Something that won't leave me alone...
What Amita can't get out of her head is the sound of her grandmother's voice, telling her stories from the Ramayana as she fell asleep when she was a child. Half in Tamil, half in English, Amita never quite understood the complete story as her grandmother told it, but she understood the devotion of the king to his queen.
The story of Sita goes something like this:
Sita is the virtuous wife of Rama, a wrongfully exiled king in ancient India. Banished from their thrones for fourteen years, god and goddess, king and queen, husband and wife, wander the forests and rivers of a land long forgotten. On this journey, Rama spurns the advances of a rakshasa, a female demon. Insulted, the rakshasa goes to her brother Ravana, and persuades him to kidnap the beautiful Sita in revenge.
Taken from her husband's side by force and locked away in Ravana's island fortress, Sita patiently waits for rescue, adamantly refusing Ravana's advances to become his wife. Rama, upon discovering the abduction, begins to assemble his allies to storm the demon lord's stronghold. In preparation for war, Rama sends Hanuman, King of the Monkeys, as a forward scout. While on this mission, Hanuman finds Sita and offers to aid in her escape. Sita refuses, choosing to wait for her husband to arrive and avenge her honor by killing her captors. She will not willingly touch any man but Rama.
In the end, Ravana falls to Rama's sword and Sita is liberated from her captivity by her beloved husband.
That is the story of Sita, as she knows it, but Amita knows the story should not haunt her now. She is not Sita, caught in a demon's clutches. Not anymore.
Um, yeah, so apparently when the muses come out to play, all of them do, even the non-academic ones.
*goes back to working on her paper*