“I never played the roles a woman is supposed to play. Perhaps they never appealed to me. Or perhaps I looked at my identity as not being dependent on them. If anything, I took the traditional roles of a woman and moulded them to my convenience, my purposes. I played the role of a “mother” to my troops, or “obedient daughter” when I was learning queenship, because it suited me.. Just as it suited you, Sita, to play the traditional role of a wife, mother and daughter under extraordinary circumstances.”
Bhoomika is a story about how Sita, from the Ramayana would have led a completely different life had she not been married to Rama. With the help of a sage, she is led to see visions of how different her life would have turned out to be.
It feels as though this book is a journey of the authors personal relationship with the goddess Sita and how he grew up and realized that though we in India pray to Godesses and celebrate their homecoming all over the country during different times of the year, the Indian woman faces prejudices on a daily basis.
It is a well written, simple, breezy book. The author doesn’t dwell too much into the Indian epic and even though I think the book is not as great as other books that have taken off from Indian mythology (such as Asuras and The Palace of Illusions), Mr.Iyengar has still done quite a decent job.
For me personally, I think religion has been one of the biggest hindrances to women emancipation. So I may not have been that interested in hearing or reading about this book. However it was given to me by a date and so I’m gonna keep this copy.
“’You have lived your life entirely by your choices. And yet you have been alone’ I replied quietly.
I almost hated myself for saying it . Loneliness was a stick that women used to beat other women with. It was less a stick and more a knife that we plunged into each others back. Most of the time, we did so under the guise of compassion or empathy or even pity, which made it worse.”
