Anything But Ordinary
"I was born under unusual circumstances."
Padma
reads this first
sentence of the first page of her ancestor's diary over and over.
She can't seem to move beyond this first sentence because she is trying
to wrap her brain around the idea that not only was Sita not born in a
hospital, but she wasn't born from her mother at all. After
giving up on the idea of initial understanding she continues to read
the first entry in the diary.
"I don't remember much of my
life before I came to live with my mother and father, just that first
day when I woke up and the warm sun was shining down on me. I
opened my eyes to a palette of colors. Below me was the deep red
earth, above me the cool blue skies, and it seemed I was surrounded by
fields of green. I opened my ears too and heard a man's voice
that seemed to be heading my way. I was a bit frightened, but his
voice sounded kind and so I remained where I stood. Not a moment
later did the man cross my path and I ended up frightening him more
than he ever could have frightened me. He said he was a little
surprised to find me in the middle of his crops and asked me how I came
to be there. It was at that moment that I drew a blank and could
not think of anything before waking up in this field. I started
to panic at my sudden loss of memory, but this kind man put me at
ease. He told me he was King Janaka of Mithila and that he would
take me home with him until I regained my memory."
Padma
empathized with Sita in
this moment. She, just like her distant relative, had always felt
like she didn't know where she came from. Sure she was close with
her family, but she had always felt like she was stuck between two
worlds with nowhere to fit in. Her parents were all about
tradition and maintaining the ways they had always stuck to in India.
Padma had grown up learning about these traditions, but found that it
was hard to stick to them in her modern twenty-first century
life. Reading about how confused Sita felt put her at ease and
she no longer felt alone. Maybe feeling torn and confused was
just something everyone had to go through.
"My father told me
when I was older that while in the field where he found me, he had
heard
a voice from the skies above and that he had seen the nymph
Menaka. He had told her that before his first wife had died, they
had tried so desperately for a child and now that she was gone he was
very lonely and wished once again to have his house full of
laughter. It was then, after speaking with Menaka, that he came
upon me in his field and he
knew that I was a gift from the heavens."
Padma
envied the bond that
Sita shared with her father and wished she had a closer relationship
with her father. He was so traditional and it seemed to her that
not only did they not have anything in common, but that he was far too
busy with her brothers to care. She closed the diary for now and
got back to cleaning out the attic.
~
___________________________________________________________~
Author's Note:
I chose to tell the parts of the diary from the first person
perspective of Sita. Padma's part in this story and in all other
future stories is in the third person omniscient perspective.
There are so many different versions of the birth of Sita, all with
different little details. The major facts are always the
same: King Janaka was plowing in one of his fields to invoke rain
when he came upon Sita, not a baby, but no more than a young
girl.
Some versions talk about how King Janaka and his wife could not
conceive children and then they were blessed to have found Sita in the
field. Others talk about how his wife dies before he finds
Sita. I choose to use this particular version as my foundation
for the
retelling and also to have Sita view the Earth as her mother.
Regardless
of whether the King's wife was present, one thing was clear: Sita
formed
a true and loving bond with her father. I tried to show how her
upbringing and knowledge of where she came from led to the strength
her
character showed later in her life. I skipped back and forth
between Padma reading the diary and Sita taking us through her early
years to show the similarities between the two women's situations and
their shared feelings of confusion.
Bibliography:
Narayan, R. K. (1972) The
Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic.
Buck, William (1976).
Ramayana: King Rama's Way.
Wikipedia Page on Sita.
Sita's
birth and Parentage.