Seetha’s Story
Foreword
I never truly understood the fact that I was Indian until I was about fourteen. I had found a huge pile of wedding photos hidden away under my mother's bed showing her and my father during their traditional Hindu ceremony. Finding the photos of my mother and father (together! smiling!) was quite a shock, but the bigger thing that struck me while flipping through the ancient film was the beautiful sari my mother was adorned in. It was gold with brown highlights and had tiny silver beads handing from every end. It started at her chest and cascaded down to her ankles to reveal two feet, covered in henna and on them hanging two pristine, shining anklets.
I had never really worn Indian clothes, and if I did it was for events or get-togethers and I would often make a gigantic scene about wearing traditional clothing. But staring at those photos, absorbing the beauty of my mother, her clothing, the country she was in- it made me want to wear my lehenga and go everywhere in it. So I immersed myself in the culture I so much so admired.
The Priyanka that has bark colored skin and loves it emerged, and I began to regularly wear clothes from India or experiment with different colored bindis and even practice different henna designs on my hands. When I began to read Indian literature, determined to finish the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in less than a week without relying on the English translation, I became stuck.
While reading the Ramayana, I took a liking to Seetha, the wife of the main character. She was beautiful, could dance like a princess, and sang like a bird. She was just like my mother in that wedding photo. But in the story she was exiled from society, abused, and left to die. And- for what? Nothing, absolutely nothing. What came out of this outrage was Seetha's Story, a poem retelling the Ramayana but from Seetha's point of view, to illustrate the misogyny in Indian mythology. After writing it this last winter I showed my mother and she almost began to sob- there were so many parallels between the story of Seetha and the things my mother experienced in her life. So, this is for my mother, and all the other women whose stories are not heard.
FROM THE ground
came Seetha, psychedelic and all
Celestial hoops of cyclical divinity & a bleeding, watching orb
resting on her T. Puckered lips, glossed, from the sliminess of man
or the womb of earth & One crown
swallowing her brain
vacant eyes
a hand held out, Stop.
Hidden between her legs
a lotus, plucked to baldness.
II.
आच्छाद्योदरमूरुभ्यां बाहुभ्यां च पयोधरौ
उपविष्टा विशालाक्षी रुदन्ती वरवर्णिनी
[the wide eyed Seetha/with excellent color/covering/stomach/with thighs/breasts/with hands/sat down/crying]
from Valmiki’s Ramayana (Book V Chapter 19)
III.
Brown hands
unweave my sari, Dropped to the
floor & then my first sin: Rama
IV.
the darling is a scintillating Sita,
tap tap tap Odissi in the jungle with
forced mudras, bones cracking,
keep dancing, legs bending
Deer, gold, dazzling, vibrations of seduction
a material crime to women indeed
from the meatiness of night, the
murmurings of bark
How can Ms. Sleeping Beauty wake up?
Trashing in sheets, awake, I’M AWAKE
Furious venom
in the animal
but she ate the apple (anyhow)
& the Sitayanam progressed…
there are waters so clear they
could swallow you whole,
just as Sita’s heart pure with candidacy
intent
it could demolish our villain,
our Ravana but
A woman asserting her own power isn’t virtuous
paralyzed on her belly croaking I knew I knew
V.
abla naari is my name
(helpless woman)
VI.
Alas! My husband! With
Rama I am complete,
with Rama I am full of fire
for the love of life
for the love of my life
I throw myself into the pyre
a helpless woman in His eyes,
My Rama, my
betrayer. No longer wants Sita
but the flames cannot lie
the flames cannot deny
the pure idiocrasy in Sita’s veins.
VII.
O ma,
Bhūmi if you truly are
envelop me once again into the roots of
misogyny
where I can sob all hours
my tears flow down my writhed breasts
Eat my pureness, chew my sadness
and throw up what’s left
THE IDEAL Woman.