Ramayanam – As I See It Chapter 4 – When Silence Becomes Exile

This chapter is harder to read slowly. Until now, the pain sat inside palace walls. Now it moves. It takes form. It enters a chariot.

Lakshmana is asked to prepare everything with care. Horses are harnessed. A splendid seat is arranged for Sita. The cruelty of the decision hides behind courtesy. She is told she is being taken to visit the ashramas of sages. She carries no suspicion. She even gathers ornaments as gifts. There is something unbearable in that detail. Trust sitting next to betrayal, not knowing.

I paused there. Sometimes the worst wounds are not loud. They are delivered gently, wrapped in normalcy.

By the time they reach the forest near the Ganga, Lakshmana’s silence begins to crack. When he finally tells her the truth, it does not explode into anger. It collapses into something heavier. Sita does not scream injustice at first. She processes it in layers. She remembers how she had walked into the forest once before out of choice. This time she is being left there without it.

What unsettled me most is that Rama is not physically present, yet his decision fills every space. Lakshmana suffers because he must execute it. Sita suffers because she must endure it. Rama suffers because he must live with it. No one is victorious here. No one feels righteous. Only duty stands upright while relationships fall.

And then there is that moment when the chariot leaves. That image does not leave the mind easily. A pregnant queen, once seated beside a king, now standing alone on the banks of a river. There is no audience to witness it except trees and flowing water. History will remember Rama’s dharma. The forest remembers Sita’s abandonment.

This chapter does not feel ancient when I read it. It feels uncomfortably current. How often do we see someone quietly removed for the sake of optics. How often are women asked to carry the consequences of decisions made in the name of honor, reputation, stability. The language changes, the setting changes, but the mechanism feels familiar. Reputation survives. The vulnerable adapt.

And yet Sita does not become bitter in the way we expect. She grieves, yes. She questions. But she also gathers herself. That strength is not loud strength. It is interior. She does not have the luxury of collapsing permanently because life within her continues.

What I see in this chapter is not just abandonment. I see how easily society rationalizes pain when it serves a larger narrative. And I also see that resilience does not mean approval. It means survival. That difference stays with me.

Agre Pashyami. 🌿

Ramayanam – As I See It Chapter 3 – When Reputation Costs Love

Chapter three did not disturb me immediately. It settled slowly, like something heavy placed in the centre of the chest. There is no enemy in this chapter. No arrow. No battle. Only words. Words spoken somewhere in the city by people who are not evil, just ordinary. They question Sita. They question her time in Lanka. They question whether a queen who lived in another man’s captivity should return to the throne without doubt. It is not a court accusation. It is casual suspicion. But suspicion has its own strength.

Rama hears this through a messenger. What unsettled me is that he does not react as a husband first. He reacts as a ruler. He does not deny Sita’s purity. In fact, he affirms it. He knows her innocence more than anyone else in that kingdom. Yet he speaks of lineage, of Surya vamsa, of the weight of reputation. He says a blemish, even if false, spreads like oil on water. It does not need truth to grow. That sentence stayed with me.

In that chamber, everyone knows Sita is innocent. Lakshmana stands torn. Bharata is shaken. Rama himself is in anguish. This is not ignorance. This is not doubt about her character. This is fear of public perception. And that is what makes it heavier. When truth stands clearly in front of you and you still choose something else because of what society might say, the wound becomes deeper.

Rama finally makes a decision that feels unbearable. Not because he believes Sita is guilty. But because he believes the throne cannot carry even the shadow of accusation. A king, he feels, must be stainless in the eyes of his people, even if the price is his own life’s peace. Sita becomes the price of that stainless image.

This is where the chapter would not leave me. Not because I want to judge Rama. But because I recognize the pattern. How often do we sacrifice someone quietly in the name of reputation. How many times does a family protect its name by isolating one person. How many decisions are taken not because we doubt the truth, but because we fear society’s voice. We say it is for the greater good. We say it is for honor. But somewhere, someone pays.

What I see here is not a villain and not a saint, but a man crushed between role and relationship. And what troubles me is not that this happened in Treta Yuga, but that even today, in quieter ways, we still do the same.

Agre Pashyami. 🌿

We all say it at some point. “Kashtam… kashtathukku mela kashtam… why so much?” It comes out of frustration more than philosophy. I once heard this simple story that Mahaperiyava used to enjoy, and it stayed with me because of how ordinary it was. Milk complains first. “I was safe inside the cow, undisturbed. Suddenly I am pulled out, poured into a vessel, and placed over fire. I boil, I tremble, I rise. Why this test?” It cools down, thinking the worst is over. Then sour curd is mixed into it and it thickens into curd. That too doesn’t last. It is churned and churned until butter separates. Even that butter is not spared. It is melted again, slowly, over heat, until it becomes ghee. Imagine what it must feel like to change form again and again without choosing it.

Finally the ghee sits quietly in a jar near a window. Two women outside talk about prices. Milk is cheap. Ghee is costly. Sitting there, the ghee realizes something without anyone lecturing it. The very stages it resented the boiling, the mixing, the churning, the melting are what made its value different.

When I think about it, I don’t see this as some grand moral story. It feels close to daily life. We prefer to remain as we are familiar, comfortable, unchanged. But life does not usually leave us untouched. It heats us, mixes us with people and situations we did not choose, churns us until something within separates, melts us again. At that time, it simply feels unfair. Only later do we notice that we are not who we were.

Milk did not become ghee in one smooth moment. It passed through stages that each felt unnecessary while they were happening. Maybe some of the “kashtam” we complain about are also stages we cannot see fully yet.

Agre Pashyami 🌿

Ramayanam – As I See It Chapter 2: When a Man Meets Himself

I moved into the second chapter of Dushyanth Sridhar’s Ramayanam and what struck me first was how quietly it unfolds. Rama is seated in the palace and Sita comes close, resting her head on his chest. His ornaments feel sharp against her, so he removes them without fuss. There is ease in that moment, a tenderness that makes what follows feel personal rather than grand. From that softness, Rama begins to tell her about Valmiki, not as the great sage we revere, but as the man he once was.

He speaks of Harit, a young boy gradually shaped by the company around him. There is nothing dramatic at the beginning of his fall. It happens slowly, through influence, habit, and small adjustments that reshape a life over time. He joins hunters, adopts their ways, marries within that world, and eventually becomes someone who robs travellers to support his family. What feels real is that he does not see himself as evil. He justifies his actions as necessary. That reasoning does not feel ancient. It feels familiar.

When the sages question him and ask whether his family will share the consequences of what he is doing, he answers confidently that they will. He runs home expecting support, only to realise that no one is willing to carry his wrongdoing. That moment unsettles him more than any curse could. We often act believing we are doing something for others, but accountability does not spread itself across people. It returns quietly to the one who acted.

Harit goes back to the sages shaken, and they do not condemn him. They simply tell him to repeat the name of Rama. He struggles at first, but he persists. He sits in meditation for so long that an anthill forms around him. That image stays with me. His change does not come through spectacle. It comes from stillness, from repetition, from staying long enough for something inside him to shift. When he finally emerges and is called Valmiki, it feels less like magic and more like the result of endurance.

The chapter returns to Rama and Sita, still in the comfort of the palace, unaware of what lies ahead. But the story of Harit does not remain in the forest for me. We tell ourselves many things in the name of family, pressure, or responsibility. We soften our choices because the intention feels justified. Yet when a consequence arrives, it does not arrive collectively. It arrives personally. What changed Harit was not punishment. It was the moment he could no longer pretend.

Perhaps that is why this story is placed here. Before the epic deepens, we are shown that no greatness begins without honesty. A man must first meet himself.

For now, that is what remains with me... that transformation rarely begins with noise. It begins when excuses fall silent.

Agre Pashyami 🌿

Ramayaṇam — As I See It Chapter 1: Before the Turning

I have begun reading Dushyanth Sridhar’s Ramayanam slowly. There are one hundred and eight chapters in this volume, and I do not want to hurry through them. I am not trying to retell the story or reinterpret it in any authoritative way. I simply want to move through each chapter with attention and share what remains with me after I close the page.

This is the first of those pauses.

The opening chapter does not begin with exile or accusation. It begins in fullness. Two years after the pattabhishekam. Rama and Sita seated together. The kingdom is steady. There is a quiet kind of happiness in the air. Nothing appears unsettled. The choice feels intentional. Before life shifts, it often rests.

I found myself noticing the small details. Rama rises at once when Vasishta’s disciple arrives. He does not remain seated as a distant king. He stands naturally, listens carefully, and asks with interest. There is dignity in him, but no stiffness. Authority has not hardened him. That simplicity felt more powerful than any grand description of virtue.

Sita too is very alive in this chapter. She does not sit silently beside him. As they walk through the gallery of paintings that hold their own past, she responds to them. She smiles at memories of childhood. She reacts to Surpanakha. She laughs at Hanuman. She pauses before Valmiki’s image and wants to know more. That curiosity felt deeply human. She does not walk past her own story. She enters it again, gently.

The gallery scene stayed with me. They are looking at what they have already lived, standing in comfort, unaware of what lies ahead. It feels familiar. We often revisit our own memories during calm seasons of life, believing stability will continue. Yet change rarely announces itself loudly. It grows quietly, even while everything seems settled.

This first chapter does not feel heavy. It feels composed. But beneath that calm is movement. Tenderness exists before separation. Ease comes before testing. A life that appears complete is already unfolding toward its next turn.

As I begin this journey through the 108 chapters, I find myself starting here with quiet. Not with questions about what will happen next, but with attention to what is already present. Sometimes it is these untroubled moments that shape us most, even before we realize life is preparing to turn.

For now, I am content to stay with that.

Agre Pashyami. 🌿

There is something about this line that refuses to leave me.

Agre Pashyami.

Before me, I see.

Not I imagine.
Not I remember.
Not I describe.

I see.

When I reached the first verse of the 100th Dasakam of Narayaneeyam, I expected grandeur, a conclusion, something triumphant. Instead, what I found was stillness.

After so much narrated stories of incarnations, miracles, cosmic movements, the poet does not raise his voice. He simply says that the Lord stands before him dark like a monsoon cloud, draped in yellow silk, ornaments glimmering softly, eyes that do not pierce, but hold.

It felt less like poetry and more like a moment that happens after a long journey.

I do not know if such a vision comes suddenly. I sometimes feel it does not. It feels as though the mind, after wandering everywhere, becomes tired of wandering. It settles. And in that quiet, something that was always there becomes visible.

Perhaps that is why this line speaks to me.

In daily life, we are always speaking... explaining, defending, analyzing. Even in matters of faith, we like to discuss, compare, interpret. But there must come a point when words fall away and there is only recognition.

You stand before something real, and you know.

For me, “Agre Pashyami” is not about spectacle. It is about presence, about allowing the noise within to thin out just enough so that what is sacred in front of me is not missed.

This space, this blog, begins there.

Not with certainty.
Not with answers.

Just with the willingness to look and to see.

Agre Pashyami. 🌿