Madayanti: The Woman Who Tore Open Her Womb

This story takes place in Ayodhya. Not in the Ayodhya of today though, but in an Ayodhya that was the glorious capital of a mighty empire. And not of the days of Rama or Dasharatha either, but at a time much before that. But it is a tale of the Ikshwakus all the same, into whose line Rama would be born later. When this story takes place, several of the Ikshwakus who would later be celebrated in our epics are yet to be born. But many legendary ones have already ruled the land and so have a few whose names the Ikshwakus would rather like to forget.

This is the tale of King Kalmashapada, whose real name was Mitrasaha Saudasa – Saudasa because he was the son of Sudasa. But it is also the story of a woman – a woman called Madayanti, who was Kalmashapada’s queen. This is the story of how and why she tore open her womb with a stone, though she still gave birth to Ashmaka, the next king of the Ikshwakus. This is also the story of how a king tried to atone for his sins by offering his queen’s body to the man he had wronged. The Mahabharata tells us this story in detail, as do Valmiki’s Ramayana and the puranas briefly, though the versions, as always, differ from each other in some respects and the passage of time – several millennia – has altered the story itself, as each narrator told it the way he felt it should be told.

Kalmashapada, the Mahabharata tells us, was a happy king and a glorious one. He had a prosperous kingdom, a beautiful wife whom he loved dearly and who loved him equally and he enjoyed the kingdom and the wife thoroughly. Then one day he met Shakti, son of the sage Vasishtha, on a mountain path.

Both a kingdom and a beautiful wife could be intoxicating. The old sages say youth, wealth, power and impetuousness, each of these could cause a disaster – then what to speak of when all the four join together? Probably Kalmashapada had all four of them – and that could truly be disastrous.

Kalmashapada’s encounter with Shakti was disastrous. Coming across the sage’s young son on that narrow mountain path, the arrogant king asked Shakti to move out of his way. Shakti refused. He was the eldest son of Vasishtha, the greatest sage of the age. He was a brahmana. And perhaps in his mind he too was proud of his recent achievement – he too had a young, pretty wife who was on the way to becoming a mother. Shakti pointed out that he was a brahmana and a brahmana always had the right of way before a king. He was nice to begin with – though his tone was perhaps that of a brahmana educating an ignorant king.

Kalmashapada would have none of it, though. He was the master of the land and as such everyone within its boundaries was his subject, which included the brahmanas, sages, all. Perhaps he had in his mind that it was he who fed the brahmanas – they lived on what the king gave them and what his subjects gave them.

Eventually the words became rough, the Mahabharata tells us, each shouting at the other “You get out my way” and “You do that”. And then, in a moment of extreme rage and supreme arrogance, Kalmashapada lifted a whip and lashed the sage’s young son with it. Again and again and again. Shakti, now wild with pain and anger, did what angry sages and brahmanas always did. He cursed Kalmashapada. “A brute you are, behaving like a rakshasa. And for this, I curse you. May you become a rakshasa.”
The curse turned Kalmashapada into a rakshasa – a cannibal. “Now that you have cursed me and made me a cannibal, I’ll begin with you,” said the king and with that he killed Shakti and ate him. From then on, his life is that of a cannibal.

The Mahabharata tells us of another power struggle going on at this time – that between Vishwamitra, until recently a king, and Vasishtha, the sage. In their first encounter, Vishwamitra’s royal power had been defeated by the sagely power of Vasishtha. Ever since Vishwamitra had been trying to break Vasishtha – break his spiritual power by wrecking his life and forcing him to react violently. Vishwamitra reaches the spot where the altercation between Shakti and Kalmashapada was going on. He hears them fighting. And when he hears the curse, he senses his opportunity. He invokes the spirit of a rakshasa and asks him to enter the cursed king. His actions from then on are as much a result of the curse as because of the presence of the spirit of the rakshasa in him, who is guided by Vishwamitra and does all that could be done to reduce Vasishtha’s power.

Soon after eating up Shakti, the Mahabharata tells us, Kalmashapada also ate up all his ninety-nine brothers. A story that suggests that the clash between Shakti and Kalmashapada perhaps has a past history. For, it is not likely that Kalmashapada eats up all the brothers of Shakti for a crime committed by Shakti. He can’t hope to spite Shakti with that action since Shakti is already dead. But this becomes possible if his enmity was with the father – with Vasishtha.

Perhaps Kalmashapada’s enmity was really with Vasishtha. The clash with Shakti perhaps was only an outcrop of that enmity. Perhaps it was because Shakti was the hated Vasishtha’s son that Kalmashapada refused to give him way and later whipped him. He was perhaps taking out his anger with the father on the son. Otherwise in the days which we are discussing, it is unthinkable that a king would whip a brahmana, that too a sage’s son.

The ancient texts also tell us that Vasishtha was Kalmashapada’s purohita, his priest and spiritual guide. And also that Vishwamitra had for some while been coveting that position. Perhaps the king and his purohita had parted ways in those days and Kalmashapada was furious with Vasishtha for some reason.

In fact, in one of the versions of the story, it is not Shakti who curses Kalmashapada and turns him into a rakshasa, but Vasishtha himself. Which should explain why Kalmashapada took his vengeance by eating up Shakti and all the other sons of Vasishtha.

According to this version, given in the Uttara Kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana, Kalmashapada’s name was Veerasaha Saudasa. Once, out hunting, he comes across two rakshasas in a forest. The rakshasas have eaten up all the animals of the forest, assuming the form of tigers. Saudasa kills one of the rakshasas and the other vows revenge.

Years later Saudasa becomes the king of Ayodhya and he, under the protection of Vasishtha, conducts an ashwamedha that lasts several years. On the last day of the sacrifice, the rakshasa finds his opportunity. He assumes the form of Vasishtha and coming to Saudasa tells him that since it is the concluding day of the sacrifice he would like meat to be served to him in his meal. The king instructs his cooks to cook meat, but they are confused. Meat for Vasishtha – they are not able to understand that. The rakshasa takes advantage of the confusion of the cooks and entering the kitchen in the guise of one of them, prepares not just meat, but human flesh itself, and brings this along with the rest of the meal to the king. Saudasa with great devotion offers the meal to Vasishtha and the sage, recognising the flesh, curses the king and changes him into a rakshasa for the sin of offering him a meal fit only for rakshasas.

The king, in a fury at the injustice of it, also takes up water in his palm and empowering it with mantras, gets ready to curse Vasishtha too in turn. But queen Madayanti stops him from this sin, telling him that he shouldn’t curse a brahmana. Since the empowered water cannot be wasted, she requests him to sprinkle it on his own feet. He does it – and his feet turn spotted. It is then Saudasa gets the name Kalmashapada, says the Uttarakanda. Kalmashapada means spotted-feet.

Vasishtha does offer release to the king from the curse – at the end of twelve years. But there is no reason why this should have satisfied him. For no fault of his a rash Vasishtha had taken away twelve years of his life and turned the mighty Ikshwaku into such a wretched creature. It is possible that as rakshasa nature took over, as he sank into spiritual darkness, he began seeking revenge and ate up all the sons of Vasishtha.

Vasishtha endures the pain of the death of all his sons – the Mahabharata text tells us. But not for long. Soon he is so pained by it that he decides to commit suicide. His first attempt is to kill himself by throwing himself down from the top of Mount Sumeru. The rocks at the bottom turn soft like cotton, the text tells us, and receive him gently. Next he walks into a roaring fire, again the text tells us, and the fire turns cool and leaves him unscathed. These failures do not ignite the desire to live in the heart of the sage. He next throws himself into the violent sea, with a boulder tied to his neck. The waves pick him up and gently deposit him on the shore and retreat. Admitting his failure, he goes back to his ashram. Death has refused to oblige him.

The rainy season revives his agony again. And when he sees a swollen river in spate, cutting away its banks and carrying mighty trees down with it, the sage decides to make another attempt at suicide. And to make sure he dies, the sad old man ties up his limbs with ropes before he casts himself into the torrent. But once again he is defeated. The river breaks the ropes and frees him, and then carries him back to the shores. The river that did this will from then on be known as the one who freed the sage from his ropes – Vipasha.

His torment does not allow the sage to stay in one place any more. He becomes a wanderer, spending his time in the wild, on the mountains and in the plains, on the banks of lakes and rivers, in jungles and other areas away from human habitation. Once again he sees a river that tempts him – a mighty Himalayan torrent filled with monstrous crocodiles. The river refuses to accept the sin of killing the sage and instead, splits herself into a hundred streams – and becomes the Shatadru. Shata, meaning hundred.
The sage now returns once again to his ashram. He has no desire to live, but he knows his attempts to kill himself are in vain.

On the way something beautiful happens. He meets Shakti’s widow Adrishyanti close to the ashram and learns from her that she is expecting a child – his grandson, someone to continue the family line. But before he has time to relish the news fully, he sees Kalmashapada the rakshasa standing in front of him, with a staff raised in his hand. Adrishyanti screams seeing death before her, and seeks refuge behind a calm Vasishtha.

Vasishtha does not reduce Kalmashapada to ashes with a curse – perhaps he feels this has all gone on far enough. He decides to release the king from his curse. And does so by sprinkling water empowered with mantras on him. Kalmashapada comes out of the curse.

This again suggests the possibility that it was he who had cursed Kalmashapada originally. Though a sage of the stature of Vasishtha can perhaps release a man from another’s curse, it is usually only the one who gave the curse who has the power to withdraw it. Perhaps it was he who had cursed Kalmashapada initially, not Shakti. Perhaps it was him that Kalmashapada had slighted earlier, not Shakti. After all, Vasishtha was his guru, and a clash between an arrogant king and his kulaguru is not an impossibility, especially with someone like Vishwamitra very keen about it.

Kalmashapada too has had enough of all this. He has learnt his lesson. He makes the conciliatory gesture. He wants to atone. He tells the sage – “I want the next man on the throne of Ayodhya to be born of you.” This will be atonement both for his arrogance and for killing all the sage’s sons. Atonement for his arrogance because there is nothing more humiliating for a man – and much more so for a king – than to have to offer his wife’s body to another man. Atonement for killing the sage’s sons, for this is the greatest gift the king can make by way of amendment – the sage’s son shall inherit the throne of Ayodhya.

Incidentally, with this there will no more be any Ikshwaku blood in the Ikshwakus. The future Ikshwakus will be the descendants of this queen, whose relation with the Ikshwakus is not natal, but through marriage, and that of the sage, who is not an Ikshwaku. The future Ikshwakus will not be Ikshwakus really, just as in the Mahabharata neither of the parties fighting for the throne of the Bharatas will be a Bharata by blood, since neither Dhritarashtra nor Gandhari, nor Kunti nor the parents of the Pandava children, had any Bharata blood in them. Rama, known as the greatest of the Ikshwakus, will not be an Ikshwaku by blood descent, not by aurasa descent, as they used to say in those days, but only by what is known as kshetraja descent. He is linked to the Ikshwakus by the fact that he is a descendent of theirs through the child born in the kshetra, ‘field’, of Kalmashapada, though not fathered by him. He will inherit his gene pool not from an Ikshwaku – it will have to be traced back to Vasishtha across generations.

Kalmashapada requests Vasishtha to do niyoga in his queen and takes him with him to his palace. There he asks his wife Madayanti to receive the sage in her bed. This is how the next Ikshwaku is born.

His name is Ashmaka.

The Mahabharata tells us that a pregnant Madayanti picked up a stone and with it hit her swollen womb – again and again and again. Tearing her womb open. And bringing forth the child who was later named Ashmaka – ashma or ashman meaning stone.

The queen perhaps dies in the process.

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The Mahabharata tells us that it was because of the inordinate delay in the birth of the child that Madayanti hit her stomach with the stone. That the pregnancy had been going on and on and she grew impatient and did it.

I do not believe it.

I believe that Madayanti hated her swollen stomach. Hated the act that lead to her swollen stomach. Hated the child growing in her womb. And wanted to destroy it – even if in the process she herself would be killed.

The act through which that pregnancy was created – it could create insane hatred, intense loathing and self-repugnance.

Women do not enjoy being reduced to mere female bodies – bodies that can bring forth. The epics tell us so again and again.

Bali, the great emperor, fascinated by the sage Deerghatamas, asked his wife Sudeshna to offer her body to him. Instead, she sent her maid to the blind old sage. Just as Ambika did later, in the Mahabharata. Ambika had to be persuaded with the great difficulty for the first niyoga – impregnation by someone other than her husband – but she did it, partly because of the desperate need, because Hastinapura urgently needed a king and there was none. Partly because of guilt – she had failed to give Vichitraveerya a child, an heir to the throne, and it is overindulgence with her and her sister that had killed him. And partly because she expected either the handsome, mighty Bheeshma, the greatest hero of the times, in her bed, and if not him, then one of his cousins – certainly not the sage. But in spite of all this she had been reluctant. And the second time she was asked to submit herself to the ordeal, she sent a maid in her place. Ambalika did not enjoy the niyoga either. In Kunti’s case, she had to be persuaded again and again by her husband before she submitted herself to it.

Apparently, women do not enjoy being treated on a par with animals.

In none of the other niyogas we know of, there is any proof that the women enjoyed the experience. Sex with a husband is one thing, sex with a lover is one thing, sex with a paramour is one thing – but sex without desire, without the bond of love, is a totally different experience.

The king simply asked her to receive the sage in her bed. He was atoning. But it was she who had to pay the price.

For twelve years she had waited for him to be released from the curse, waited devotedly, while he roamed the jungles feeding on human flesh. Then she heard that the king’s curse had ended and he was returning, and waited for him with breathless eagerness, with deep love. She must have prayed all those twelve years for his release from the curse and for his return. But when he comes, he comes bringing his, their, kulaguru with him and straight away asks her to receive the sage in her bed. In atonement for his sin.

Her shock must have been great. She submits to the king’s will. To his order. And then she hates herself for submitting to such an act, hates the king for ordering that, and hates the kulaguru for performing it. She is enraged at the desecration of her body, of her womb. And is repulsed by what is growing in her womb.

The kulaguru has the same position as that of a father – only superior. Guru was universally considered like a father in those days in India, as we do even today. And having to undergo that experience with him – that must have been unimaginable for her. And yet she did it. She submits to the king’s will. And ends up hating all people responsible for it, ends up hating herself. Ends up hating her pregnancy, the child growing in her womb. A child produced in her womb by someone who was not her lover, who was not her husband, but someone she looked upon as a father. Someone whom she had revered like a father ever since she came to live in Ayodhya as the young queen of Kalmashapada.

And she picks up that stone, and hits her womb again and again, thud, thud, thud, screaming in agony, crushing her insides, tearing her stomach open, tearing her womb open, spilling its contents out. And perhaps dies in the process.

The child lives, though.

The king has atoned. The next Ikshwaku on the throne will be the aurasa son of Vasishtha, Vasishtha’s flesh and blood.

The Mahabharata tells us this part of the story differently, though. According to it, it was not in atonement for his sins that Kalmashapada offers Madayanti to Vasishtha. It is because he was incapable of producing a child in her. He has been rendered incapable by a curse.

The same curse as Pandu receives later in the Mahabharata from the sage Kindama. And almost for the same reasons. Pandu receives the curse from Kindama because he killed the sage while the sage was engaged in sex, while he was in the middle of the sex act. And Kindama curses Pandu that he too will die in the sexual act – that if he ever touched his wife, if he ever had sex with her, he would die immediately. A curse that comes true later because Pandu is not able to resist the temptation when he sees his beautiful wife one spring morning when the whole earth is bathed in glory, when the whole nature is celebrating the festival of life, of creation. Pandu has sex with Madri in spite of her protests, and she perhaps gives in, in spite of the knowledge of the consequences, seeing his pain, his agony, his helplessness, and he dies in the act.
Kalmashapada too is cursed, the Mahabharata tells us, with the same curse. But not by a sage but by a brahmani. By a woman.

According to this story, the brahmani Angirasi was in the jungle, making love to her husband. They were in the middle of their lovemaking when they see Kalmashapada the rakshasa approaching. They separate and flee. But Kalmashapada catches hold of the brahmana. The brahmani too stops. She begs the rakshasa to spare her husband – her reason: she has not yet achieved satisfaction. She tells him that, adding that she was doing it for begetting a child and now that child will never be, so please spare the man. Kaslmashapada refuses to listen to her and tearing him to pieces before her eyes, eats him up. The brahmani prepares a chita, a pyre, and enters it, killing herself. Before dying she curses Kalmashapada – you have caught and killed my husband while we were in the act of love. For this, if you ever touch your wife, you too shall die immediately. It is because of this curse that Kalmashapada is forced to offer his wife’s body to the sage – that is what the Mahabharata tells us.

There are a lot that is discordant in this version.

We are told that immediately on being released from the curse Kalmashapada made the request to Vasishtha to beget a son in his wife. This is rather strange. A man who has been changed into a rakshasa, when he is released from the curse, the first thing he does is request his guru, his kulapurohita, to beget a son in his wife. This seems extremely unlikely. That cannot be his first concern.

But it becomes likely if he was atoning for his sin. If he had insulted Vasishtha for some reason, and Vasishtha had changed him into a rakshasa, and as an act of revenge he had eaten up all of Vasishtha’s children, and yet Vasishtha had released him from the curse – then in gratitude and in atonement, he makes that request and offers his wife to the sage: this seems more likely. It becomes more likely even if it was not Vasishtha he had insulted, even if it was not Vasishtha who had cursed him, but Shakti. For nothing could be done now about what was done to Shakti, he was dead. And by insulting Shakti first and then killing and eating him up, as well as killing and eating up all the other sons of Vasishtha, Kalmashapada had wronged more Vasishtha than Shakti himself and now he wants to atone, he wants to express his gratitude to the sage for releasing him from the abominable curse – that is understandable. If it is not an act of atonement, an expression of his gratefulness, it is not likely that this will the first thing that Kalmashapada does immediately on his release from the curse. And the texts tell us that immediately on his release, Kalmashapada made this request, made this offer, and took Vasishtha to the palace for this express purpose.

Add to this the fact that Kalmashapada had believed he would never be released from rakshasahood. He did believe so and he tells as much – in the story of Uttanka that appears in the Ashwamedhika Parva of the Mahabharata. There Kalmashapada tells him that he does not see an end to his miseries – neither in this world nor in the worlds to come. Kalmashapada’s relief at the release from the curse must have been immense. And in the immensity of his relief, he must have wanted to atone and must have made that offer to the sage. I do not think it was as much a request that Kalmashapada made to Vasishtha as an offer. An offer atoning for his sins. It was not because he was prevented by a curse from touching his wife that he made that offer but because he wanted to atone.

It was also an act of surrender – an act of admission of the superiority of the sage to him, of the sage’s spiritual powers to his royal power. Surrender he had made even before his release from the curse, while he was still a rakshasa, as he admits to Uttanka. He tells him: “No king can be stable in his power in this world nor happy in his future worlds after antagonising brahmanas”. [Mb Ashwa 58/8] Defeat rings throughout Kalmashapada’s words in this chapter of the Mahabharata.

Also, the brahmani story sounds too much like something added later to the main story to justify Kalmashapada’s heinous crime of offering his wife’s body to another for sex and procreation. The brahmani in the story is not really angry with the rakshasa for killing her man – her anger is more at killing him before they have finished the sex act! The story tells us very clearly that she tells him two things – one, that her sexual act has not reached its culmination, that she has not yet reached satisfaction; and second, that she was doing it with him for the purpose of procreation and now that procreation will not be possible. It is as though she does not care for her husband, as though her only interests are in sexual satisfaction and in begetting a child, for both of which the man is a tool and her anger is at the loss of that tool. It reads as though if Kalmashapada had killed the brahmana just a little later, after they had reached their climax and she had reached satisfaction, and after she had been inseminated, then she wouldn’t have minded the killing. The curse itself makes this more clear. The wording of the curse specify that if Kalmashapada touched his wife during her receptive period, then he would die. If he had sex with her when she is in her ritu [patneem rtau anuprapya], then he would die.

It is as though it is begetting a child in his wife that the brahmani’s curse prevents, not sex per se. That sounds very much like a story added to justify Kalmashapada’s offering his wife to Vasishtha. I am inclined to reject the story as a later addition with this specific purpose. Whoever added the story to the text knew the enormity of the act of Kalmashapada – and he wanted to mollify it, to soften it, by justifying it by saying that Kalmashapada had no choice, a niyoga was absolutely necessary.

There is another reason why I suspect the story of Angirasi. The Kalmashapada we see in the Uttanka story in the Ashwamedhika Parva is what we would call a perfect gentleman, in spite of being a cannibal. Uttanka goes in search of him so that he can ask for Madayanti’s kundalas, which he wants to offer his gurupatni as his gurudakshina. Uttanka meets him in the jungle and when he does, it is the sixth-part of the day, which is the time for him to have his meal of human flesh, as he himself tells Uttanka while welcoming him arrival, and he is very hungry. And yet Kalmashapada does not gobble him up immediately. Instead, when he is told about the reason for his arrival, Kalmashapada leaves him off to go to Madayanti. He gives him time to complete his purpose when the brahmana promises that he will come back to him afterwards to be eaten by him. Again, when Madayanti asks for a proof that he is really coming from Kalmashapada, Uttanka goes back to Kalmashapada seeking the proof – the rakshasa does not eat him this time either. Then, after getting the kundalas, the brahmana comes to Kalmashapada a third time – this time seeking answer to a question he has about the meaning of the message Kalmashapada had sent to the queen through him by way of proof. Again the rakshasa does not eat him. Besides, Uttanka now asks Kalmashapada another question – what is good for him, to come back to Kalmashapada or not to come back after he has completed his errand? And the rakshasa tells him plainly – not to come back, for if he came back, he will certainly eat him. A hungry Kalmashapada lets the brahmana go, knowing full well he will not come back. This is not the man who will catch hold that brahmana engaged in sex with his wife and eat him up, while his wife pleaded for his life.

Also, even if a niyoga is necessary, one’s guru, one’s kulapurohita, is not the right person to do that, certainly not the first choice. Perhaps a guru is the last person to approach for this purpose since a guru is like a father both to the king and to the queen.
In the Mahabharata, Satyavati asks Vyasa to do niyoga – initially in Ambika and then later in Ambalika, both wives of Vichitraveerya. Vyasa is a renowned sage at that time – speaking of him proudly his mother tells Bheeshma – the renowned sage who has codified the four Vedas, he is my son. She is embarrassed to make this confession of giving birth to a child while still unmarried, but she is proud of Vyasa, of the fact that he is a great sage.

But Vyasa is asked to perform the niyoga not because he is a sage but because he is a half-brother to Vichitraveerya and therefore the first choice for performing niyoga, exactly as Bheeshma is, whom she first approaches though he refuses, citing his vow to remain an oordhvareta, a celibate, as the reason. Bheeshma is Vichitraveerya’s half brother because they have the same father, and Vyasa because they have the same mother. So it is because Vyasa is Ambika’s and Ambalika’s devar [Sanskrit: dvivara, meaning second husband, husband-alternative, levirate] that Satyavati asks him to do the niyoga.

When Deerghatamas is asked by Bali to do the niyoga in his wife Sudeshna, Deerghatamas is a sage all right, again, but not his guru, not his priest. He had just been brought to the capital rescued from the river.

Vasishtha the kulaguru was certainly not the first choice and yet the first thing that Kalmashapada asks after being released from the curse is to beget a child in his wife – a child who will sit on the throne of Ayodhya and whose descendants will be the future kings of Ayodhya for all time to come. No, the story of the curse of the brahmani does not ring true. An act of atonement definitely does. For Kalmashapada, there is no more humiliating way of punishing himself that that request he makes, that offer he makes.
Whatever the reason, from the standpoint of Madayanti, Kalmashapada’s queen, the story is just one: her husband, her king, offers her body to another man. It is only the body that is offered, not her. For she does not become Vasishtha’s wife, but continues to be Kalmashapada’s wife. Had he offered her as a wife to the sage, to be his forever, perhaps it would have been less humiliating to her. She is just given to the sage for the sexual act, for procreating a child in, and that could be very, very humiliating for any woman. She submits to the king’s will, offers her body to the sage for that demeaning act, hating him for what he is doing, hating her man for what he is making her do, hating herself for what she is permitting to be done to her. She must perhaps have wondered why she did not kill herself before she allowed that act to take place. And then, as she watches her stomach bulge, the child in her womb grow, her determination grows, her fury becomes blinding, and in a moment of supreme will, she decides to end herself and the product of sin in her womb. The child survives, though, and we are told nothing of what happened to her – perhaps there is nothing to tell.

One of the saddest parts of this story is that Kalmashapada does not feel any need to consult her before offering her body to the sage. He feels no need to discuss it with her. He makes that offer the moment he is released from the curse when he is yet to meet her.

Kalmashapada feels no need to consult her, to discuss it with her. As though her part is only to beget children for him and how those children were conceived was no concern of it. She belonged to him, her body belonged to him, her womb was his – she was his kshetra, his field. Her body, her womb was his kshetra, his field. They did not belong to her, but to him. To be used for his purposes. To be used as he pleased. What seeds he wanted to sow there would be decided by him, not by her.

He had the right to inseminate her any way he wished, just as he had the right to inseminate his cows by any bull he wished.

It is not that Kalmashapada does not love her. He does. But that does not mean he does not own her, cannot offer her body whom he pleased.

Perhaps Kalmashapada’s offering her body to the sage is as much an act of a rakshasa as his eating human flesh had been, though he was unaware of the cruelty of what he was doing.

Interestingly, if anyone doubts that there is something foul in all this, we have the Mahabharata itself to tell us that we are not the first to be shocked by this. Others before us have considered this an act of sin. Arjuna, who is told this story by the yaksha Chitraratha, is shocked by it, though his shock is at Vasishtha’s acceptance of the offer than at Kalmashapada’s offer. He perhaps believed, like Kalmashapada, that a wife is a husband’s property – while he had doubted the morality of Yudhishthira’s act of wagering Draupadi in the dice hall, he had never doubted that he had the right to do that. He had also agreed to share Draupadi with his brothers, as though she was a thing to be shared and not a person.

Arjuna is shocked by Vasishtha’s acceptance of the offer. And he asks Chitraratha in dismay, in outrage, how a sage like Vasishtha could accept that offer, do something like that, when Vasishtha knows clearly what should be done and what shouldn’t [Janata vai param dharmam vasishthena mahatmana… Mb. Adi 181/2]. This is agamya-gamana, says Arjuna – proscribed sex, sinful sex, ‘entering a forbidden woman’. Arjuna uses the word adharma to describe the act.

~00~

The story of Kalmashapada is a story of worldly power bending its knees before spiritual power. It is a story of braahma, spiritual power, winning a victory over kshaatra, material power. It is a story of a kshatriya being humbled by a brahmana.

Kalmashapada’s defeat is also Vishwamitra’s defeat – Vishwamitra the kshatriya’s defeat before Visishtha the brahmana.

But it is also the story of a woman being used as an object – used as an object in one of the most humiliating acts possible, if not the most humiliating act. An ugly act in which woman becomes a pawn in a power-play between men and is reduced to an object – a sexual object.

The woman strikes back in the only way it is possible for her to strike back – by killing herself, and by trying to kill the child in her womb.

The tragedy is that she fails in that too. She fails in killing that child – the child so begotten on her, the child that will forever establish Vasishtha’s blood on the throne of Ayodhya, the child that will from then on forever will be the sign of the humiliation of the Ikshwakus.

Perhaps she succeeds in one thing – in killing herself.

Good for her, perhaps.

~00~

There are a few other interesting sides to the Kalmashapada story. Like the one in which a brahmana comes to him asking for a meal with meat, and to whom Kalmashapada orders his cook to serve human flesh.

It is also interesting that all the people who cause harm to Kalmashapada in this story are brahmanas – Vasishtha, Shakti, the brahmana who asks for meat in his meal, and the brahmani Angirasi and her husband, all. Uttanka, too, is a brahmana. Natural perhaps, considering that this is really a story of the struggle between spiritual or brahmanical power, and royal power.

O0O

My Friend Ebhrashi

Ignorance is Bliss.

My friend Ebhrashi had just got engaged to a beautiful girl who had an identical twin. I asked Ebhrashi, “How do you tell them apart?”

Ebhrashi said, “I don’t try to.”

O0O

Ebhrashi had always felt his nose was ugly. He went for a nose job to the plastic surgeon. He asked the surgeon, “How much will it cost?”

“About two lakhs,” said the doctor.

Ebhrashi was silent for a minute. Then he asked, “Supposing I bring my own plastic?”

O0O

Late one evening Ebhrashi came home and found his wife in the arms of another man in their bedroom. “I am going to hack him to pieces,” screamed Ebhrashi, rushing out of the room. “Where is the hacking knife?”

His wife jumped out of the bed and ran after him. She caught hold of him and shouted, “Don’t be a fool! You have been out of work for months. Where do you think the money came from for the new clothes I bought for you recently? And for the new sofa set in the drawing room and the new curtains? Did you believe I made all that money from my sewing?”

Ebhrashi wrenched himself free from his wife’s grip. As he was rushing toward the storeroom, his wife yelled, “No hacking knife, you idiot!”

“Who wants a hacking knife?” Ebhrashi shouted back, without stopping.
“I am getting a blanket. The poor man might catch a cold lying naked there.”

O0O

Ebhrashi’s son was a chip of the old block. During a parent-teacher meeting, his teacher told Ebhrashi’s wife. “Your son is intelligent, but he is interested only in one thing – girls. He spends all his time fooling around with them. But don’t worry. I am working on a plan to change him.”

“Good,” said Ebhrashi’s wife. “Let me know if it works. I want to try it out on his father.”

O0O

Ebhrashi had taken a girl to the movies. Of course, they were not interested in the movies. The two talked away excitedly, and after a while the man sitting behind them lost his patience. Tapping Ebhrashi on the shoulder, the man said, “Excuse me, but I can’t hear a thing.”

“Well,” fumed Ebhrashi, “this is not meant for you. This is a private conversation.”

O0O

Ebhrashi was giving advice to a young colleague in the office, who was about to get married. “The first ten years are the hardest,” he told the young man.

“How long have you been married?” asked the youth.

“Ten years,” said Ebhrashi.

O0O

This is from the courtship days of Ebhrashi.

Ebhrashi had slipped quietly into his girlfriend’s room one evening. He sat there whispering sweet nothings to her, quietly so that they wouldn’t be heard. After a while he heard the clocking striking nine, then ten and then eleven.

“How fast time flies when I am with you,” said Ebhrashi passionately.

“Don’t be a fool!” said his girlfriend. “That’s Father setting the clock.”

O0O

The Single Crow Cawing

I woke up early today
When it was still dark
Hearing a single crow cawing outside
Perched on the electric pole.
It kept cawing and cawing
All alone
For a long time
And I was worried –
Will the sun come up
If only one crow cawed?
Fortunately, other crows joined him after a while
And I knew there was no reason to worry any more
Soon the sun will come up in the eastern sky.

O0O

Eearly morning, October 11, 2009

The Life and Teachings of Jillellamudi Amma

I began reading The Life and Teachings of Jillellamudi Amma with some misgivings. Part of an early youth spent as an atheist is still with me; besides, I am used to devotees making all kinds of legends about their masters. And as I began reading, I wondered if some of my doubts were turning true. I found some incidents mentioned at the beginning of the book testing the boundaries of my willingness to believe. But I decided to read on, partly because the book is so beautifully produced and partly because I had heard such beautiful things about the woman saint whom they call Jillellamudi Amma. I have a close friend who has childhood memories of being in the lap of Amma. Once, he tells me, he was sitting in Amma’s lap and taking bites from a guava in his hand when Amma asked for it. He said he couldn’t give it to her – it was ‘jootha’ since he had bitten into it and what is jootha should not be given to anyone. Amma laughed and said it was fine with her, she did not mind, and accepting the fruit from his hand took a bite from it and returned it to him. I loved the incident and felt I had to know more about the woman saint who did that.

I do not know when I started looking at the incidents mentioned in the book with more trust and openness. I know for sure that one of the incidents that made an impact on me was Amma’s placing her foot on the heart of a gentleman devotee of hers in an act of blessing and giving strength. No, it is not the effect the touch had on the devotee that impressed me, but the fact that she touched him with her foot itself.

This is how the book explains the incident. Lakshminarayana [L.], a devotee, was on a visit to Amma;s place, accompanied by his wife. “He wanted to perform puja to her. In the course of an absorbing discussion with her children [devotees], Mother invited L. to sit nearer to her cot. But L. said that he was afraid to do so. “Why should you fear Mother,” asked Mother and placing one of her feet on his lap, she placed the other near his heart.”

In the traditional Indian culture, a woman does not place her foot on a man’s chest, whatever her relationship with him. Some male saints are known to have done so, as Sri Ramakrishna once did to young Vivekananda. But I had never heard of a woman saint doing that, either to a female devotee or to a male devotee. And that is what Jillellamudi Amma had done. I knew one thing for sure. In order to do that, either she had to be completely fake, or a very great saint, a powerful yogini. I had no reason to believe that she was fake – nothing that I had heard about her or read about her told me so.

Lakshminarayana’s relationship with Amma as portrayed in The Life and Teachings of Jillellamudi Amma makes fascinating reading, partly because he begins with no faith in Amma. “Though willing to accept that some sort of an Intelligence lies behind the order in Creation, he was averse to the worship of sadhus, sannyasis, mahatmas and the like. Even if these existed, L. felt that more harm is done to society by the existence of innumerable “counterfeits.””

This is how the book describes Lakshminarayana’s first encounter with the miraculous. “Strangely enough, he once dreamt that he was taken to a temple by his aunt and that, when he prostrated at the feet of the Goddess, though only to satisfy his aunt, tears rose in his eyes. The toes of the idol’s feet stirred a little when the tears fell over them. Surprised, he looked up at the face of the Goddess. He found a living form there. She patted him gently, saying, “You need not shed tears. I am always there for you.”

The dream puzzled Lakshminarayana, but otherwise did not alter his life in any way and he more or less forgot it though every time he recalled it, every detail appeared before his mind, with total vividness.

Years later, after he had become a devotee and regular visitor to Amma’s ashram, something happened that brought this dream to his mind with the force of a lightning strike. Let me quote the incident straight from the book.

“During one of his visits, Mother playfully referred to L. as “the man from Guntakal.” L. felt very badly and was on the verge of shedding tears because, if he were transferred to such a distant place, he wouldn’t be able to visit Mother so often... Mother noticed his intense feelings and asked him to sit near her. He rested his head on her lap and wept silently. Tears flowed profusely from his eyes and fell on the toes of her feet. The toes stirred a little. He raised his eyes to look at Mother’s face. She smiled most benignly and, patting him affectionately, assured him: “You need not shed tears. I am always there to look after you.””

The book winds up the incident saying, “The dream that he had years earlier, even before he heard of Mother, had now come to pass!”

The transformation of the nonbeliever Lakshminarayana to a firm believer in Amma and her powers provides some of the most fascinating reading in the book.

A few years after Lakshminarayana had his original dream, he got married and set up his family. It was his aunt that first suggested that he visit Jillellamudi for Amma’s darshan. He refused, since he did not believe in such things, though he did allow his wife to accompany his aunt on the visit. It was his wife’s subsequent persuasion that eventually took Lakshminarayana to Jillellamudi first and Amma left a powerful impression on him on that first visit itself. He had allowed his wife to persuade him because he was depressed, but the moment he reached Amma’s presence, all worry and gloom disappeared from him. The result was that he now began visiting Amma’s place regularly.

It was on one of these visits that Amma put his foot on his heart.

“Once Mother asked L. to be present for three days during the ensuring Sankranti. But when the time came for him to visit Jillellamudi in accordance with Mother’s words, a notice was issued by his office that no one should leave the place without prior permission. It looked as though this was intended for L., who was known to be visiting Jillellamudi almost every weekend. L. did not want to seek the permission of his boss. “If Mother really wants me to go there, the boss should himself send for me and permit me to go,” he said to himself, “or else I shall stay here only, shutting myself up in my house, without taking any food for three days.” Mysteriously, before the office closed for the day, the boss himself sent for him and told him that he could leave if he so wished!”

Several other incidents speak of Amma’s powers and of her miraculous presence in the life of Lakshminarayana and his wife. “For instance, after the birth of their first daughter, one day Mrs and Mrs L argued and quipped about the child resembling one of them. The next week, when they visited Jillellamudi together, they were disappointed to see the very large number of visitors, for they could not have a personal interview with Mother. When they wanted to leave the village along with several others who were seeking Mother’s permission to leave, Mother gave prasadam to all except these two! She sent word to them and granted them a personal interview. Mrs L. was holding the newborn daughter in her lap.

“Your daughter resembles your sister-in-law,” said Mother gazing at the child.

Mrs and Mr L. just smiled in reply. Then Mother admonished them in feigned anger: “Don’t you have anything else to discuss at home?””

Here is another similar incident. “In those days they were visiting Mother as frequently as possible – once a week or a fortnight. Whenever they came, she used to refer to the various victuals they had prepared on various days at Guntur, and what was wrong with their preparation and taste! One day she referred to the pancakes that Mrs L. prepared on a certain day in her home in Guntur: “The hotel-made pancakes taste better, don’t they?” asked Mother, looking intently at the face of L.”

Those were precisely the words he had spoken days earlier when his wife had given him the pancakes she prepared!

“Then she turned to Mrs L. and advised her: “You are preparing them in a curved pan, they must be roasted n a flat one.””

I would like to quote here one last incident from the life of L. related to Jillellamudi Amma. One night, when he and his wife were together in bed, it occurred to them that it was not proper for them to keep Amma’s photograph in their bedroom and they shifted it to the little shrine they had in the kitchen. “Later, when they visited Mother for the weekend, Mrs L. without stating what had happened, just said to Mother: “Pardon us, Mother.”

““It’s no mistake! It is what is most natural. When you believe that I am omnipresent, what is the need to hide anything from me? There is no need to feel guilty about it,” Mother replied.”

I have been discussing Amma based exclusively on one part of one chapter from The Life and Teachings of Jillellamudi Amma – the fourth chapter, titled “At the Feet of the Mother.” Chapter one is titled “A Short Sketch of Mother’s Life” and chapter two, “The House of All – A Symbol of Synthesis.” Chapter three is “The Miracle That Is Mother” and has subsections with such interesting subtitles as: “The Baptism of Tears,” “The Subtle Alchemy,” “When Mother Speaks,” “In the Presence of the Mother” and “The Incredible Mother,” all dealing with different aspects of the Amma-experience. Chapter five is titled “With Her Children” and gives us snippets of her conversations with her disciples and devotees. The final chapter, “Sayings,” consists of her sayings about herself, about God, the Way, the nature of humanness, death, and so on. In addition to these six chapters, the book also has a Postscript and an Introduction. The book, as was mentioned earlier, is beautifully produced and the cover design by Girija Nair is a delight to the eyes.

The publishers have done a great service to spirituality in general and Indian spirituality in particular by bringing out this beautiful book on a great modern saint, who is not as widely known in India outside Andhra Pradesh as she should be, though her fame outside India seems to be somewhat better established.
Timothy Conway, Ph.D., says about the mother: 'Anasuya Devi is, to my mind, one of the greatest spiritual presences ever to be embodied in this planet, a highly remarkable Divine Mother of modern times.'

One of the most remarkable things about Amma is that she lived the life of a village householder all her life.

Before I end, here are a few sayings by Amma on different subjects.

On Herself
• Reality itself is my state.
• I am the beginning and I am the end.
• I cannot be known; you know me only when I make myself known to you.
• Not teaching anything is my teaching.

On God and the Way
• If Knowledge is Brahman, why not Ignorance?
• Where is the question of a good way to Atman, when everything you see is that?
• Adopting sannyasa is not right; one should become a sannyasi.
• Bestowing the nearness of God is initiation.
• Experience bestows faith; faith cannot bestow experience.
• Mindfulness is real worship.
• Every word becomes a mantra through mindfulness.
• The meeting point of “I” and “Thou” is the substance and meaning of Brahman.

Profound, lovable, unforgettable sayings, all of them! If you ask me, though, I would pick up “Bestowing the nearness of God is initiation.” How beautifully and effortlessly she takes the word diksha [initiation] to a new height!


O0O

The Life and Teachings of Jillellamudi Amma, by Ekkirala Bharadwaja, Editions India, An imprint of Stone Hill Foundation Publishing, Cochin, 2007. [stonehillfoundation@asianetindia.com] 176 pp, Rs. 195, ISBN 81-89658-44-1.

The World of Tamas and Richard Bach

Richard Bach is best known for his Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a tiny book that achieved the ultimate literary success of becoming a cult book for an age. It was the friend, philosopher and guide, the guru, for young people all over the world in the nineteen-seventies. Millions of young men and women were inspired by it and tried to live their lives as the book taught.

Bach’s next book, Illusions, did not achieve the success its predecessor attained. However, the book has at its beginning one of the most beautiful stories I have ever read – a profoundly beautiful story that can mean scores of different things to different people at different times. This is one of my favourite ‘teaching stories’ – I have used it on different occasions as a vehicle to take my students to a variety of truths.

Here is the story reproduced in its entirety:

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river.

The current of the river swept silently over them all – young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, “I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.”

The other creatures laughed and said, “Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom.”

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, “See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!”

And the one carried in the current said, “I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.”

But they cried the more, “Saviour!” all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.

O0O

This is exactly how the world of tamas is. Those creatures that live at the bottom of the river are living in tamas. When you are dominated by tamas, you refuse to let go, you refuse to change. You unconsciously associate all change with death and all change is anathema to you. You dread it. And in your moral fear, you cling – what you cling to does not matter, but you cling. It could be to the twigs and stones at the bottom of the river. Or it would be to customs and traditions that have lost all meaning. It could be to truths that have become false with the tides of time, to lifestyles that have become irrelevant, to relationships that have ceased to have meaning, to your possessions or to a thousand other things. It could even be to the empty packet of the toothpaste that you bought ten years ago, or to the toothbrush that you stopped using ages ago. But if you are tamasic, you cling to them. Cling to them for your life. And you are terrified of the very thought of letting go. For your mind, steeped in tamas, tells you: “Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die.”

Krishna discusses tamas at length in the Bhagavad Gita and contrasts it to the other two gunas – sattva and rajas. Speaking of tamasic knowledge, Krishna says that they do not see even when they see: they see what is not there, and do not see what is there. To them what is real is unreal, and what is unreal is real.

That is what happens when we are under the influence of overpowering tamas. The creatures at the bottom of the river see the ‘messiah’ floating by above them. They hear his words, his exhortations to let go. But all they do is to continue to cling tightly to the twigs and stones at the river bottom. And make legends about a saviour.

I am sure they clung all the more tightly to the twigs and stones when they saw the creature floating downstream and heard him.

Indian culture tells us the story of Indra, the lord of the gods, becoming a pig due to a curse. He lives lifetimes as a pig, enjoying the pleasures of the pig’s life, considering them the highest pleasures, producing numerous children in every lifetime, considering the pig’s world the best of all worlds. The gods come to awaken him, enlighten him. When they tell him he is the lord of the gods, the master of the heavens, and ask him to go back with them to the heavens, he attacks them furiously and drives them away, telling them there can be no life better than that of the pig. As they run away in terror, he moves towards his sow, grunting in triumph.

Life is not meant for clinging, but for letting go. So long as you do not let go, you do not know of other possibilities. When you let go, other possibilities open before you.

When the child leaves its mother’s womb, as Tagore puts it, it is born into the wide open wonderful world.

O0O

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.

O0O

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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The Willing Woman: On Epic Women and Will Power

I was surfing channels on the TV the other day when I came across an episode of the original Mahabharata serial being re-telecast. It showed Duryodhana coming to his mother Gandhari just before the war begins and seeking her blessings for victory. Gandhari refuses to bless her eldest son. All she would say is ‘Where dharma is, victory shall be’. Yato dharmah tato jayah.

It requires enormous courage, will and determination for a mother to say that to her son going to the battlefield.

Gandhari invariably appears in the Mahabharata as a woman of iron will and determination. When we first meet her as the young bride of blind Dhritarashtra, it is with a blindfold over her eyes. Traditional interpretation says she blindfolded herself out of devotion to her husband – to deny herself the pleasures that were denied him. If the world of sight did not exist for her husband, then she did not want it for herself either. Many modern writers, including myself [See The Brides of the Bharatas – http://www.boloji.com/women/0076.htm], see it as an act of revolt by a woman who was betrayed rather than as one of self-denial.

Whatever her reasons, it requires enormous will power to keep that blindfold through a lifetime of joys and sufferings. Any woman would want to have a look at the man she has married – the man with whom she is going to spend a lifetime, the man whose children she is going to bear, but not Gandhari. She denies that pleasure to herself. And perhaps a woman feels a still greater need to see the face the children she has given birth to. But in Gandhari’s case, she denies that privilege too to herself. As the children she brought to life come to the world, her blindfold remains firm on her face. All her one hundred sons are killed in the Mahabharata war. Gandhari visits the battlefield after the war is over. But her blindfold remains in its place. It is only through the powers given to her by Vyasa that she sees their dead bodies lying scattered all over the battlefield. She never sees her husband’s brother Pandu, or his wife Kunti. She does not see her own daughters-in-law or grandchildren. She does not see Kunti’s celebrated daughter-in-law Draupadi, or her other daughters-in-law. She never sees Bhishma. She never sees Krishna. Once that blindfold is on, she does not see her own brother ever again, though he spends the rest of his life with her at Hastinapura. [The story that she removes her blindfold and looks at a naked Duryodhana before his final mace fight, making his body diamond-like, finds no place in the Sanskrit epic.]

After the great war Bhima and Yudhishthira come to see her. Not one of her sons has survived the war. And the last of them, the eldest, the most capable, her mighty warrior son who had come to her day after day seeking her blessing for victory but had received only one answer – yato dharmah tato jayah: where dharma is, victory shall be – that master of thirteen akshauhinis of army has just been killed treacherously against the rules of battle, forcing her to question what she had told him every day about dharma succeeding. Bhima was the one who had killed every one of her sons. Yudhishthira is the man for whose sake the war was fought. Gandhari seethes with anger. Her eyes fall on Yudhishthira’s toes from within her blindfold and his toenails turn black. And yet her blindfold remains firm on her eyes.

Later in the battlefield, through the powers given her by Vyasa, she watches the dead bodies of her sons, while birds pulled out their intestines with their beaks and animals tore at their flesh. She watches the measureless grief of her daughters-in-law who weep over their dead husbands. She watches other mighty warriors, including those who fought against her sons, like Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu, lying dead there. She listens to the heartrending cries of the widows of these men. In her helplessness, she takes out her anger on Krishna. She holds him responsible for all that has happened – he had the power to stop it, she says, and yet he did not stop it. She lays a curse on the one man whom she had admired unreservedly, on the man in whom she saw the perfect manifestation of Godliness. But all through this, her blindfold remains in place.

Later, after having lived for a while under Yudhishthira as king, she goes to the forest along with her husband and Kunti, to spend her last days leading an ascetic life there. She fasts there, avoiding food and surviving on water. Kunti, the mother of the ruling king Yudhishthira, becomes her eyes as well as her husband Dhritarashtra’s eyes. Eventually a raging forest fire engulfs the whole place. She takes her seat on the forest ground, along with Kunti and Dhritarashtra, withdrawing her senses into herself, her mind calm and serene, allowing the forest fire to consume her body along with that of her husband and sister-in-law. As fire begins to turn her body into ashes, her blindfold is still there covering her eyes.

That is Gandhari. She is will power itself, in a woman’s form.

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But Gandhari is not the only woman of powerful will that ancient Indian literature portrays. Several more of our epic women who have become role models for millennia ever since their time had equally powerful wills.

If Gandhari’s will power is unshakeable, so is her sister-in-law Kunti’s.

Kunti gives birth to a son while she was still unmarried – a child born with golden armour and earrings. One dark night, weeping in uncontrollable sorrow and yet afraid to produce a single sound, she puts her child in a box and floats him down the river, with the woman who attended on his birth as her only witness. Her heart would weep forever after that night for the son she floated down the river. But her sorrow would remain her private secret.

She chooses Pandu as her husband in a swayamvara and lives with him for years. She lives with him as his queen in Hastinapura for a short period and then in jungles and mountains for several more years. All through these years, she holds on to her secret with almost superhuman tenacity. Not once does she give her beloved husband a single clue that she had given birth to a child before she married him. Not even when he begs her again and again to beget children with other men because he couldn’t beget children of his own. The prolonged discussions about this issue might have lasted weeks and months, for she wouldn’t be persuaded to do what he wanted her to do. And yet she gives him not one clue that she has already given birth to a son by another man while she was a maiden. Eventually Pandu succeeds in persuading her to do what she hated to. She begets three sons for him by three different men – but the secret of her first born son will remain her secret.

Years later she has an encounter with her abandoned son. He is a glorious youth now, known to the world as Karna. In a single verse, the Mahabharata compares him to the sun, the moon and fire – so brilliant is he. He is the very embodiment of warriorhood, glowing with everything that makes a warrior great. He is tall, strong and built like a Palmyra tree. When she sees him first, it is as a challenger to her other dear son Arjuna in an arena where he, along with his brothers and cousins are displaying their learning in martial arts and she is sitting among the royal audience and watching it all.

She takes one look at him and she instantly recognizes him. The unmistakable signs are there – the golden armour and earrings he is born with. Her heart cries out for him, and yet, once again, she cannot allow a single sound to come out of her. He is both her pride and her shame.

He is standing there as a challenger to her other mighty archer son, Arjuna, who has just proved himself to be the greatest young warrior of the day. The abandoned first son does everything that the younger son has done to be called the greatest archer of the day. And then he challenges his younger brother for a duel – he does not know he is challenging his own brother.

His parentage is questioned. Only royalty can enter into a duel with royalty. When he stands silent, unable to answer, he is crowned king on the spot by Duryodhana, his brother’s rival.

He had grown up as the son of a lowly chariot driver. Seeing him crowned king, the old charioteer walks into the arena. Karna, in humility, bends down and touches his father’s feet, declaring his parentage to all the world.

Karna, arguably the greatest warrior of them all, her son, is now loudly called low-born and ridiculed by another of her sons, Bhima. Bhima asks him to pick the charioteer’s whip in his hand as befitting a driver instead of the bow and arrow which is fit only for warriors.

One moment her son is crowned a king and the next he is mercilessly ridiculed on the grounds of his lowly birth. His mother is a queen and she knows that the man who begot him has nothing about him that a son should be ashamed of. Karna raises his eyes and stares in helpless fury at the Sun God watching it all from the skies.

Watching it all, Kunti faints in the royal galleries. Those who see that assume that it is because of the threat which her son Arjuna had faced and from which he has narrowly escaped. As for herself, her secret would remain deep in her heart, with not a clue to anyone. She had long ago determined to guard her secret and she will keep guarding it.

There come innumerable occasions when her revelation of the secret would have changed the situation entirely and avoided untold sufferings to her children and their families. But not once does she reveal it. She witnesses her sons being defeated in a game of dice and made slaves to their worst enemies, losing their kingdom and all else they owned. She endures her beloved daughter-in-law, Queen Draupadi, being dragged by her hair into an assembly of kings when she was in her monthly period and wearing a single piece of bloodstained cloth. Humiliation after humiliation will heaped upon Draupadi – on the orders of that son Kunti had abandoned as a baby. She endures her sons’ and daughter-in-law’s sufferings for twelve years in jungles and another year of humiliation they lived in hiding as dependants in another kingdom. But she does not reveal her secret.

On the eve of the terrible war, she meets and talks for the first time to her son, begging him to join her other sons’ side. He refuses, but promises to spare the life of all her other sons, except that of Arjuna. This meeting and this promise too she keeps a secret from all.

In the Mahabharata war her son Karna is killed treacherously by her son Arjuna and yet the secret remains with her. It is only when death rites for the family were being performed after the war that she for the first time acknowledges before the world that Karna was her son and asks her eldest surviving son to perform obsequies for him, shocking him, and everyone else, with her revelation.

Sometime after her son Yudhishthira is crowned the king of Hastinapura, when Gandhari and Dhritarashtra decide to spend the rest of their life in the forest leading an ascetic life, Kunti is with them as they take leave of the citizens. As the old couple walks towards the forest, she too walks on with them. The Pandavas are aghast! She has not told one word to them about going to the forest, she has given not a clue. They all beg her again and again, giving reason after reason why they need her with them, why she should not abandon them, but it is of no use. Kunti has made up her mind to live the rest of her life with old Gandhari and Dhritarashtra in the forest, serving them, and no power in the world can alter her mind. It is with them, the mother and father of the men who caused her sons and daughter-in-law such untold sufferings, that she meets with her end – welcoming the forest fire that consumes them all, seated in meditation like them, as calm and serene as they were.

The Mahabharata tells us that her sons were fathered by gods – Arjuna by Indra, Bheema by Vayu, Yudhishthira by Dharma and Karna by the Sun god. If we refuse to accept gods siring children in human women as a possibility, then Kunti’s secret still remains with her: we do not know who the fathers of her sons are. But of course, her sons themselves never discovered it.

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If Kunti is a woman of unbeatable will power, no less is her daughter-in-law Draupadi. It is not only in the dice hall into which she was dragged by her hair that she shows her power, but throughout her life. In fact, the very first time we encounter her in the Mahabharata, she shows she is truly a woman born of fire. As Karna puts arrows to the bow with the aim of hitting the target and winning her, she, a bride standing amidst all those kings, appearing for the first time in an assembly, has the presence of mind and the courage of heart to say she shall not wed him. We may not agree today with the reason for her refusal – it is based on the caste of the man who was trying to win him. But what she is asserting is a woman’s right to decide who she shall wed.

Much later in the dice hall it is her courage that saves not only her but the Pandavas too. It is bending before her dignity and courage that Dhritarashtra eventually asks what was going on to be stopped and then, through boons offered to her, releases her and her husbands from slavery and gives them back their kingdom and wealth that they had lost in the game of dice.

She takes a vow in the middle of her humiliation there – that she would tie up her hair only after it has been smeared with the blood of Dusshasana. Her hair remains unbraided for the next thirteen years, including the one year she spends at Virata as a maid to the queen.

Before Krishna goes on his peace mission to Hastinapura, Yudhishthira asks him to work for an amicable solution – he wound be contented with just five villages if war could be avoided through it. Of all the Pandava brothers, it is Bhima we associate most with battle hunger. Perhaps the life he has lived for the thirteen years has tired him or maybe it is the fear of the Bharata family being wiped out of existence – whatever his reason, he too asks for peace. He too speaks of peace and tells Krishna that the Bharata family should not come to an end because of them – if necessary, they would accept Duryodhana as their lord, be subservient to him and walk behind him in humility. Krishna’s first response is a smile. But when he speaks, it is like a whiplash. He accuses Bhima of cowardice and fear, of behaving like a eunuch. Krishna ends his speech with the powerful words: yad ojasā na labhate kṣatriyo na tad aśnute – a kshatriya does not enjoy what is not obtained through valour. After Bheema, it is Arjuna’s turn to speak of peace. He asks Krishna to act in such a way that there is peace between them and their enemies. But Draupadi remains determined: the war should be fought, enemies should be crushed, she needs her vengeance. Thirteen years of suffering and privation hasn’t weakened her will – if anything, it has become more resolute.

When Krishna offers to go on his peace mission to the Kauravas in a final attempt to avoid the war, she comes before him and, taking her long, thick, curly black hair in her hand, eloquently appeals to him to remember her hair as he talks of peace at Hastinapura. It is not peace she wants, it is not even the kingdom she wants, but vengeance. Her desire for vengeance would see that all hundred sons of Dhritarashtra are killed in the war.

According to a folk tradition, Krishna and Arjuna, dressed as ascetics and looking for warriors to join their side before the great war, encounters Barbareek under a village tree. Barbareek is Ghatotkacha’s son and Bheema’s grandson. He is going to Kurukshetra to join the war. Krishna tests Barbareek’s skill with arrows, which proves to be amazing, and then asks him whose side he will join. On hearing that Barbareek will join whichever is the losing side, Krishna the ascetic asks for ‘bhiksha’ from him. Barbareek promises whatever he is asks for and Krishna asks for his head. The noble Barbareek gives it, taking from Krishna a promise that he would be given the privilege of watching the war from a tree top.

After the battle is over, there is a dispute about who the greatest warrior in the battle was. They decide to consult Barbareek’s head – which had watched the whole war from the treetop. Barbareek confesses he did not see any mighty warriors in the battlefield. All he saw was Krishna’s Sudarshana chopping off head after head, and Draupadi drinking up all the blood that spurted out.

The folk tradition is inspired by a popular perception: the Mahabharata war was fought to quench the blood thirst of Draupadi. She wanted vengeance and nothing would change her determination. Such was her will.

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Draupadi is popularly symbol of female determination and will. But in a way even she becomes soft in the end. After Ashwatthama butchers her sleeping brothers and children in the Pandava camp after the war is over, she demands his head. Eventually, though, she becomes satisfied with a jewel of supernatural powers taken from his head and does not insist that he be killed. The Draupadi we meet towards the end of the Mahabharata is a mere shadow of her earlier self.

But one epic woman whose resoluteness of will never weakens through a lifetime of sufferings is Sita of the Ramayana. Our first encounter with her as a woman of will is on the day her husband was to be crowned the crown prince of Ayodhya. After Rama is told by Kaikeyi that the kingdom will go to Bharata and he himself will have to go on an exile to the Dandaka forest for fourteen years, Rama comes to inform Sita about it and to take leave of her. Unlike Rama who is deeply affected by the news and just manages to hold himself together [See Rama: A Study in Self-Mastery – http://www.boloji.com/perspective/323.htm], Sita is untouched by it. Not once does she mention the loss of kingdom. Instead, all she is concerned about is that Rama should not leave her behind when he goes to Dandakaranya. She just will not have it.
She tells Rama that she has decided to go with him. Just like that. It is not a request. She does not plead to Rama to take her with him. She makes a statement of fact: she is going with him to the jungle. And nothing in the world can alter it, nothing in the world can stop her. She does not change her mind once she has decided something. [Sāham tvayā gamiṣyāmi vanam adya na samśayah; nāham śakyā mahābhāga nivartayitum udyatā – literally translated: for that reason, have no doubt, I am coming with you to the jungle today. Once I decide to do something, I cannot be turned back. VR 2.27.15]

Sita here is pure will and determination.

She assures Rama she will make no demands on him. She will live with him as a brahmacharini. She shall be happy with whatever food the jungle provides. She requires no comforts. And she shall walk not behind him, but ahead of him – crushing the thorns and stones on the way with her feet and making his path smooth for him. Agrataste gamishyāmi mrndantī kuśakantakān. [VR 2.27.7]

Rama refuses to listen to her. He describes the pains and privations of the jungle. He describes the dangers of the jungle. But none of that scares her. She is sure of one thing. Come what may, her place is with him. And with him near her, the forest is no forest for her. And without him near her, the palace is no palace to her either. Heaven for her, she tells him, is being with him; and hell, being away from him.

Rama still refuses. And when he does that, the gentle Sita becomes ferocious like a wounded tigress. In her fury, she would stop at nothing. She insults Rama in the most hurting way possible. “Did my father make a mistake when he gave me to you by thinking that you are a man when in fact you are only a woman in a man’s body?” she asks him. Eventually Rama realizes his error and announces he shall take her with him, it was only his love for her that made him ask her to stay back in Ayodhya.

Indian culture in general sees Sita as a very accommodating, submissive woman. But in seeing her so, it misses the core of her personality – her iron will, which she displays again and again throughout her life. Such is her will that a man like Ravana is reduced to impotency before her determination – that too while she was his captive.

Subsequently when Sita is brought before Rama after the war with Ravana has ended, Rama insults her and rejects her publicly, telling her he does not want to see her, her sight is as unpleasant to him as light is to a man suffering from an eye-disease. He asks her to go and live with whomever she chooses – Lakshmana, Bharata, Shatrughna, Sugreeva, Vibhishana or whoever else. She responds by declaring her purity in strong words and her decision not to live thus humiliated by Rama. She asks Lakshmana to prepare for her a pyre – the word she uses, chita, means only one thing: a funeral pyre – and jumps into it, with a prayer to the Fire god on her lips in the name of her chastity and constancy towards Rama. This is what we commonly understand as the agnipariksha, Sita’s ordeal by fire. Whatever it is, whether is an ordeal or an attempt to end her life, it is not on the orders of Rama that she does it, but on her own. Just as the decision to go to the jungle with Rama is her decision, the decision to jump into fire too is her own.

Sita’s iron will is never displayed more clearly than in the last scene of her life. Summoned by Rama, she accompanies Valmiki to Rama’s temporary assembly in Naimisharanya where he is performing the horse sacrifice. She is in Rama’s presence after sixteen long years – she had last met him in her palace gardens in Ayodhya the evening before he abandons her. That evening was one of domestic bliss and tender love. Rama practically forces her to ask for something she wishes – a pregnant woman’s wish, for she is five months pregnant – and after refusing many times, telling she does not want anything, at length she expresses a wish to visit Valmiki’s ashram. He promises to fulfil her wish the very next day. It is that night that Rama hears of the rumours among common people of Ayodhya about her chastity and decides to abandon her. He calls Lakshmana and commands him to take her and leave her in the forest. When she comes to his assembly in Naimisharanya, it is the first time she is in his presence since that sweet evening of sixteen years ago in Ayodhya.

And yet, throughout the encounter, she never once looks at Rama, never utters a single word to him. She still loves him – that is her other strength, apart from her will. But that love has changed. Years ago in Ayodhya she had declared she wouldn’t be able to live one moment without him. Today through her action she says she cannot live one moment with him, such is the pain he has given her. When Rama declares in the assembly he will take Sita back if she proves her purity there, in that assembly, she proves it, and through that proof ends her life. She steps forward from behind Valmiki, her head still bent, her eyes still looking down. “I have not once thought of a man other than Rama in my heart. If this is true, Mother Earth, accept me unto yourself,” she demands of her mother. “With my words, with my deeds and with my heart, I constantly worship Rama. If this is true, Mother Earth, accept me unto yourself.” The earth splits open before her, Goddess Earth appears, and she takes Sita away with her.” She still loves Rama beyond words – but the Rama she loves lives only in her memories. He had died the moment he ordered Lakshmana to take her to the forest and abandon her there. As for the king of Ayodhya, she had never cared for him.

Incidentally, her will, in Sita’s case, is not always her strength. Sometimes it becomes her weakness. Such is the case when she forces Lakshmana to go after Rama, who was chasing the golden deer for her. Lakshmana, unable to stand her fury, leaves her to the safety of the ashram, and weeping in his heart, goes in search of Rama. She will be able to see the brothers only after one year – after untold sufferings for herself, for Rama and Lakshmana, and a war that killed Ravana and all his sons and his brother Kumbhakarna, and masses of warriors on both Rama’s side and on Ravana’s.

Continued 2
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