Some of you may be familiar with the Indian classic tale of the Ramayana. The hero of the tale is Ram who was banished to the forest for a period of years because of a family spat. He took with him his loyal wife Sita, his brothers Laxman and Bharata.
For years the Royal couple lived in the forest like pilgrims, wandering here and there, living on berries. One day Ram and the boys went hunting, leaving Sita alone in the forest. For protection, a magic circle was drawn around Sita; she was to stay inside the circle until the men returned from their hunting trip.
But someone was watching. That someone was Ravana, who had fallen for Sita in a big way. Ravana was a devotee of the great God Shiva and had gained his power from doing all sorts of austerities. Ravana saw his chance while Sita was alone in the forest and took it.
By some magic trick he began to call Sita using the voice of her beloved, and sent a golden deer into the forest to tempt her away from the magic circle of protection.
Sita, like all women was curious and bored with waiting and so followed the deer and was abducted to Sri Lanka by Ravana.
There she languished for many years while she waited for Ram to rescue her and fended off the advances of Ravana. Eventually the god Hanuman got an army together, built a bridge from India to Sri Lanka, set the place alight with his tail and rescued the goddess.
In the end everyone got to live happily ever after, Ravana was killed but that was ok because as my brother Gopal explained to me, Ravana only wanted to meet Shiva and in order to do that he had to die. But in order for Ravana to die, he had to be killed by a god.
It was that lovely mix of dharma and karma that Indian tales explain so beautifully.
Ram got his wife back, and eventually his Kingdom as well. The trouble began when the neighbors started a whisper campaign against Sita who was pregnant at the time.
The people were not convinced that Sita had remained pure during her time in Sri Lanka, and poor old Sita was banished again.
I will leave it to my Indian sisters to provide a feminist analysis of Sita in terms of the Ramayana, but in terms of the current visa situation to India this is what I think really happened.
Sita was refused re entry into India for the crime of being a curious and disobedient woman. Or she was refused entry for no reason whatsoever. In any case she was stood down for a whole lot longer than the two months that anyone who enters India can expect if they decide to include a side trip to a neighbouring country in their travel plans.
For her sins, she was subjected to daily sexual harassment from the demon Ravana and just had to bide her time in Sri Lanka until the boys got it together to rescue her.
Luckily for Sita, she had Hanuman on her side.
Finding myself in a similar predicament as Sita, I only wish for a Hanuman of my own.
Since the days of Sita and Ravana, things have hardly improved for solo women travelers who come to Sri Lanka.
Ravana may be gone but like a weed in the garden he has returned with a thousand differing guises, and his actions are the same.
Ravana is the taxi driver who takes you from the airport to your hotel and wants to pick you up the next evening for ‘sightseeing’ (in the dark?), he is the waiter who wants to rest his scrotum on your arm while he is taking your meal order, he is the rent boy on the beach, the drunken toddy wallah making cat calls as you pass by, the tuktuk driver, he follows you down the street like a Kashmiri in Delhi, he is the man in the shop who keeps touching you, he is passing on his cycle, his motorbike and whispering filthy words as he passes, he is the policeman guarding the temple, the soldier at the gate.
It’s a damn shame to have to say this because I travel to meet people and eat their food, to understand their culture and to look for bridges between us. I expect to be asked constantly if I want a tuk tuk, a guide, to change money, that’s all part of the tourist game.
I don’t expect to be constantly harassed by the local men. I used to think that Indian men took some beating when it came to the treatment of women but Sri Lankan men are a cricket score when it comes to that.
After less than a week in Sri Lanka I am looking for a bridge back to India or at least a Hanuman temple so I can go and make a puja to him for protection while I am here!
Otherwise it seems I am going to make good my promise to myself to go into a yoga meditation lock down for a period of time long enough for me to realize that such healthy habits will sustain the long life the lines on my palm assure me I will have.
Or like Sita at the end of the Ramayana, perhaps I will ask for the earth to just swallow me up