I have loved Indian culture for the ease with which they portray such complex concepts to the reader with such simplicity through stories and also because they have such a diversity in the character pool with the story always being so timeless, that it remains relevant always and Ramayana used to be one of them for me. Having watched it so many times in different formats since childhood, I had already had it by-heart, when I sat again for this Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana re-telecast. I watched it with a predetermined mindset of what new they could have shown or what new will I find in this story, that would change my narrative for it, I knew the story already- the birth, Ram-Sita marriage, the legendary exile, the unique war, a bit shameful Sita’s fire test, a close to happy ending and then the most controversial and debated of all the excerpts of Ramayana, the disowning of Sita by Ram.
If not all, but almost every woman(and some men too), including me, has been tormented with the “apparent” disrespect of Sita by Ram after freeing her from Lanka. And no matter what explanation I read on the internet or so, I could never understand it. So many times, have I inquired Ram within the realms of my mind and tried to, in some way or the other, justify, what he did, but I could never produce a sensible answer. And this has sub consciously poisoned my reverence for him as a God, inspecting and decoding each of his decisions and responses, and testing whether or not his actions justified his almighty stature of God, because clearly for me his handling of Sita related matters were not god-like at all. I now think there are two ways to explain my interrogation of ram- one of a self analysis process to understand why he did what he did and the other that of revenge, a personal vendetta for treating women in his life like that. Lest, howsoever we may see it, the conclusion of this process was that I started to think of him as a mere human- strong, brave, intelligent, skillful- but just a despondent human in the clutches of the life playing itself through him and he being a mere puppet, acting as best he could with his abilities. I would often compare the two Vishnu avatars – Rama and Krishna- for their wits and intelligence and obviously Krishna would win. And slowly and steadily as this ramification went on in my mind, Ram descended from the stature of God to that of a normal human being, who had skills but not the wits or guts to treat or respond to the people who wronged him in some way or the other.
But clearly, this time was different. Maybe, I was watching it after a long time with quite a mature mindset or that due to such rigorous analysis over the years or because of a larger knowledge pool that i possessed now, this time when I saw this epic, I watched it like Sherlock decoding a crime scene- I could clearly reason and relate his each and every step, why he did and how was it relevant or a better option. I could make out clearly his god like attitude and stature from what he did- his strategy, his foresightedness and also the responsibility to carry out a task that he was enforced with.
Contemplations 