The Forest of Enchantments - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Could not wait to know, Chitra Banerjee's view on Sita, after reading her mesmerizing Draupadi in "The Palace of Illusion".

Valmiki could not better understand a women's feelings. What occured when Sita was alone in the darkness, under the sorrow tree, her despair, exhilaration, - in the forest, in Ayodhya.

While Ramayana resonates even today, she has the underlying questions in the novel: How should women be treated by their loved ones? What are their rights in a relationship? When does a woman need to stand up and say, "Enough".

Sitayan in red; was written realizing three important things:
- Sita might be incarnation of goddess but having taken a mortal body, is human with failings.
- Sita's choices and reactions stem from courage, easy to mistake for meekness.
- Sita's and Ram's story is most tragic love stories.

Love: Other face is compassion.
- It isn't doled out, drop by drop. It doesn't measure who is worthy and who isn't. It is like the ocean. Unfathomable, astonishing, measureless.
- In a moment it could fulfil the cravings of a lifetime, like a light that someone might shine into a cavern that has been dark for a million years.
- Is wild and optimistic in the beginning
- For the sake of love you give up anger.
- Golden rope, that bind you and pull you in different direction
- It's found in its purest form, on this imperfect earth, between mothers and young children, because there's nothing they want except to make each other happy.
- Even the strongest intellect may be weakened by love.
- The more love we distribute, the more it grows, coming back to us from unexpected sources. And it's corollary; when we demand love, believing it to be our right, it shrivels, leaving only resentment behind.
- What a chameleon thing love was, lifting us up one minute, casting us down the next.
- It made us ready to wreak havoc - even on people we cared for
- It could make us forget out own needs. It could make us strong even when the world was collapsing around us.
- It could kill. Sometimes it could kill instantaneously.
- It's not enough to merely love someone. Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we're willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.
- Once mistrust has wounded it mortally, love can't be fully healed again.
- How it makes us back down from protesting because we're afraid of displeasing the beloved, or because we're afraid that our disagreement is the symptom of a greater disease: incompatibility of values.
- How entangled love is with expectation, that poison vine! The stronger the expectation, the more our anger towards the beloved if he doesn't fulfil it - and the less our control over ourselves.
- When we want to please the one we love. That same love clouds our eyes and doesn't allow us to see what's right in front of us.
- Love is the spade with which we bury, deep inside our being the things that we cannot bear to remember, cannot bear anyone else to know. But some of them remain, and they rise to the surface when we least expect them.

Other lessons are:
- If you want to bring about change, do it in a way that doesn't bruise a man's pride. You'll have a better chance of success.
- The way of Gods are strange, hard for our limited human minds to encompass. Sometimes our Ill luck has consequences that bless others
- We come into the world alone, and we leave it alone. And in between too, if it is destined we will be alone. What you can't change you must ENDURE.

If Panchaali’s tone, in 'The Palace of Illusion', is youthful and spiky, Sita, by contrast, sounds stately and serene, a woman schooled in the treacherous ways of the world by her foster mother Sunaina, long before she arrives in King Dashrath’s household, bristling with feminine intrigue. Divakaruni also pays close attention to the voices of the other women who orbit Sita—Dashrath’s queens Kaushalya and Kaikeyi; Ahalya, cursed by her husband Gautam for alleged infidelity; Sarama, Vibheeshan’s wife, who loses her son Taranisen during Ram’s battle with Ravan to rescue Sita; and Mandodari, Ravan’s chief queen (and according to some versions of the epic, like the Adbhuta Ramayana, Sita’s long-lost mother), who remains, as Divakaruni puts it, “at once so powerful and powerless". “Manthara wants to be Kaikeyi’s protector, she acts out of love," Divakaruni says, “as does Kaikeyi, though she misunderstands her son Bharat entirely." The tragedy of Kaikeyi, which is also the tragedy of the entire Ramayan, is that of love—one that only Sita is able to transcend. “For Sita realizes that it’s not enough to love people," Divakaruni says, “she also learns that we have to love people for what they want for themselves."

Narrated in first person - where Sita is 'I': Book covers, life from girlhood onwards, how each important moment had felt. How excited it was when Ram was met; consternation when he strung Lord Shiva's bow; elation on putting the wedding garland; ecstasy on coming together with Ram; determination to follow him to exile; exciting wanderings in forest; terror of abduction and despair under sorrow tree; heartless rejection and stepping into fire; willingly starting new life; filling a dispirited and dilapidated country with abundance and hope; drawing Ravan's image under the influence of Surpanakha; being banished in the forest with Valmiki and Indira without a word being said because of frivolous gossip, where the twins protective Lav and perceptive Kush were born and later defeats the army and befriends the white horse which was part of ashwamedh yagna; courage through out - of endurance, of moving forward in spite of obstacles, of never giving in, and in the final amazing and heartbreaking moments of her life, refusing to compromise to go through the test by fire for the second time, no matter how much was at stake, keeping aside useless emotions like Anger and self-pity, and speaking calmly, when heart was breaking and driving home the point how important it was to balance duty with love and that private life must not be sacrificed for the public one.

She does this so society will not point on women, when they aren't guilty, the burden of proving their innocence should not fall on them. She did this for the sake of her daughters in the centuries to come. She stood up against the unjust action. As she had lived for the sake of her children when she was abandoned. She called on her mother earth and father fire, and dissolves into them; telling one crucial thing to her husband that she forgave him long time ago. For she knew Ram was compensating for the mistakes his father made when he gave into the demands of his favorite wife and banished him, even though he knew it was bad for the kingdom, as it left a deep mark on Ram.

Blessed to end this Karkidakam month reading the amazing, and much awaited Sitayana.