Sita Swayamvar: A Sita Ramam Fanfic

1. Raavan Sanhaar

What if the letter wasn't 20 years late? What if it reached Sita Mahalakshmi only a year later?

The tables sat in the same place as they did a year back. The carpets were old but not worn. The window sills were probably stuck by now, with the chilling temperatures and the heartless abandonment. The wind-chimes didn't sing-song any movement, any change. Just silence. Lifeless quietude, prolonged death of words and expressions, since the ears to listen were now locked away in a foreign land.

The only place that bore dents and marks were the steps. Poor wooden blocks bearing the weight of the woman's heart. The rain and snow couldn't have made them wetter than the unquenchable wallows of Sita Mahalakshmi.

In a thin maroon saree, her body froze outside, although death from lack of sensation and numbness would have suited her better than accepting the bitter truth. The cruellest matchmaker, then she realised, hadn't been her brother. It was fate. Their fate.

Day and night made no difference then. Her lips quivered, and her sore throat let out the smallest and deepest of screams. Screams that none heard but every passer-by felt piercing them. People full of concern and short of patience dissuaded her. But she moved not. Not an inch. Even today, when the closest of her well-wishers from around the town in Kashmir she hid herself in, came to warm her body, her eyes only wished for the one pair that gazed at her like she was the calm in his chaos, the home to his orphaned heart. She needed that cinder. The cinder of his embrace.

Her eyes slowly wrinkled around the corners, glistening but lost in a reverie. The times when she thought it was forever-fairytale, flashed right in front of her. Him calling her 'Hey, Sita' instead of 'Sita Ji' for the first time, or when he brought butterflies to carve their story in the eternal pages of their lifetimes. When he jumped in the bathtub and asked her to move on, and when she chose sati.

But there was something that wouldn't let her give up her life. Yes, she lived in the cascading falls of snow and rain and sun. She ate so little that every next day she was found unconscious. But her darkening life was held up only with the persistent efforts of the villagers and her own heart beating to the rhythm of a hopeful thumping. A familiar beat.

As the snowfall increased beyond her capacity to resist, she decided to step inside. And then, amidst all the silence, her heart pounced. She thought of it to be her usual anxiety but the anticipation that followed was new and unwelcomed.

Could it be...Ram?

But thoughts and reality rarely do match up. Instead of slumping down, into a mess of tears and heartbreak, she chose to relive their rare beautiful moments. Moments lost in time, and present in memory. With a hand up around his imaginary shoulder and one to the side in an attempt to clasp his, she let her legs guide them to a heavenly dream. Heart of hers, then pounded harder and harder until the door burst open. With a shudder she looked back, surprised to find a bearded man being held back.

"Who are you?" she asked, an unreasonable hopeful question from her side.

As he was dragged outside, he put forth a wooden box and said, "This is Ram's letter."

At that moment, with that confession, Sita froze. Her mind calculated various possibilities of what it could actually be about. And her palpitations made sense to her. Breaths uneven, eyes stuck on the box, tears welling up, she formed her trembling words to him, "Ram?"

"It's been waiting for months."

Oh how her heart fell to solace at that moment! A deep smile erupted from her, and she knew her punishment was over. She needed to feel the letter, to read it, to sense from it Ram's last touch, their probable final meet. She needed to know his final words to her, of their story.