The Liberation of Sita in the words of Volga

After reading Devdutt Pattnaik's Sita, I saw Ramayan in a whole different light. I saw the characters in a while different light. And I got to know about stories and understood the ones I already knew about in a whole new light too. So you can imagine my curiosity when I came across the book titled 'The Liberation of Sita' by Volga. Of course the title attracted me, but so did the name of the author, Volga. At the end of the book, when I got to know the story and reason behind her penname, suffice to say, I was moved.

Now coming to the book. The Liberation of Sita is a collection of five short stories with Sita occupying the centre stage. But what's marvelous and unique about this book is that even though each story is about Sita and her days in the forest after she was left there under false pretenses by her husband, sstory are also about Surpanakha, Ahalya, Renuka, and Urmila. The way Sita's encounters with these women at different points in her life left her with questions and then later on with answers endeared the whole experience even more to me. The way Sita loves flowers and archery both has also been highlighted many times, which again goes on to prove how strength and fragility go hand in hand. Although which one signifies what here? Leaving you to ponder over this one.

"Each story is independent and yet connected. In each of them Sita learns a lesson that facilitates her liberation."

In the stories, the way a young Sita fails to understand and at times even feels something not short of frustration at Surpanakha, Ahalya and Renuka but goes on understand them and their journeys, pains and experiences better to a point of forming sister-like bonds with them is what I would say is the magic of Volga's writing.

"Volga’s Vimukta not only belongs to this tradition of feminist revisionist myth-making but takes it further. Volga does not use re-visioning merely as a strategy to subvert patriarchal structures embedded in mythical texts but also as a means to forge a vision of life in which liberation is total, autonomous and complete. She also creates a community of women by re-presenting myths from alternative points of view, and by networking women across ages and generations. She achieves this through different narrative strategies: giving voice to women characters marginalized in the ‘master narrative’, extending the story of a character beyond its conventional closure; forging female bonds and creating a female collective; and redening many conventional epistemes including liberation."

While both Sita by Devdutt Pattnaik and The Liberation of Sita by Volga talk about more or less the same thing, the latter took a better dig at patriarchy by asking questions that we all must have thought of of but never had the audacity to ask our loud.

At the end of the book I read the author's explanation of rewriting the stories the way that she did, the essence of it, and the importance of it, and I understood what and why and how this book is more important than we think.

A paragraph at the end of the book summarises all I felt and understood:

"Volga’s re-visionist myth-making thus opens new spaces within the old discourse, enabling women to view their life and experiences from gynocentric perspectives. They recreate a world of freedom in which they not only willingly bear the responsibility of their own survival, but also have a sense of joy and complete freedom. Women are no longer means to serve someone else’s ends, nor are they merely the prizes in men’s quests. On the contrary, they are questers seeking their own salvation."