nonfiction by Emily Northey
Yuddha KandaThe Yuddha Kanda describes how a floating bridge is built to Lanka and Rama crosses it to save his wife. He fights and finally kills Ravana and saves Sita from her prison. To test her purity, he asks her to perform a trial by fire, which she willingly jumps into and comes out of unburned and whole. Rama and Sita return to Ayodhya—Rama’s exile is now over—and he regains the throne.
Her keeper takes her to the city and asks her to blink at millions of billboards, children running through the street, preserved ruins of past kingdoms. But he is still not convinced. He beckons her to ceremonies with young dancers and tents billowing with perfumed smoke and candles trailing on the ground, spangling the floor like a reflection of the stars. She can hardly focus. The dark makes her blink so slowly.
He leads her to the candles, begs her to take part. Her keeper sits in the dust. She watches as someone takes their fingertips and plays with the tiny curling flames, then she closes her eye.
Uttara Kanda
The seventh and last book of the Ramayana, the Uttara Kanda, shows the insecurity of the citizens of Ayodhya in having a queen that lived in another man’s house for so long. Though Sita had passed the fire trial, Rama still exiles her for the sake of his kingdom’s trust. Sita returns to the wilderness, where she gives birth to twins, who grow up as students of Valmiki and remain ignorant of their father’s identity. They learn to sing the story of Rama and one day their father hears it. He is overcome by grief and demands to see his wife. But Sita calls upon her mother, Earth, and the ground opens up and receives her. Sita vanishes and the gods appear to Rama and inform him that his incarnation is complete, and he returns to the heavens.
And he believes her to be a part of him, to belong to him. She’s focused on him, through him. He brings her gifts of spice shop dyes, snake charmers and enormous statues of his many-armed, many-headed family.
But her keeper clutches a return ticket. She glances around her, catching things she’s missed.
Her keeper sighs.
Blink.
She gazes upwards, sees that the circling palm trees remind her of Florida, swim suits, water with ice cubes.
Cattle behind fences. Beiges and creams and grays.
She slips into her dark bag, feels it bump-bump against the hip of her keeper as they leave him for what is undeniably home.
Emily Northey is a senior creative writing major, minoring in photography and Asian studies. Her poetry and photographs have been published in RiverCraft and she has had a photographic essay published in Essay. When she's not writing or taking pictures, she spends her time shimmying with the SU Belly Dance Circle, of which she is the marketing and promotions manager.
Coming next week: poetry by Kim Stoll
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