Sitting in the long narrow balcony of Arshia Sattar’s apartment is peaceful. Our conversation is punctuated by the chirping of birds and the occasional soft purr of a passing car. Her collection of potted green plants adds to the tranquillity of the quiet, verdant neighbourhood of Cooke Town. Sattar wants to get the photo shoot out of the way, and poses with practised ease, pausing only to ask if she can hold up her new book, Ramayana for Children . Her excitement is contagious. “See how beautiful the book is,” she says, pointing to the illustrations done by Sonali Zohra, an artist whom Sattar found on the Internet. We gush at the artwork for a while and then come to the point.
Why does the Ramayana need to be told yet again?
Sattar has her answer ready. “I wanted to write the story such that children would enjoy the magic and the adventure.” She also wanted them to find the story familiar; filled with the princes, princesses, magical animals and scary monsters they know from the other stories that they read. Her early memories of the Ramayana are what she first heard as a child from her nanny. “She would tell me the story at night, I think during Ram-Leela time. It was my first memory of fear. I was afraid that Ravana would come and carry me off.”
But as an adult, what actually carried her away was the sheer magic of Valmiki’s Ramayana , which she points out, is the one that people actually know the least. Sattar is a scholar with a doctorate in classical Indian literatures from the University of Chicagoand the Ramayana has been central to almost all her literary forays. Her translation of the Valmiki Ramayana is considered a classic. She has written essays about the thoughts and feelings of Rama and Sita in their years of separation and trial in Lost Love: Exploring Rama’s Anguish . Then there are three books for children: Kishkindha Tales , Pampa Sutra and Adventures with Hanuman ; all of which delve deep into the epic.
Explaining her preference for Valmiki’s version, she says, “It is a story of jealousy and betrayal, of love and honour, of courage and faith, of friendship and loyalty. It is about kings and warriors, ferocious rakshasas and flying monkeys, fathers and sons and brothers. It shows us how difficult it is to do the right thing. Most importantly, it is here that we see Rama as a human being, just like us. Rama’s story is also the story of Hinduism. Dharma tells us what we should do but it is karma – our actions – that determines what happens to us.”
However, Sattar didn’t want Ramayana for Children to come across as a heavy book, “holding the meaning of an entire culture within it.” So, she follows a straightforward linear narrative, devoid of sub-plots. In her hands, it becomes a story of family relations and how to be good. “Those, too, are things that children know something about,” she says.
Sattar looks at her watch discreetly. She has a Skype interview scheduled later in the evening, part of the publicity exercise for the book that took her “about 30 years to write”. She acknowledges that everyone is writing about the Ramayana nowadays. “There’s — for adults —the new mythologies where old stories are retold from a new angle or from a minor character’s perspective. There’s less for children at the moment, but that’s sure to change. There’s none in particular that I would recommend, they’re all very interesting. Read them all, if you are interested in the Ramayana .”
What makes her book interesting are the subtle interpretations she has snuck in, discernible to an astute reader. Sample this sentence uttered by Rama after other gods question his letting Sita walk into the fire to prove her chastity; an action not befitting the ‘greatest of all the gods’: “I know myself only as Rama, the son of Dasharatha,’ stammered Rama. ‘Tell me who I am. Why am I here? What is my purpose?”Sattar does not recall this sentence being in any of the classical texts. “For me, this is the biggest moment in the story – imagine being told by gods that you are god. I would stammer, if I were faced with that. That’s sort of the point of retelling the Ramayana . You make it yours, you put yourself in it, you make characters act and react as you would.” Sattar speaks of a ten-year-old boy who told her that the only thing he would want to change in the story was Sita’s banishment, a response she found heartening.
The apartment is filled with books and contempoary art, and Sattar points to an open suitcase she is packing. She is off to Pune, to spend time with her mother and also to teach the University of Chicago’s South Asia Study Abroad Programme. She talks about coping with life after her husband Sanjay Iyer passed away last year. “It just gets worse,” she says. Her coping mechanism is to be as busy as possible. Sattar’s next book is on Valmiki’s Uttara Kanda, which will be released in November. “I’m going to wait a bit before I switch gears back to writing for younger readers, probably a collection of myths.” At the end of the interview, Sattar gives me a warm hug and opens the front door. The time spent in the quiet oasis has been as rejuvenating as the story of Ramayana will be to a young child with a fanciful imagination.
Jayanthi Madhukar is a freelance writer who believes that everything has a story waiting to be told.
