Forest of Enchantments
Re-telling of the timeless epic
The Forest of Enchantments does not dwell on how Sita looked - like a lotus or a lily or a Goddess. Her beauty is rather visible in the strength of her character. It is the story which Sita tells after all, and she must be tired of the flowery tags too.
In fact, Chitra Banerji Diwakaruni (the writer) begins the story with Sita. In her exile - for the second time in her life. With her two sons, in Valmiki’s Ashram. We all know this is where the world’s greatest epic will be composed, to be read by her sons to their father soon enough, completing a full cycle and bringing the story of Ramayan to an end.
But the writer imagines Sita reading it before it was sung and feeling that her voice is being lost. And Sita, on Valmiki’s insistence, taking the quill in her hand and re-telling the entire story from her own perceptive, by also giving a voice to the other women in the story.
This is what the Forest of Enchantments brings to us.
The story of Ramayan has always been an enigma in the Indian psyche. We have people worshiping it- not as mythology but as a piece of their very own history. We have people using it - to justify redundant norms or chastity and honor or simply to establish binaries of good versus evil. We have people criticizing it, for the way it treated women and portrayed certain races and castes. We have the skeptics and disbelievers too. We have people who cry - when watching it and reading it and hearing it - my mother included.
The Forest of Enchantments does not take sides. It does not establish if Ram and Sita were indeed Gods, though there is no change in the original story. All the miracles, the lifting of the shivdhanush and the Gods whispering truths unknown are there in the book. But the book choses to emphasize the human side of the characters, letting the divine only add to the intrigue.
It does not portray anyone as heroes and villains. It is realistic in the way it shows the interpersonal relationships between the mothers of Ram - hardly amicable but rather on guard against each other. It shows how Dashrath was blinded in his love for his one wife and one son, the fatal mistake that cost him everything. It shows Ravaan for who he was - a great warrior and King, arrogant and lustful, prone to weakness and unfair and yet not above moral scruples and love for his family that pricked his conscience from time to time.
It exalts Ram and Hanuman and Laxman for the qualities they embody and the values they represent, but lets us see them with their human emotions, bringing them closer to us. More than anything, it offers Sita agency - even when she was not able to control the decisions that were made for her - we see how her response to it was in her control.
The Forest of Enchantments does not preach.
Instead, it gently unfolds the love between the two people meant to be together but driven apart by both - their own human follies and forces they could not control.
Forest of Enchantments is the second such book written by Chitra Banerji Diwakaruni. Her first, and more famous is the Palace of Illusions - Mahabharat retold in Draupadi’s voice. While Palace of Illusions is intriguing and gripping - for all that Mahabraharat is, this book is tender and beautiful in its description of everything, most of all the forest that Ram - Seeta - Lakshman as their abode.
There is a certain innocence in which Sita describes her Ram - his valor, his humility, his humanity, his unwavering affection for his brothers and his quiet, all encompassing love for Sita. Sita’s Ram is imperfect, because she sees flaws in his sense of righteousness that made him lay down everything at stake, and because she sees how his parents' difficult relationships affected him deeply. She is privy to his plans for making Ayodhya a welfare state, and to his anxieties too - of whether he will be able to be a good King to his people.
She sees in him what no one else can and wants to see - such is their blinded faith in his greatness - and she loves him a little more because of it. Because the love which sustains in spite of experiencing all the different shades of a human mind is true love.
And when they separate, their yearning for each other is so great that it pulls your own heartstrings till it hurts with a bittersweet hurt of love and longing. Viraha - the magical word in which this timeless epic is weaved.
I wanted to skip the part where Sita returns and is exiled again, when the citizens of Ayodhya cast their aspersions on her - and Ram, the ever righteous king who cannot let any blemishes appear on his Kingly duties, banishes her. I wanted to skip it because it is too painful to comprehend. And it is not just Sita’s unjust treatment that is difficult to bear, it is the torment of their separation - once again.
Very often, in looking at the way Sita suffered in the hands of Ram - we don't like to look at his sufferings too. Once again, we get caught in the binary - good versus bad, fair versus unfair. Even if Sita was the one living in the forest with little comfort - she still had her dignity and her truth with her. She had her sons. Ram, on the other hand - was stuck in performing the role he never really desired and yet was deemed perfect for. He was lonelier than anyone could have cared to understand, and would continue to be so till he decided to give up his human life. He was in his human avatar, after all. None of the human sufferings belied him. And yet, his tireless commitment to the people who made him the King did not falter.
The book balances this conflict for us, making us feel for everyone - for everyone deserves to be heard and to be understood - too many times they are punished and this is the way we can be kinder to them.
Forest of Enchantments is an ode to Ramayan and also a feminist critique of the same. It is not an interpretation but a perspective that needs to be discussed and much as the epic is praised. If anything, it will only add more allure and less mystique to it.