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. 🌿