About Sita: Now You Know Me
Written by Sage Valmiki, the Ramayana narrates the life story of Rama in 24,000 verses. Rama is a powerful and revered incarnation of Vishnu, one of the supreme gods of Hinduism, and is worshipped by more than a billion people even today. Sita, Rama’s wife, has been regarded as an incarnation of goddess Lakshmi. Her presence is significant in the epic poem when the tempestuous events of their lives are described. Yet, Sita, as a heroine, remains an underdeveloped character. As such, the substantial silence of Valmiki on Sita has been exploited by countless writers and poets since the time of the Ramayana.
Sita: Now You Know Me, a mythology-retold novel, follows this much traveled path. It is an intimate portrayal of Sita, in her most human, imperfect, and yet, appealing form. Set in the Vedic times of ancient India, Sita narrates her turbulent life in extensive detail, revealing her deepest desires, grief and horrors, as well as her profound love for Ram. This Sita is deeply rooted in two major elements of her time: the agricultural practices that are further cemented by her connection to the mother earth and the magnificent era of debates on life and the cosmos, of the Vedas and Upanishads.
Sita’s timeless story is unifying. To a western reader, her eventful life tells a gripping tale. To the South Asian readers who are saturated with the stories from the Ramayana, she leads them to a private and concealed existence that has been mostly neglected despite the thousands of books based on the Ramayana. While keeping the epic's storyline mostly intact, Sini has changed some events and subplots, added new scenes or twists, and altered a few characters as she needed, to narrate Sita's story as a human story.
This debut novel was published by Rupa Publications, New Delhi, and is available on Amazon. Sini Panicker has written the same novel in Malayalam (the language of Kerala), with a title of Yanam Seethayanam (യാനം സീതായനം). It was published by Poorna Publications, Kerala, and is available on Amazon India and Poorna website.
