“The Forest of Enchantments” - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

 

🪔 “The Forest of Enchantments” is a major undertaking in that Divakaruni is adding dimensions to a beloved Hindu epic, “The Ramayana”. Divakaruni’s author’s note on this project resonates - she articulates what many of us (especially women) have felt as we’ve grown up with these stories. She taps into our feelings of injustice. 

🪔 Along her own story, Sita sets out to tale the forgotten or marginalized stories of Kaikeyi, Ahalya, Surpanakha, Mandodari, and Urmila because although those who’ve read “The Ramayana”, or grown up hearing its stories, will be familiar with these names, their stories have always been told through the lens of their husbands or sons. The familiar story of Sita herself, is known to us only through its intersection with and impact upon the life of Ram. Divakaruni is careful not to alter Sita’s tale - she plays within the parameters of the epic, but works to fill out her existence.

Of these, I most enjoyed what CBD did with the stories of Urmila (the forgotten) and Surpanakha - she made them both something substantial, more than the one dimensional characters we know. The scene of the trio departing for the 14-year exile, and leaving behind Urmila, was poignant. Urmila’s loss and sacrifice are all but ignored in traditional retellings of “The Ramayana”. 

🪔 Childhood iterations of the epic gloss over Dashratha and his three queens as mere facts in the story. Divakaruni gives their arrangement its due consideration. For all the in-fighting between the three queens, she distills it to a matter of basic self-preservation. Ram and his half-brothers were born into this pressure cooker environment.

Divakaruni also expands on the bond between Kaikeyi and Manthara which is usually dismissed as a given. Rather than relying on the cunning servant narrative, Divakaruni instead focuses on the forging of their relationship amid the intrigue of palace walls. They were trying to thrive not merely survive, and thus, a quasi-mother-daughter bond emerged. Honestly, this is the kindest treatment of these two erstwhile villains of the the great epic. 

Divakaruni provides new insights into Kaikeyi’s choice to demand fulfillment of her two boons, and Sita’s almost-crazed insistence on the golden deer; on the one hand, it reads more like a Greek tragedy in that certain events were preordained and the actors had no choice in the matter. Sita, like Helen of Troy, was the direct cause of much death and destruction. destiny/fate

Both Kaikeyi and Sita were seemingly taken out of their character, acting without self-determination, and returned to it after they had impacted the narrative in significant ways. I felt I gained new understanding for both women, though their choices are often the subject of much criticism (“if she hadn’t…then this entire tale would have ended differently”).

🪔 Sita intuits the harm in Ram’s reaction to her in Lanka after defeating Ravan. She knows she is deluding herself into accepting his apologies after humiliating her. Yet, she presses ahead. The epilogue is particularly difficult to read, as we are acutely aware of what is in store for her, despite her hopeful ignorance. Ram’s statement that he and the children have “lost much time” is maddening as it blithely ignores his primary role in the matter. CBD giving a voice to Sita in those final moments, is something many of us have always wanted to hear - what might her response have been at this final indignity? She calls his demand what it is: peak victim-blaming.

🪔 Duty, karma, maya (illusion), and honor are recurrent themes. Divakaruni often uses foreshadowing techniques to warn the reader of choices to be made and events to come. I liked the occasional flickering, otherworldly memories that pass between Sita and Ram - quiet reminders of “who” they really are outside the maya of human existence.

🪔 I found the prose tiresome in places, but perhaps that was my own eagerness to get on with this story. Despite knowing the original well, I was unable to put this novel down; Divakaruni adds much to the narrative that I personally felt is missing from the traditional stories. I do think that Divakaruni was able to do more with Draupadi’s story in “Palace of Illusions”; perhaps the framework of the original “Ramayana” was more restrictive with Sita’s story.