after the chariot like people tormented by thirst runs towards water. They beg Sumantra to drive slowly so that they could have another look at Rama’s face. Women wail aloud filling the whole place with their anguish. Tears falling down from the eyes of weeping women so drench the earth that the dust raised by the chariot and thousands of men and women immediately settles down. Dasharatha comes out of the palace gates and seeing the disappearing chariot, falls down on the earth like a felled tree. When he comes to, he and Kausalya both begin running after the chariot. Dasharatha shouts at Sumantra asking him to slow down the chariot, to stop it.

Again the one man still in control of himself is Rama. He turns around and looks back. He sees his mother and father and the masses of people running after him, and he knows the sooner this scene ends, the better it will be for all. While thousands of voices from behind ask Sumantra to slow down the chariot, Rama asks the minister to drive faster and faster. He tells Sumantra moving slow will not only increase everyone’s sorrow, but might even have disastrous consequences.

Amazingly, even in his great sorrow, he thinks about Sumantra! What reason will the minister give the king when he goes back for not obeying his order to slow down, to stop? Rama tells him, “If the king questions you when you come back, tell him you did not hear him.”

That is how Rama leaves Ayodhya. He would maintain tight control over himself for the rest of the day and two more days and nights. And then, when he is for the first time alone after he takes his orders from Kaikeyi, with just Sita and Lakshana with him, he would let himself go.

So devastating is his grief now, held under check for three days and two nights, that when it comes out it is shocking not only in its power, but also in its nature. He now accuses his father of being a slave to Kaikeyi, who would do the meanest thing to please her. He accuses Kaikeyi of being an evil woman who can do anything for power, including poisoning Dasharatha to get rid of him to make her son Bharata’s path easier for him. He speaks of the possibility of Kaikeyi poisoning both Kausalya and Lakshmana’s mother Sumitra. He feels that Bharata would now enjoy all the pleasures all alone. He then wails aloud piteously in the solitude of the jungle, tears streaming down from his eyes. It is only after this that he eventually becomes calm like a fire without flames, like an ocean without waves.

Self-mastery does not mean being untouched by emotions.

A World War II movie shows us a shocking scene. Inside a moving train are several passengers, including an ex-soldier. Next to him is seated a young mother, with her baby in her lap. As the train makes its lonely journey through a dull, monotonous afternoon, the passengers fall asleep, including the mother. The baby slips down from her lap and slowly crawls dangerously towards the open door of the compartment. The ex-soldier, awake, watches it without a muscle on his face moving. Watching the scene on the screen, the entire audience holds its breath. But the soldier feels nothing and he does nothing to stop the baby or wake up the mother.

This is no self-mastery by any standards. This is being dead. The ex-soldier hasn’t risen to any spiritual height. What has happened is that he has become sub-human. What was human in him has died. What Rama shows through those three agonizing days is self-mastery of the highest kind. And it does cast a spell – not only on the people of his time, but also over us, across a distance of a few millennia.

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The Willing Woman: On Epic Women and Will Power 2

Continued from 1

The epic woman from whose son our land gets its name too shows the same independence and determination as Gandhari, Kunti, Draupadi and Sita do. Shakuntala’s marriage is by her own decision. She meets the emperor Dushyanta in her foster father Sage Kanva’s ashram. The two fall in love and decide to become husband and wife according to the ancient customs of Gandharva marriage, which said that a man and a woman in love with each other can wed on their own. Dushyanta goes back after a while, promising he would send for her shortly. Shakuntala waits for Dushyanta’s people to come and take her to his palace. They do not come. She gives birth to her child in the ashram and names him Sarvadamana, Subduer of All. Yet no one comes from Dushyanta. Eventually, when her son is twelve years old, Kanva, her foster father, reminds her it is time for her to hand over her son to his father and let him live in the palace, where he belongs, learning the ways of kings. That is how Shakuntala reaches Dushyanta’s court. [In Kalidasa’s version, it is a pregnant Shakuntala who reaches the court.]

Dushyanta refuses to acknowledge that he had ever met Shakuntala or had any relations with her. He refuses to acknowledge the adolescent she has brought along as his son. He calls Shakuntala a whore and the mother of a bastard child born of shameless lust. He shows no respect even for the clothes she was wearing, in which she had come from an ashram.

At his words, Shakuntala becomes like a snake that has been stepped upon. This is the man she had chosen for herself thirteen years ago. This is the man to whom she had surrendered her body. This is the man who had begotten a child in her and left, promising to send his people to fetch her and then forgotten all about it. And now he is insulting her in the middle of an assembly, in the presence of ministers and noblemen – insulting her in such brute, merciless words.

The young woman who grew up in an ashram does not know what fear is. She does not know what treachery is. She does not know what weakness is. She has received the best possible upbringing: in an atmosphere of love, kindness, truth and fearlessness. She does not care she is standing in the presence of an all-powerful monarch. She does not care his ministers and nobles are listening to her. She lashes out at him, in the only language she knows: the language of truth.

“You know me well, great king,” she tells him, “and yet you shamelessly say you do not, showing total lack of culture.” She reminds him that culture demands that a wife who comes to her husband’s place for the first time needs to honoured, she needs to be offered worship. “You err by not worshipping me as I stand here,” asserts Shakuntala, demanding from her man the obeisance that is every woman’s right by Indian culture. “I deserve to be worshipped. And you do not offer me worship that is my due” – archarhām na archayasi mam.

Incidentally, Shakuntala’s power comes from her knowledge of her rights. Our ancient culture held women at the highest level. Our women did not grow internalising a self image that told her that she was the creation of a lesser God. She was the creation of the same God, maybe even a greater God. She was not a source of sin for man, but of dharma, virtue. It is thrilling to see this powerful self-image in woman after epic woman. All the women we have spoken of so far, be it Gandhari, Kunti, Druapadi, or Sita share the same self-image: an equal to her man. There is no feeling in her that she is the second sex. If anything, she is the first sex. Gandhari never once in her life cringes before her husband Dhritarashtra. Kunti never once feels she is inferior to Pandu. Draupadi knows she is in every way equal to her husbands. And Sita says she will walk not in Rama’s footsteps, but ahead of him, so that she can crush the thorns on his path with her feet and make his journey easier for him. This amazing self-perception of power is not born of arrogance or haughtiness, but of her culturally given status.

We see this same status of women in their husband’s home spoken of by the Vedas. The standard Vedic blessing for a new bride was:


Samrājñī śvashure bhava
Samrājñī śvaśvrām bhava
Nanandari samrājñī bhava
Samrājñī adhi devrshu
[RV 10.85.46] [AV 14.144]


“Be thou an empress to your father-in-law. An empress be though to your mother-in-law. Be thou an empress to your husband’s sister. An empress be though to his younger brother.”

Coming back to Shakuntala, she says Dushyanta needs to worship her for she is his wife come home for the first time.

Shakuntala tells Dushyanta that a wife is not a man’s plaything – she is an equal half of his being, his best friend in the journey of life, the root of his dharma, artha and kama [virtue, wealth and pleasures]. And for a man who wants to cross the ocean of samsara and reach moksha, she is his most powerful ship. She reminds him that woman is the sacred ground where man is reborn as his own son.

Shakuntala tells Dushyanta that she has not come to him for his charity – she does not need any of it. What she demands is justice – what is hers by right. In fact, she does not need even that. She is perfectly willing to go back to the ashram from where she came – she will always be welcome there. She does not care for the comforts of the palace – such things do not tempt her. She needs just one thing: that his child is acknowledged as his. And she warns him: “Ignore me, Dushyanta, and your head shall shatter in a thousand pieces”.

Dushyanta still does not acknowledge her or her son. Instead, he insults her father, the sage Vishwamitra, calling her wanton; and insults her mother, calling her a whore.

Before answering him this time she apologises, for she says what she is going to say is going to hurt him. And then she tells him the difference between a fool and a wise man is that the fool chooses evil where the wise man chooses the good. “Truth,” she tells him, “is superior to a thousand ashwamedha sacrifices; the study of all the Vedas, bathing in every sacred teertha in the world – nay, even these are not equal to truth.” Dushyanta was clearly proving himself to be a fool by choosing lies over the truth.

As she turns around to leave, she tells Dushyanta her son does not need his kingdom. She did not bring him to Dushyanta in the hope of her son inheriting his kingdom. No, he does not require it. For, her son will rule over all the earth bounded by the oceans even without his help.

The gods interfere here on Shakuntala’s behalf and testify that she is Dushyanta’s wife and Sarvadamana is his son, suggesting he be renamed Bharata now; from his name India gets the name Bharata.

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Perhaps no other story in world literature speaks of the will power of a woman more eloquently than the story of Amba does.

Amba of the Mahabharata was born a princess – one of the three daughters of the king of Kashi. As the girls become nubile and ready to chose their husbands, a swayamvara is arranged for them, and kings and princes from across the land come, to prove their valour and claim their hands. While the swayamvara is in progress, in comes Devavrata Bhishma, a prince who has sworn never to marry. He is unaccompanied and comes all alone riding his chariot. Bhishma challenges the royal assembly of heroic men and claims the princesses for himself in the name of his valour. He leads the princesses into his chariot and challenges the kshatriyas to stop him if they can. Accepting the challenge, they surround Bhishma’s single chariot in a hundred chariots and elephants. In the fierce battle that ensues, Bhishma vanquishes them all with a smile on his face. The princesses are taken to Hastinapura and handed over to his stepmother, Queen Satyavati, so that they could be wedded to Bhishma’s half-brother Vichitravirya.

As the wedding arrangements progress, Amba, the eldest of the three princesses takes a bold decision. She is not going to wed Vichitravirya, unlike her two sisters who are ready to. She approaches Bhishma and confesses that she belongs to another man. She has mentally given herself to King Shalva and he too has accepted her as his wife, unknown to her father. As a righteous Bharata prince, she tells him, it is his duty to let her go too Shalva.

Bheeshma consults his stepmother, his ministers and wise men and sends her to Shalva in honour, accompanied by old brahmanas and her old retainer. Shalva refuses to accept her, telling her she has been had by another man. You are an anyapurva, he tells her repeatedly – a woman who has belonged to another man. Amba tells him Bhishma had carried her away by force and she hadn’t gone to him of her own choice. She has never thought of another man, she has never belonged to another man, she is not an anyapurva but an ananyapurva. Shalva now says he is terrified of Bhishma and cannot have her and asks her to forget him and go wherever she liked. Amba keeps begging the man to whom she had given her heart once and who had reciprocated her love with equal ardour, but Shalva sticks to his stand.

Amba leaves Shalva and thinks things over. Bhishma is certainly to blame for what has happened. Her father too is responsible, for declaring that any man who displays great valour could have her. She herself is responsible – why didn’t she jump out of Bhishma’s chariot and run to the man she loved? She blames Shalva, she blames herself and finally she blames God.

She considers her options. She cannot go back to Bhishma. She cannot go back to her father – she does not want that. Shalva has rejected her. And there is no to her place for her go to. Eventually she goes to an ashram outside the city to spend the night there.

She explains her situation to the ascetics in the ashram and tells them she wants to lead the life of an ascetic from now on. They discourage her, telling such a life is not suitable for her and her staying there will not be appropriate, considering that she is a beautiful, young princess.

In the ashram she meets Hotravahana, once a king and now an ascetic, who reaches there by chance. Hotravahana is Amba’s maternal grandfather. He consoles her and tells her the right person to help her is Parashurama – the great warrior who has spent his life destroying corrupt kshatriyas, but who is now living an ascetic life on the Mahendra mountains. He asks Amba to go to him there. By then Akritavrana, a disciple of Parashurama comes to the ashram, with the message that Parashurama is coming to the ashram the next day to meet Hotravahana, his friend.

Until meeting with Akritavrana, Amba is not sure who exactly should be held ultimately accountable for her tragedy. It is Akritavrana who puts the blame squarely on Bhishma. Amba makes up her mind finally. And from now on nothing on earth, or even beyond, would change her mind.

Amba meets Parashurama and explains her condition. Moved, Parashurama promises help. He is sure Bhishma, his disciple, would listen to him.

As Parashurama goes to Bhishma, Amba clarifies her position. She tells Rama: Slay Bhishma, as Indra slew Vritra. She insists it is the death of Bhishma she wants, nothing else would satisfy her. Perhaps she knew Bhishma better than the sage-warrior did and was sure Bhishma would not listen to his old teacher in this matter.

Rama however goes to Bhishma and asks him to take Amba to himself, since there is no other solution to her problem, adding the threat that unless he did so, he would kill him in battle. Bhishma refuses to have Amba back and challenges his guru in battle. The battle rages for many days, but neither is able to defeat the other. Eventually Bhishma’s mother Ganga and the gods interfere and stop battle. Parashurama admits his failure to fulfil his promise to Amba and asks her to seek Bhishma’s refuge once again. Amba answers, her eyes blazing in rage: On no account will I ever go back to Bhishma. She will now go where she will be able to destroy Bhishma in battle by herself.

Amba is no more the helpless maiden who ran from man after man seeking love, kindness and justice. She is a transformed woman now. She has made up her mind and no power, human or divine, will be able to change it, such is her determination.

She engages in superhuman tapas on the banks of the Yamuna. She gives up food, grows emaciated and dry, her hair grows matted, but she stands motionless with for six months. The Mahabharata tells us the only food she ate those six months was the air.

Following the six months, she enters the waters of the Yamuna and standing there does tapas for another year, fasting throughout.

For the next one year she performs austerities standing on her toes and eating only a single leaf that has fallen by itself.

Possessed by her scorching anger, she continues her tapas for twelve years.

Bhishma’s mother Ganga appears before her and tries to dissuade her from her dark tapas, but Amba’s mind will not be changed.

At this stage there are two versions of her story told. According to one, she continuous her tapas, until she forces Shiva to appear before her by the power of her austerities. According to the other, she dies and is reborn again as a woman, a princess of the Vatsa country, and continuous her tapas in that life too until she forces Shiva to appear before her.

Shiva asks her what she wants and she places her demand before Shiva: she wants to kill Bhishma in battle. When Shiva grants her wish, she asks him how she can kill Bhishma in battle since she is woman. Shiva assures her it will happen in her next life time.

Amba has no interest left in life. She has a single aim before her: Bhishma’s death at her hands. Amba lights a huge pyre and enters it, seeking her next birth. As she does so and as fire begins to consume her body, her lips give expression to her one consuming purpose: bhīṣmavadhāya, for the death of Bhishma.

After a lifetime of tapas as Amba and another as the princess of Vatsa, she is born as a princess once again – as Shikhandini, the daughter of Drupada of Panchala. It will be years before she achieves her purpose. In the meantime she will have a sex change and become a man, and learn archery from her father’s enemy Drona, the greatest teacher of the day, and become a mighty warrior in her/his own right.

I have often wondered if the real reason why Bhishma refuses to take up weapons against Shikhandi is not his respect for Amba and her will and determination.

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The list of women in ancient Indian literature who show immense will power as displayed by Amba, Shakuntala, Sita, Draupadi, Kunti, and Gandhari is long and for obvious reasons we cannot discuss them all here.

“Frailty, thy name is woman,” said the bard of the west. It is a statement that our authors from that remote time certainly would not endorse. They did not see women as weak and helpless beings. Instead, they saw them as shaktis, embodiments of power and determination. In the classical period, the perception would change and celebrated authors like Kalidasa would paint women – frequently these same women – in much softer colours. Thus Kalidasa’s genteel Shakuntala is not the tough Shakuntala of the Mahabharata. Many later versions of the Ramayana would make Sita weak and almost a shadow figure. A time would come when a woman would be appreciated for her weakness, in the name of delicateness, rather than for her strength. But such certainly are not the women who inhabit our epic land. The sage-poets who composed those unsurpassed works of literature did not see women as ‘dolls’, but as full human beings made of blood and flesh. Each one of our epic women has a will of her own, and is a person in her own right.

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