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Continued
from yesterday’s instalment
 'I advised you to stay back just because I did not know what you may really feel about accompanying me,' says Rama. Now, this is a place where reasoning should have its fair share. No doubt we excluded what Sita said from the purview of logic in this very same scene. But we did so because her mind was lacerated by emotions and she did not actually mean what she said.
It is not so in the case of Rama. Though he had come with a dull spirit to meet Sita to inform her of the reversion of the decision to appoint him the Prince Regent, he had soon solidified and his words sound dispassionate and are born out of keen intellect when he tells Sita to remain in Ayodhya, while went on exile. He is very firm in his decision and refuses to budge an inch from that position. He remains unaffected till he sees those tears from Sita's eyes roll on his chest.
Or that is the way he appears to be. He might have desired to take her with him, even when sounding very serious and sincere about Sita living in the palace, while he leaves for the forest. The Poet does not give us any clue. But he opens the heart of Rama wide for us all to see, once he (Rama) is convinced that it is what Janaki desires sincerely.
His very tone changes now. It is no more a dispassionate voice, void of emotions. He is actually delighted now. That delight shows through in his words. 'Follow me now,' he tells her lovingly "as Suvarcala (nicknamed Samjna, wife of the sun-god) does the Sun-god". (Valmiki Ramayana, Ayodhya Kanda, Canto XXX, Sloka 30). 'Let us go together like the shining bright sun and his wife. You remain by my side always like the wife of sun remains by his side.'
 "Since you were (obviously) born to dwell with me in the forest, O princess of Mithila, you are incapable of being abandoned by me even as compassion cannot be given up by a man of self-knowledge." (Ibid, Sloka 29) As compassion becomes an inherent part of a person who gains wisdom, you have become an inherent part of me. If I am a man of wisdom, you are that compassion that resides in me, that cannot be taken out, nor can be left behind.
Rama, who has insisted in so many words for almost two Cantos that she should remain back in Ayodhya to such an extent that she broke down in tears, now says: "Beloved Sita, you have arrived at a most welcome decision worthy in every way of my race as well of yours." (Ibid, Sloka 41) Sastriyar elaborates on this Sloka as follows: "My family is honoured by you. Your family is also honoured by you. You have done a thing, you have made me do a thing, which is worthy alike of your house and my house."
'Your persistence has made my earlier decision to leave you here grow weak,' he says. It is not her persistence alone that made his decision grow weak. If it was so, he would not have shown his happiness in approving her decision and applauding it as well as he did in Sloka 41 above.
More follows...
Published on 19th
January 2003
Hari Krishnan
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