Yet, even as Chandrabati feels an affinity with Sita, she doesn’t wallow in self-pity for being cursed to bear the burden of ill fortune.
But Chandrabati also describes Sita as janamdukhini-'a girl born to suffer'-and elsewhere as “the luckless one', an epithet she also uses to refer to herself. Chandrabati's story of Sita's origins is borrowed from the Adbhuta Ramayan, where Sita is believed to be born to Mandodari, Ravan’s queen, through the intervention of the gods. Like the irascible Wife of Bath in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, she dismisses tradition and reclaims authority to rewrite the stories of yore from the point of view of a woman. View Full Image 'Chandrabati's Ramayan', Zubaan Books, 120 pages, Rs395Īn individual with a mind of her own, Chandrabati begins her narrative not in Ayodhya but at Ravan’s palace, described as a site of ethereal beauty created by Vishwakarma, the divine architect.
