The Elemental Daughters and Their Trysts With Love II

Part 2: Earth and the Faces of Love.

Earth, one of the elements we are known to be made of, an element that keeps you grounded, an element that we will end up going to once our life is over, perhaps the only element that isn't in motion. It doesn't have to reach anywhere like the flames of fire have to, neither does it flow anywhere like the water, it isn't light like the air, nor does it envelope anything like the sky/space/ether does. What makes Earth so special then? It is perhaps the only element that provides without judging. It bears everything positive and everything negative, it tolerates every possible burden without complaining, it is only when it becomes beyond its capacity to bear is when it trembles, to lighten itself, to bring things to balance or at times to only display its fury at how man mistreats the nature. 

Eons ago was a time when this very earth gave birth. She gave birth to someone believed to be an incarnation of a goddess, the goddess who as a part of a divine plan had to descend to earth as a human and it seems she may have thought that let her take birth from the womb of the one whose plight the gods and goddesses wished to lessen. Thus she was born of the earth, but little did she know that she would indeed end up being like her mother, patient, kind, bearing, providing and enduring and when the man judged her and treated her with disrespect which was too much to be endured she displayed her fury and chose to abandon him and go back to the very earth who bore her. Her name itself came from her mother "seet"which means furrow, thus she was named Sita.

Sita is worshiped across India and also Nepal, but as much as she is revered, she is misjudged and misunderstood. It won't be wrong of me to say that whenever we hear the name Sita, we imagine a woman who is teary-eyed, who is alone and who is very helpless, it is sad that beyond these superficial descriptions that are subconsciously laid down by the society we are unable to see her resilience, her strength, her fierce determination which albeit silently speaks volumes of her caliber. It's worth wondering of how shallow it is on our part that when it comes to Draupadi (daughter of fire), we are quick to opine that she was someone who was strong minded and determined( something that we have just begun to appreciate otherwise even her confidence and strength was misjudged as petulance and haughtiness) only because she was vocal and brazen, but when it comes to Sita, her silent resilience is misjudged as her helplessness, only because she is polite and demure, because she chooses to measure her tone to express opinions. It only shows how quick we are at taking anything at face value and our inability to interpret things that are written between the lines. Which leads to the question that have we been worshiping Sita out of devotion or out of sympathy?

Following the lines of the first part, this post is based on my understanding and interpretation of Sita from renowned author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's, bestselling novel "The Forest of Enchantments", which is basically the narration of the popular epic "Ramayan" from Sita's point of view. Chitra in her version of  Sitayan (the journey of Sita) continues to amaze the readers as she did in her decade old classic "The Palace of Illusions", both these books show how skillfully she has you investing in two of the most misunderstood female protagonists of Indian mythological epics. While in Palace of Illusions Draupadi experienced the forms of love till she realized the truest form of love, in the Forest of Enchantments, Sita observed the various faces of love while she experienced the same only to realize love in its entirety. 

 

The book makes the story step down from the huge pedestal of an epic to a sacred position of a love story that has a tragic ending. The book is a journey of a woman from her marriage till she decides to abandon this materialistic and judgmental world. 

The love of Sita and Ram is just the other end of the extremes of love; at one end of which is the impulsive and passionate love of Shakti and Shiva , in the intermediate lies the innocent and carefree love of  Radha and Krishna, and eventually the toughest end of this spectrum representing endurance and patience of love is the love of  Sita and Ram. 

In her initial days of her marriage, adjusting to her roles as a wife and as a daughter-in-law, Sita discovered happier and lighter aspects of love. She discovered how even duty is a form of love, she realized how love works in its ways irrespective of desires and expectations; 

.....the more love we distribute, the more it grows, coming back to us from unexpected sources. And its corollary: when we demand love, believing it to be our right, it shrivels leaving only resentment behind.

When her husband got banished as a result of his stepmother's insecurities, she realized how love changes into hate in an impulse. Love is too pure and hence very fragile, so susceptible to the dilutions of human expectations and insecurities, that merely loving doesn't become enough, the love has to be guarded with respect and freedom. For love doesn't mean binding, nor does it mean an imposition of wishes. 

Earthly as she was, Sita always found herself connected to the forest, thus in the exile she never felt the pangs of suffering or discomfort, that began when she was abducted by Raavan. While in captivity, as she steeled her mind making herself immune against the cajoling and threats of the demon king she couldn't help but observe how complex love was in the case of Raavan and his wife Mandodari, who knew her husband has committed a sin, yet her love for her husband didn't subside. It is debatable that love is that complex that one's love conflicts with the other or is the human nature that complex that  the situational decisions it makes out of its wits, desires or expectations, creates this illusion of love having so many complexities. 

As soon as she was rescued, She was abandoned by her husband, who was doing his duty as the king of Ayodhya. On having been abandoned by the other half of her soul, she chose to burn herself alive, only for the god of fire to give testimony of her purity, post which even her husband apologized assuring her that he knew as her husband that she was chaste, it was only his kingly duties that restricted him. She realized the impulsive nature of love when even she was quick to forgive him. 

However, the trials and tribulations weren't over yet, for after they returned from their exile and were crowned king and queen, the people of Ayodhya indulged themselves in filthy gossip regarding Sita's chastity, which forced Ram to banish her to forest again, an action for which he is criticized till date. Little did he know that his beloved wife was pregnant with twins when he decided to take this dreadful step. 

In this second phase of forest exile she felt defeated by love because no matter how severe this injustice felt, she couldn't bring herself to hate Ram. It's noteworthy that she never tried to change Ram or lead him away from his idealistic ways, no matter how extreme they may have seemed. She knew that love no matter how deep or true doesn't ensure change at the end of our beloved, the best that can happen is we change ourselves. Change out of love is meaningful only when you feel inspired by your love and not out of desire to posses your love or the expectation of having your love requited. 

As she entered the phase of motherhood with the birth of her sons Luv and Kush, she realized that the love in it's purest form is the one between a mother and her child, a mother who out of care and affection provides and its child who out of care and volition serves her. 

At the final stage of her story when the world demanded a proof of her chastity again, she brought forth her fury. She like the earth couldn't bear the burden of misjudgment, gossip, reputation, unnecessary trials any longer. The biggest burden that she had to bear for the fourteen years she spent away from her beloved was the burden that arose from the constant need of sacrificing love for duty. Thus to set an example for the succeeding generations of womenkind she chose not to bow down to the prejudice of the society and renounced the world by going back to her mother earth.  Her journey was indeed one of a kind, for she served as an example not only by how she lived but also by how she chose to depart from this world of which she didn't feel the need to belong to. 

As the earth cracked open to take away her most beloved daughter with her, she could see her beloved husband profusely apologizing and claiming his love for her. She was in awe at the marvel of how she had forgiven him long ago, of she knew that he had always loved her even when he had to abandon her. She knew that she loved him even if she had felt betrayed by him. It is amazingly explained by the author in the last lines of this book.

"'I forgave you a long time ago', I say to Ram. 'Though I didn't know it until now. Because this is the most important aspect of love, whose 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.'"

Thus, love is as simple and at the same time as twisted as we perceive or interpret it to be. We love our loved ones the way we understand love and the ones who love us, they show love in the way they understand love, so who got love and who didn't is not that easy a question to answer, but rest assured, all forms of  love comes from compassion. It has compassion as one of its faces yet puts us through the hard times, it demands freedom yet it binds and pulls us with its golden ropes at its will. 

The book had an interesting approach at showing Sita as someone who is an incarnation of goddess indeed but due to being born a human she isn't aware of her divine self, something she gets only in fragments, something she realizes when she has realized love entirely.

Taking cue from the above, the final conclusion that could be drawn from the journey of both these Elemental Daughters is that when love is realized without any regret the way it was by Draupadi and when love is understood without any judgement and bias, the way it was by Sita, it does help you realize your divine potential. Thus one should go with the flow of love, realizing and accepting its forms and faces at the same time have faith in love as it will eventually help you realize the divinity in its entirety. Just remember one thing.

That entirety is you and that divinity is love.  

The Elemental Daughters and their tryst with love I

Part 1: Fire and the Forms of Love.

Fire, an element that is too extreme in its nature, when confined to a small lamp, lantern or a prayer-furnace it is a symbol of hope, divinity and warmth but when set free it renders everything found in it's path to ashes. Thus, it's safe to say that fire is kind, hopeful, encouraging and at the same time, impulsive, impatient and vengeful, yet it is considered and revered as the purest element. Such were the attributes of fire's daughter too, her birth gave her the names Yagyaseni (the one born out of a yagya) and Agnisuta (the one born out of fire), her attraction and complexion got her the name Krishnaa (the most attractive/ black or dark), after her land she got the name Panchaali (the one from the land of Panchal) and finally because of her father she got the eternally famous name of Draupadi (the one who is the daughter of Drupad). The elemental daughter being spoken about is Draupadi, the daughter of fire, her struggle is known but what is not known is her tryst with love.

The knowledge and understanding regarding one of the most popular female protagonists of this epic is pretty limited. The common folk (the ever existing breed) know her as a woman who was insulted when an attempt was made to publicly disrobe her, the patriarchal folk (the heavily populated breed) has used her as an example, by considering her as the cause of a catastrophic war for generations to instill fear in the minds of women willing to break free and lastly the feminist folk (a budding breed) know her as an independent, strong-willed, determined, fierce minded woman thus encouraging the women folk to just break the shackles and establish themselves as the equal one-third part of the human species.

It's not easy to understand Draupadi, a character in an epic that's known to be bigger than 10 times that of Homer's Illiad and Odyssey combined, an epic which was hugely dominated by the male population of which she was the female protagonist, various television serials came by and went but the depth was somewhat lacking, the depth that was required to understand the complexities of a character as complicated as her. 

Of the various books and novels that I read, I came across a hugely recommended "The Palace of Illusions", by noted author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. The book made an attempt to narrate the great epic of Mahabharata from Draupadi's point of view, and what better way to understand the character than let that character be at the center and let it express what it felt during these chain of events. The book took paths that were less taken, and narrated in a bold and effective fashion. It did add some myths to this piece of mythology (which is a dying genre) but rather than questioning it, the book enables me to reason with it, not that the book was influential but it just presented what the possibilities were and if my mind had the capacity to include them and fathom deeper than it already did. 

It is said that the purest emotion in Mahabharat is the emotion of revenge, the seeds of the famous Kurukshetra war, the infamous game of dice were all sown in the soil of vengeance. Far away from a family feud was a king (Drupad) burning with the desire for revenge against a former friend (Drona) for his supposed humiliation, it was out of revenge that he craved for children that would fulfill his dream of having that friend killed and create a division in the family of the student (Arjuna) who humiliated the king at the behest of the friend. Out of this fire of vengeance came Draupadi, who was destined to create a division in the family of Pandavas and Kauravas. 

Being a child of vengeance Draupadi never really experienced love as parent would shower upon its child, for her father she was just an instrument of revenge. The other people close to her gave her everything they felt was love but she couldn't feel it that way. She found protection in her twin brother and later affection and attention from her five husbands but how much of that affection could be called love is difficult to interpret. Her only solace was her dearest friend Krishna. It's noteworthy that when it comes to giving examples of friendship from Mahabharat people only talk about the friendship between the "antagonist" Duryodhan and the grey shaded "Karna", but seldom is the friendship between Krishna and Draupadi mentioned, it could be because of our notion that devotion is the only possible relation between Human and its God, forgetting that sakhya bhav (Emotion of Friendship) is another form of Devotion itself, or because our society has just come to terms with the reality of a genuine platonic friendship between a man and a woman.

This book also brings to light a possible story that people mostly don't know, or they know but they don't wish to talk about it because its controversial to mention, the story of the hidden feelings Draupadi had for the tragic hero and the unlikely villain of the epic, Karna. 

Before any judgments are passed, it would be right to say that Draupadi did remain loyal to all her husbands, as it was her exhorting and her motivation that got the Pandavas ready to fight the war. Each Pandav loved her in his own way. Yudhishtir's love was polite, shy and gentle, Bheem's love was passionate and a mild irrational,Nakul and Sahdev's love for her was tender and innocent, and Arjun, the Pandav she cared for and whom she yearned for the most; Arjun's love was cryptic and distant as if he silently declared that if Draupadi couldn't be his alone, his heart wasn't there in sharing her. 

However, she couldn't really reciprocate the feelings of the five brothers, at least not equally, they loved her but it wasn't the kind she had longed for since her birth.

The book talks about how her husbands gave her the kingdom and palace that she had desired for and made her the most powerful queen but she wasn't able to ward off the thoughts she had for the man who was her husbands' sworn enemy, the thought that if she had chosen Karna her life would have been better and less complicated. Things were looking better in spite of all this but then the unfortunate event of the game of dice happened and the infamous humiliation of Draupadi at the hands of Duryodhan and Dusshasan occurred. It was in this hour of need that none of the elders of her family came to her help, her husbands who should have protected her, only stood still with their heads hung low, but the biggest blow to Panchaali was given by Karna, when he was revealed as one of the perpetrators of her humiliation. She felt betrayed, for she knew she rejected him but this humiliation was an unexpected ramification of an inadvertent wrong-doing, something that can't be justified no matter what. The feelings that stayed with her, her curiosity about him, the feelings that she not dared to call love got diluted with Karna's desire for vengeance, the vengeance that infected her to desire vengeance. 

In the passing years while in forest exile and the incognito period, Draupadi's desire for war and revenge was resolute, she fought with her feelings, for she didn't have come to terms with the situations. She felt betrayed and humiliated no doubt, but when she got to know Karna's truth and the fact that he regretted his actions, a part of her mind that held a grudge against him, felt calm, she could see herself empathizing with him. Her feelings swung between empathy, love and hate during the war, courtesy Karna's dilemma, the undefined attraction and his role in killing Abhimanyu in the war respectively. It  was because of these feelings that she was the first one to fall to her death while the Pandavas marched for heaven. 

All her life, suffering from humiliation, harassment and losses and also enjoying the status of queen and ruling as an empress, Draupadi always felt that she never got the love she had always longed to get. In an episode from the book she was told by Sage Ved Vyas (the author of Mahabharat) that she would get love but she would never recognize who would she get the love from. When she was all alone and ready to let her soul abandon the body as she had fallen from the mountain, she felt someone's presence by her side, it was none other than Krishna. 

She then recalled that when the shameful incident of disrobing happened, the only person of whom she could thing of to soothe her mind and assure her peace was Krishna, who then saved her, she recalled that all the happiest memories of her life  at the palace, forest or at incognito involved his presence by her side, she recalled  he was always there around to assure her and to look after her, whenever her mind was at distress. 

Thus she realized that she did get love, but not from her husbands and certainly not from the man she was attracted to but from her dearest friend, Krishna. So what, if the love was platonic, it was a love that never asked anything in return and was yet hopeful, a love that didn't expect, a love that always forgave, a love that never lessened or changed even if she had changed into someone vengeful, it was platonic devoid of any physical or materialistic desires but it was fulfilling spiritually and existentially. She did see two forms of love, to say in her own words:

"If what i felt for Karna was singeing fire, Krishna's love was a balm, moonlight over a parched landscape." 

- The Palace of Illusions

The love Draupadi had for Krishna is defined by many as devotion, but if observed closely, it indeed is the love emanating out of friendship. Draupadi felt entitled for his attention and he always indulged her, he spoke to her in riddles and never really gave out the whole truth, but when she needed someone the most, she could always count on Krishna. 

In the end no matter what our perception is regarding Draupadi, when it comes to yearning for love, we are no different from her. We crave for love and when we get it we don't really recognize it. There is a famous line in the book.

"Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you're lucky, it strikes you right."

There is nothing wrong in craving, yearning or desiring for a particular form of love, but you never know love will strike you in which form, not that the other forms lay dormant, they strike you too, but the form which gives a jolt so energetic that you feel healed, protected, assured and calm in the sea of hardships and pleasures which is this life, is the one worth carrying and reminiscing at the time of death. You may feel you haven't been struck but look closely and think deeply, only then will you feel the exciting jolts of love and thus realize you were long struck by love. We all are eventually. 

The Elemental Daughters

One emerged from the fiery embers..
The other from the moist furrow...
Generations for eons have known their legends..
Their happiness, humiliation, victory and sorrow..
Beyond this tale so known
Lies their journey, to others unknown..
One saw love in scattered fragments
The other saw its diverse faces.
It was when they combined the fragments and faces..
And witnessed love in its entirety..
That they discovered the truth, realised their identity..
Thus validating their existence which I hope..
Will be remembered in perpetuity.