My unforgettable Ayodhya story

Ira Pande

TODAY, I want to tell you about my own story of Ayodhya. It was in August and the year was 1976. I was in Lucknow for the birth of my twins and it seemed to me as if I would go mad if I didn’t get a break from the unending cycles of feeding and changing nappies. Remember, in those days, there were no disposable diapers, wet wipes or sterilised bottles. I was 25 and already the mother of three, the oldest one not yet three.

Life, to say the least, was hectic. The monsoon was in full swing and our house was festooned with triangular nappies, since one batch was barely dry before another consignment of wet ones was ready for washing. My wonderful mum-in-law, Jiya to us all, suggested wisely that maybe it was time we all went off to Faizabad for a break. This was the town where my father-in-law was setting up a new agricultural university on the request of HN Bahuguna, then Chief Minister of UP. The camp office was in Lucknow but the VC’s house and its huge campus were in Faizabad. So off we went, babies and all, to the rural splendours of a small town near Ayodhya, its twin city in fact. On the evening of our arrival, Faizabad was hit by a cyclonic storm the likes of which, the locals informed us, had never been seen. Huge trees were uprooted, power and telephone lines snapped and the earth literally split open as roads were washed away.

Somehow, Jiya and her faithful band of helpers managed to cook and serve dinner, arrange cots in the courtyard of the huge old house, with mosquito nets rigged over our beds. The babies were knocked out after the day’s adventures and their older sibling was so fascinated by the mosquito net and the stars he could see twinkling in that rain-washed sky that he was silent for once. Jiya, a fervent Ram bhakt, was convinced that coming here was an inspired decision, even though I wondered how she could see anything to thank her God for.

The next morning, when the maid appointed for helping with the children came and efficiently took over the massage and bath of the babies and we were sipping some fortifying coffee, Jiya asked her, ‘Do you ever remember being hit by a storm like yesterday? Wonder what brought it on?’

I will never forget her answer: ‘Well, mataji,’ she told Jiya solemnly, ‘if Luv and Kush come into Raja Ram’s territory, don’t you think the earth would heave?’ The word she used was ‘bhooindol’, the earth rocking like a carousel. Her simple folk wisdom and its calm acceptance have remained with me to this day as a plausible explanation of that unnatural storm. So the upheaval that the town had suffered was wrought, according to her, by the entry of my innocent twins!

We all laughed at her observation then, but almost 45 years later, I can see that our epics have deep roots in the world we inhabit. For the believers, they have an explanation for all the travails and vicissitudes of life and provide the strength to survive them. Any person who has lived in rural or mofussil India will testify to the fact that tradition, ritual, myth and metaphor are living truths that sustain rural communities. No amount of scientific fact or anti-superstition indoctrination can stop people from secretly hanging on to their faith. Gandhiji was the first political activist who understood this fact and used it so effectively in constructing his Swaraj movement around the faith and beliefs of the common Indian. The metaphor of Ram Rajya and the veneration of Rama were created with this realisation in mind. His sacred name was the only way of drawing diverse castes and communities to a common cause. Sadly, the whole edifice of a secular, modern republic post-Independence was raised with slogans that sat ill with a traditional way of life. What is more, mocking and poking fun at this antiquated worldview only made the community of believers silently retreat into a sullen distance from modernity. The chasm between India and Bharat started somewhere here, I think.

Let me illustrate what I am trying to get across by relating another apocryphal story. Sonal Mansingh had once gone to a small town in Bundelkhand as part of the lec-dem circuits that Spic Macay organised to take our best-known practitioners of classical music and dance traditions to audiences who may never have seen a live performance by a real artiste. As that year marked the tercentenary of the Tulsi Ramayana, Sonal had prepared a repertoire of chaupais (quatrains) from it. The audience waited for the performance to begin in silence.

As soon as her musicians began to sing the first chaupai, virtually the entire audience joined in after they heard the first few words. The dancer and her troupe were amazed at this unexpected response. They were in the presence of people who needed no explanation of what the dancer was trying to get across.

‘I have danced before kings and queens, but the response and appreciation I got in that little town will always remain with me,’ she told me later.

These stories will stay with me forever.

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