NOVEL~*Hiding behind a Stranger*~Thread 10 - Chapter 15 - UPD 11th SEP - Page 62

Originally posted by: lashy

Teaser picture for chapter 16

Originally posted by: lashy

Good noon Harshu 🤗

Nice reviews for Untold Secrets.. good going darling... 👏 nice story... was thinking about it last night too...

(and listening to the instrumental track of Titanic by James Horner)

Oh yeah... forgot to add, have uploaded the teaser pic for 16... 😳

Originally posted by: Sandhya.A

When Yudhishtir and the entire Kuru Vansh is condemned all through Mahabharat for the insult they wrought upon Draupadi, why is Shri Ram and Raghuvansh not censured for this treatment of Sita? Why is Ram's behaviour called RajDharma?

Originally posted by: lashy

Teaser picture for chapter 16

whose that man and that women sitting on stairs.😲

waiting 😛

Originally posted by: lashy

Teaser picture for chapter 16

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

Takht-e-Sulaiman - Solomon's seat i.e. Emperor's throne (Urdu/Persian)

Shehzade - prince (Urdu/Persian)

Shehenshah - Emperor (Urdu/Persian)

Wazir-us-Sultanat - Chief minister (Urdu/Persian)

Farmaan - official decree/document (Urdu/Persian)

Maharaj/Maharani - King/Queen

Maharaj - Chef/Cook

Kunwar - Prince (Generally used in Rajputana)

Baisa - Lady/Miss/Mrs/Madam (Marwari)

Banna - Mr/Sir (Marwari)

Sahib - Mr/Master/Sir (Urdu)

Sahiba - Ms/Mrs/Lady (Urdu)

Dams - copper coins

Vaid - Doctor/Healer

Ustad - Teacher/ Master of arts (Urdu)

Caravansarai - Caravan site

Kotwal - Town chief

Kos - old measurement system of distances, used in India

Tahar - battle axe (Urdu/Persian)

Khuda Hafiz - Farewell greeting which translates into 'May God be your protector' (Urdu/Persian)

Adab/Adaab - Words of Salute/respect (Urdu/Persian)

Taslim - A salute (Mughalian)

Hukum - Sir (Used commonly to address Rajput royalty)

Salaam - A form of greeting that translates to 'Hello/Hi' (Urdu/Persian)

Shubh Ratri - Good evening/Good night (Marwari)

Padhar jo Sa - I shall leave now (Marwari)

Zergul - Calendula flower

Chulho - Wood fire stove

Ganjifa - A card game, slightly similar to poker

Ahadi - Elite bodyguard, who've received specialist training

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A laptop, a dictionary, some imagination and loads of dreams... Trying my hand at writing, once again...

Great to be back on this platform... looking forward to regularly catching-up with my lovely old friends ... looking forward to making new ones too!

Thank you all for being here... and for your support... it means a lot... 🤗

If this made for a worthwhile read, please do leave me a comment/like when you can, as it really does helps the writer in me to keep going!

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Originally posted by: luvuyuvi

Yes , ram was wrong in sending sita in forest .yes , he was wrong in not informing her beforehand that he was leaving her forever. Rama's deed became curse to entire womemkind. But for ram, his praja came first. Their happiness was utmost for him. Not even a single soul was unhappy. Not even a stupid dhobi who doubted his pativrata wife's character. In today's world, it is not possible but in ramrajya everybody was happy. As a husband, yes he was worst. But, as a king , he was is and always will be best. Things were different in ramrajya.
But again, he was bounded by certain rules like yudhishtra to follow his pratidnya. He wasn't perfect. And he wasn't complete god as well. We can't follow ram today. Where as we can always follow krishna even today. Because he was free .dharma could never stop Krishna from doing anything. And that's why despite having 16000 wives, krishna was brahmachari , complete nirmohi as aunty had once said.

Beautiful post , aunty. I am speechless

Originally posted by: sashashyam

<font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif">Let forget for the moment about all these high faluting concepts, Sandhya dear. Let us concentrate on what our Maryada Purushottam actually does.

- First, he lies to his wife, that she is being taken to get the blessings of the rishis and the rishipatnis. So much for this descendant of Maharaja Harishchandra! Did the maryada of the Raghukul not shrivel up when their descendant was lying thru his teeth and defrauding his wife in this manner?

Why does he not have to guts to face her and tell her the truth? She would then, the strong woman that she is, have left him and his precious kingdom on her own and gone back to Mithila.

- What is far, far worse, truly horrible, is that he does not arrange for a safe alternate living place for the wife about his love for whom he babbles so much. Instead, he has her dumped in the middle of a forest, with no shelter and no food and no protection. This would, in 99% of the cases, have been the same as having her killed.

What does this say about our Maryada Purushottam, not just as a husband, but even as a king? Sita is also a subject of his, and an innocent subject. Is she not entitled to his protection?

And what does dumping your pregnant wife in a forest and leaving her to a likely death have to do with the maryada of the Raghukul? If their maryada is dependent on this sort of behaviour, it would have been better that it was destroyed.

- How does he decide on a vanvaas for her, that too not in a safe ashram, like the one in which he started his own vanvaas, but in middle of a forest on her own? She is not his property for him to dispose of her like a piece of unwanted junk or garbage, is she? She is not guilty of anything, so he has no right to punish her. So what gives him the right to treat her the way he does? Why does he not arrange to send her back to her father?

- What does a ruler having a clean moral record have to do with any of this? Why should Rama even let any of his subjects question Sita's purity? If that dhobi had been severely punished for his bloody impertinence in the open court - any other king would have decapitated him on the spot for treason - then the rest would have said that he deserved what he got and that would have been the end of the matter.

It is Rama's unbelievable near collapse in the court that gives that chap ideas, and leads to his haranguing the rest of the populace and getting their at least tacit consent to his line. I have never seen a king so weak that he caves in so easily to such defamatory blackmail, and chooses the line of least resistance: abdicate or abandon his wife.

It does not even occur to him to face the problem and fight for what he knows is right. Instead, he succumbs to what he knows is wrong only because he cannot argue with his ancestors. He is like a thali ka baingan, with no powers of judgement and no convictions of his own. Wah re wah!! What sort of king is this?

Incidentally, what was all that nonsense his ancestors were spouting, that if he gave up the throne, the Raghukul would die out? When Bharata was asked to become the king, no one said that because of Dasharatha's folly, the Raghukul was going to die out. So why can Bharata not rule Ayodhya now if Rama abdicates? And as for giving up the kingship, what did Harishchandra do? He gave it away on a platter to Vishwamitra. Did the foundations of the Raghukul and its maryada not totter then?

To revert, Rama, when he was only a stripling, had the guts to argue with his father, the rajguru and the whole populace of Ayodhya to convince them to set aside a millennial tradition, and agree not to sacrifice the ashwa of the Ashwamedha Yagna. Now, when a much greater issue is at a stake, he is so weak that he runs away without facing the issue and trying to solve it.

- And after the wife, about whose indispensability for his existence he used to rave so much, has been disposed of to suit his convenience of the moment, he weeps like a four inch pipe in full flow. I felt like clouting him, Maryada Purushottam or no Maryada Purushottam.

I do not think you have taken into account the extent of damage this one god-who-was-a-man's conduct, and the example he sets here have done to Indian women down the ages. They became the gold standard for assessing and treating women right till the last century. Perhaps even now, depending on the place.

Sita Maiyya ko bhi agnipariksha deni padi thi, so tum kya ho? </font><font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif"><font face="Georgia, Times New Roman, Times, serif">Sita Maiyya ko bhi vanvaas jaana pada tha, so tum kya ho? Nikalo is ghar se! Yahan tum jaisi kulita ke liye koyi jagah nahin hai!

Again and again and again and again, and all because what Rama did here gave religious sanction to the worst kind of male autocracy, oppression and brutal treatment of women for millennia.

Why, </font>in Raj Kapoor's Awaara, his father kicks out his expectant wife for exactly the same reason, that she was kidnapped by a dacoit and then rescued.

So, Sandhya, I have left you in no doubt as to where I stand in this matter. I am sorry if I sound positively violent, but this passage has always made me see red, even when I was a teenager. In fact I am glad to have this opportunity to bring out all that bottled up anger.

One more thing. One cannot cite "the times" to excuse Rama's conduct. He is supposed to be a pattern card of perfection for all time to come. He belongs not just to his age but to all ages, and his behaviour should have fitted in with that. But we make him a God even when he was pointedly a man - all my critiques of him above are about the king and the man - and thus place him permanently above criticism.

If I were Sita, I would be looking around for ways to get out of marrying this man again for the other six janmas. I cheered when she refuses to undergo another agnipariksha at the end of the Uttara Kanda and goes back to her mother Bhoodevi. If I had been Lava or Kusha, I would never have forgiven my father for what he had done to my mother, and I would never have gone back with him to Ayodhya.

Lastly, I believe those who assert that the Uttara Kanda was never part of the original Adikavya of Valmiki, but was a later insertion at a period when the status of women in Bharatavarsha had deteriorated badly from what it was during the times of Gargi. It is an ugly annexure that we could have very well done without. Even if you compare Valmiki's Sita and Tulsidas' Sita. you can make out the same difference, the same change for the worse in how Sita's stature is perceived.

Shyamala Aunty

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Originally posted by: lashy

Good Morning Banjaras and Baisas...

🤗

Some pretty heated mythological discussions, I see, first thing in the morning... 😆🤗

Enjoyed reading all the reviews, everyone's opinions and thoughts .. how well-informed many of you are... so intelligent... and articulate too! 👏

My take - Mythology is an open pot... over the years, people have added to it, taken away from it... and the mixture inside it has changed over time... we never knew WHEN that pot came into existence and WHAT was originally put into it at all!

My stance is generally to take the 'good' lessons/morals from Mythology and leave out the rest as folklore... anyway, this excerpt from Ramayana is not the only tale of our Gods that's inexplicable - at least, not for me! (For example, Lord Shiva and Parvati are considered as universal parents... yet, we could never explain why Lord Shiva had to kill his own son over a fight to enter Parvati's private chambers... I was glad my sons didn't ask me this question during Ganesh Chathurthi festival... lol...)

I remember... when my Grandmother used to tell us these stories... we'd listen.. and any questions we asked would receive a standard answer 'This is how it was... you mustn't ask such questions... they were Gods... and we can't explain why they did what they did...'

If my sons ask me such questions in future, my answer would be 'They're interesting stories... take the 'good' lessons from it... understand the good morals... the rest would have to be left out as folklore... either way, follow the path that least hurts those who love you...'

🤗