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Continued
from yesterday’s instalment
 Valmiki and Kamban portray several simple incidents when the three reach the precincts of the river Ganges and from there to Citrakuta and Dandakaranya later. The beauty lies in the very simple manner in which these are narrated. Each little incident, insignificant as it may seem - and might perhaps for that reason overlooked and not studied properly - bring out the love prevailed among the three, how the great son of the emperor and his spouse and brother acclimatised themselves without any difficulty to the life in the jungle, from their luxurious life in the palace, overnight.
Apart from that these sargas contain valuable information that goes to prove several beliefs to be mere myths. In one such place, we see that while Lakshmana remained ever vigilant by the side of the couple, the belief that he did not sleep for fourteen years, is not a fact. We see Rama waking up Lakshmana who had overslept. We will go into that more fully when studying
Rama.
This is the portion that the Poets use to build the character sketch of the three. It is here that we see the mercurial temper of Lakshmana - for a second time - and how protective he is about Rama. It is here that we see how calm and controlled Rama is especially when he sends word to his parents through Sumantra and how remorseless he remains about the change of decision. Valmiki (and Valmiki alone, not Kamban) then narrates a conversation between Rama and Lakshmana when Rama's words sound not in the same spirit.
 While the qualities of the two warriors get broader strokes of the brush, Sita sparkles with several colours like the rainbow that she is, displaying different colours and yet remaining a single whole. She would display the qualities of an average and innocent woman now, that of a curious child the next moment and in no time she would transform into the widely read, lofty and scholarly soul that she is, in her conversations with Sri
Rama.
'Convey my respects to the King and my mothers-in-law,' she would tell Sumantra when he seeks for parting message to be taken back to Ayodhya. And she would, in the very next breath add,
'yaanudaip pon nirap pUvayum kiLiyum pOtrumin enna matru engayarukku
iyambuvaai,' ask my sisters - Urmila, Mandavi and Srutakirti - to take care of my parrot and mynah. What an occasion is this! She is sending words back home to her sisters with whom she would not be able to communicate in any manner for fourteen long years. And what an important message is she sending! 'Take care of my mynah and parrot.' It was this parrot that was named 'Kaikeyi' by
Rama.
 This childlike quality, this innocence must have melted the heart of Sri Rama. These words must have reverberated in his heart in the
days that he was undergoing the pangs of separation. He tells Hanuman to remind her of this incident.
'kiLLayodu pUvaigaL kiLaththal kiLa enum piLLai uryain thiram
uNarthudhi,' he tells Sita in Sundara Kanda. 'My mother! He asked me to remind you how like a child you asked Sumantra to tell your sisters to take care of your parrot and mynah.'
Valmiki shows yet another aspect of her quality, while crossing the Ganges. When the boat that Guhan and his men had brought had crossed halfway in the mighty river and they were at the centre, she is amazed by the breadth that the waters cover between the banks, the force with which the Ganges moves and its depth. Like any of our women, she offers prayers to Ganges, seeking the safety of her husband, and asking the river to be careful about the 'important personality' that she is carrying in the boat and to let him cross and thus enable him to spend the fourteen years as he has vowed to, in the forest.
She does so once again when they ferry across the Kalindhi. Let's take a look at the different ways in which she prays on both the occasions.
More follows...
Published on 3rd
February 2003
Hari Krishnan
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