Chapter 15 — Sita's Choice

Sita had kept the vigil with Rama and waited for the morning that was meant to make him heir. Her beauty and radiance were visible as always, but on this morning it was her attention that governed the scene. When he returned, she saw before he spoke that the day had changed.

No ceremonial umbrella shaded him. No white fans moved beside him. There was no chariot at the door, no elephant leading a procession, no gathered citizens calling his name. The signs of installation that should have surrounded him were absent.

“Why are you troubled?” she asked. “Today was named for your consecration. Where are the priests, the water, the banners, the city that was meant to go before you?”

Rama told her that Dasharatha had ordered him into exile for fourteen years and that Bharata would receive the heir's installation. He said he must go to Dandaka, live on forest food, and wear the austere dress of a forest-dweller.

Then he told Sita to remain in Ayodhya.

She was to honor Dasharatha and Kausalya. She was to serve the other mothers with care and speak respectfully to Bharata when he returned as king. Rama did not describe these duties as a punishment. He described them as the proper life he believed she should keep while he carried out his father's command.

He also tried to make the forest plain to her. There would be no guarded rooms there, no regular food, no courtly ease. Wild animals, snakes, thorns, heat, rain, hunger, insects, and long distances lay ahead. The forest was not a garden beyond the palace. It was a place where one survived by restraint and attention.

Sita listened. When he had finished, she began to weep, but she did not accept what he asked. Her answer rises from the practical forest he has described, not from a refusal to hear it.

“You call these dangers,” she said, “but with you I would call them blessings. I am to go where you go. If I am separated from you, there is no life here for me.”

She told him that, while still in her father's house, she had heard from brahmins learned in signs that forest dwelling would come to her. She had not asked for that prediction, and it did not command her. But she had long held it in mind. Now the time spoken of seemed to have arrived.

Rama continued to warn her. He spoke again of the rough ground, the rivers and their creatures, the beasts hidden in the trees, the fatigue of travel, the meager food of leaves, roots, and fruit.

Sita answered each image with another. The dust raised by the wind, she said, would be as precious to her as sandalwood if it touched her while she followed him. Grass beds and forest clearings would be more welcome than rich rooms. Whatever roots, leaves, or fruit he brought with his own hands would taste like nectar. She would not remember her parents' house or the palace while she was with him, watching the seasons change among the trees.

There were words in her speech shaped by the marital world she had been raised in. A wife, she said, went with her husband; with him, a forest could be heaven, and without him, even heaven could be suffering. She compared herself to Savitri, the devoted wife of an older sacred story. She said that a husband was a wife's deity.

But she did not speak as someone who had silently received an instruction. She challenged Rama for imagining that he could leave her behind and still call her his wife. She said that he seemed to think she could be handed over to others like a performer passed from one person to another. She asked what danger he could fear for her while she was beside him.

“Take me,” she said. “Do not make me stay here without you.”

Her speech became more desperate. If he would not take her, she said, she could not endure the separation even for a moment, much less for fourteen years. She spoke of poison and death, not as actions she performed, but as the measure of the grief she believed abandonment would bring.

Rama held her as she wept. He had thought he was protecting her by refusing; now he said he had not understood the full strength of her intention.

“Your suffering gives me no joy, not even heaven could,” he told her. “I will not dwell in the forest without knowing your mind. You were made to share this life with me.”

He called her his sahadharmacārī: his companion in shared dharma, the duty and right conduct they would have to carry together. He still held to the command that sent him away. But the journey would no longer be his alone.

Sita's grief changed at once into purpose. Rama told her to give jewels to brahmins, food to those who asked, and gifts to those dependent on the house. She began to do it, preparing not to remain in Ayodhya as he had first asked, but to leave it with him.