Page 12 - GALIET LOVE AND DUTY´S LOTUS: Rama and Sita IV

Galiet & Galiet
exiled brother of King Vali-Vadha. Just as Sita, Rama shares her instinct to risk her safety in order to rescue her beloved. Rama is willing to place his life in danger and to jeopardize his honour in order to release his beloved Sita from Ravana’s harm. Under the tempest of necessity, Rama endangers both his name and his dharma by assenting to shoot King Vali-Vadha in what appears to be a violation of the warrior’s ethical code;14 yet, as suggested by Dr. Nagaiah, it is the very inevitability of his dire circumstances that impels Rama to accept Sugriva’s grim proposal. By sharing common trials and tribulations, Rama and Sugriva create strong bonds of empathy and friendship. Through their mutually beneficial alliance, Sugriva will recover his wife and his kingdom and Rama will find and recover his Sita not too long after Jatayu’s brother, “far-seeing eyes,” shall see her in Lanka just as Helios’ “all-seeing-eyes” shall see Persephone in the netherworld. Had Rama chosen King Vali-Vadha15 as his and Sita’s saviour and ally, Rama would not have recovered his lotus-eyed beauty16 for King Vali-Vadha was a friend of Ravana. Rama and Sita’s willingness to undergo great risks by placing their lives, reputations and dharma inside the noose of necessity emphasizes the chilling despair, helplessness, frailty and humanness we all experience when afflicted by misery, strife and duress.
No longer held under the majesty and tribulations of the forest spell, Rama and Sita’s married life shall be forever transformed. Under the umbrella of a new day, Rama and Sita shall share the quintessential Greco-Roman tension between physis and nomos, a theme beautifully developed by Shakespeare’s in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, it shall be Rama’s devotion that shall perpetually suffer after they abandon the freedom afforded by the forest and enter Ayodhya of their heart filled with its courtly norms, demands and obligations. After he releases his beloved Sita from her garden of suffering and misery, he shall embrace her with the desert of his heart. Sita’s dream of a loving reunion with Rama vanishes like stars in daylight. Rama, instead, tells her that “she is free to
14 Rama hides behind bushes and shoots King Vali-Vadha while he fights with his brother Sugriva for a second time.
15 King Vali-Vadha on his second of death, tells Rama that he could have helped him attain his goal.
16 One of the many epithets of Sita employed by Valmiki. Nagaiah, Samudralala. An Appreciation of Valmiki’s Ramayana. Tirupati: Nagaiah, 1981. 141.
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