Chitra Banerjee DivakaruniThe Forest of Enchantments

A book that gave a deeper look into the life of Sita. Her journey, joys, sads and heartache, anger and everything. How human she was and yet so divine.A journey on her wars and winnings with her innerself and the world and yet so full of love, loyalty and dedication.🥹🥹

Amazing book. The way Sita gave everything and still couldn't be enough and even then kept love first until she couldn't was beautifully portrayed. Perfect book for lovers of Indian mythology and folklore and Ramayan. A true love story beyond expectations.

When was the last time a book made you cry? Unless, I was PMSing pretty strongly, I found myself fighting back tears by the end of this one.The cover art is beautiful and does full justice to the narrative that is to follow. It depicts Sita sitting under the Ashoka tree that was to be her solace in her confinement and the palm leaf in her hands on which she is presumable writing her story. Reminiscent of the Kangra Miniature art form, which originated and is now struggling to survive in my home district was another reason to fall completely in love with this cover.Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has presented to us Sitayana or the story of sita and what a job she has done with it. Its beautiful, its compelling and it is truly engrossing. At the end of this book, I felt peaceful - a word I have rarely, if ever, used in reference to a book. Divakaruni’s Sita is so much more than a woman scorned. She is indeed a queen. A Goddess. And the universal mother. The author does full justice to a woman who lost everything again and again and yet faced all her travails with dignity, drawing from reserves of knowledge that she had gleaned from people around her and choosing to live her life in a way that was an example to others. The book is truly inspirational in the subtle messaging that it is sending out through the life of this great deity. It is a definite recommendation for young women before they go out into the world as it teaches the importance of choosing your battles, standing up against wrong-doing and understanding the many forms that love can take.Divakaruni talks a lot about the love in this book. Usually a topic that is not easy to talk about without sounding trite or preachy. And easy to get on the nerves. Here though she handles the subject with an art that is subtle and truly interesting. Every episode in the life of Sita is turned into an example of love of a different kind with its myriad colours and consequences. As you read, you nod along in agreement and smile and even find yourself shaking your head at the consequences. Over and over again, Sita asks the age-old question of ‘what if?’. As ordinary humans have we not done the same again in our lives making us relate to this celestial queen.Chitra does a wonderful job of establishing the timelines in the narrative. The fact that Raavan was already a well-established king by the time Ram was born, the time between Sita and Ram’s marriage and their exile, the distances they travel and so on. There were many things that one recollects as one is reading, small things that have been forgotten, like the 'kop bhavan' of Kaeikeyi or the fact that all the waives of the four brothers were actually related.Surprisingly, there were 3-4 editorial mistakes in the book which was as disconcerting as it was surprising coming from a publishing house like Harper Collins. When you replace ‘public’ with ‘pubic’ you need to reassess your editorial staff!Time and again, I found myself comparing this book with Amish Tipathi’s Raavan ( I thank my stars I hadn’t read Sita by him or else I would have found myself horribly confused by the storytelling). Whenever Raavan was mentioned in the first part of Sita’s story, I kept imagining Amish’s Raavan and the little bit of Sita that appears in that volume. While Amish chose to set his Ram Chandra series in a world of extremely technically advanced humans, Banerjee’s Sita occupies a world where there is magic and the occult and vanishing villains and so on. The first time it happened in the first few pages of the book, it felt a bit jarring, but then the beauty of the author’s storytelling takes over as does the childhood versions of the Ramayan that we have seen or heard, thus allowing the psyche to absorb the tale as it is told.Definite recommendation. A book that can be re-read. Especially at Diwali.

It's not just merely a love story shaded with the angst of the protagonist and the trials and tribulations on her part to prove her integrity, loyalty and honesty towards the love of her life. It is rather the story of love and the very many facets of it, embodied in the form of reluctance, control, hatred, desire, longing, unadulterated affection, human complexes and lastly forgiveness. Starting from the prologue, we find Sita, the protagonist, keen to express the story of not just her experiences, but also of the numerous other female characters who, although being substantially significant in their respective ways contributing to the then society, have been conveniently avoided by literateurs and historians of the patriarchal society resulting in being written about neglectfully, or perhaps having no mention of them at all almost as if they were inexistent. As the book progresses, we find the characters (both male and female) unfold themselves into complex people, yet being realistically relatable. While Sita's mother prepares her how to deal with every individual in the new home she is about to go into, she takes up this as a challenge, knowing that in order to be with the person she loves, this would be a very nominal price that she would have to pay, least realizing that all the while, her grooming up, the way her beloved bow had trained her would be needed much later at a time, when she would have to stay away from Ram. As we go deep into the book, the author magically transports us into the magical world of the Forest of Enchantments, where Sita makes her own sweet home bereft of all the luxuries of palace, devotes her time and care to her husband, falls in the unconditional love that she harboured for her husband and gives in to her desire for the golden deer, hurting the person she had hoped not to hurt ever, the person whom she loved possibly more than herself, eventually followed by her abduction by the demon king Ravan. Strange revelations such as Sita being Ravan and Mandodari's long lost daughter is also a chapter worthy of remembrance.Sita's portrayal as the story teller herself is achieved in its entirety. That being abducted by Ravan was perhaps not the most devastating thing happening to her is vividly elaborated in the future chapters where she is forced to confront situations that were worse than her nightmares. After the end of the Sitayan, there is this epilogue that is poignant, yet being overwhelmingly simple. The epilogue effortlessly brings tears to the eyes of the readers. That the fact she chose to live for the sake of her sons and she chose to die for the sake of her daughters is vividly described in the epilogue, beautifully detailed with every bit of emotion she possibly must have been through. The story of Ramayan has been told thousands of times before, and a hundred of them must have been from Sita's perspective, but this one is unique, and possibly the best. It is a book that needs to be taught in the schools. It is a book that needs to be read by not just women to feel the angst of Sita, but also by men to realize what it takes to love. It raises pertinent questions regarding duties of a true king to his subjects, why only every man should be heard in Ramrajya and not every woman.This should be there in every Bibliophile's collection. This happens to be the author's most loved book and the hard work behind it shows through very effortlessly. Simplicity of language makes it widely acceptable among the masses and it is not surprising that the book is soon going to be considered among the best sellers in fiction category in India. It is a must read.

There was no damage to the book and it is perfect.