KALIYUGA RAMAYANA (THE PRESENT DAY RAMAYANA)
Among the Hindu epics, Ramayana is considered as the most important epic, and the Ramayana incidents were happened during the Treta Yuga. Ramayana deals with the life history of Lord Rama, his wife Mata Sita, his brothers Lakshmana, Bharata and Shatrughna. This epic tells about the difficulties faced by Lord Rama in his life, such as dwelling in the forest for 14 years due to exile, missing his wife Sita Mata in the forest, joining with her by winning in the battle with Ravana who has kidnapped Ma Sita, and finally coronated as the King of Ayodhya.
Ramayana was read by ancient sages and saints, and they had asked their devotees to follow the practice of reading Ramayana regularly. Next to Rama, Lakshmana and Sita, Hanuman occupies the main role in Ramayana. We can learn lot of good things from him, like showing obedience to his master, welcoming the guests, maintaining strict discipline, and treating everyone in a humble manner etc.
But at the present period, Ramayana was not welcomed by some group of people, who tells the actual story of Ramayana itself was fictitious and a pure imaginative story. Some people go to the extent of commenting Sita Mata as normal woman, and they even tell that who knows about her original character! They even tell that if Ramayana is a real one, then Sita would possess only some of the good qualities of the original Sita, and then they further tell that she contains only the qualities of half of the Sita who was mentioned in the Ramayana (Paadhi Sithai in Tamil). They also tell that though Ma Sita is a chaste woman, yet she might have sat next to One Headed Ravana, (since they don’t accept that Ravana contains ten heads)! while conversing with him, and since she has done this act, we can call her only as a semi divine lady!
Why I am telling all these things to the readers is, we should ignore the words of those people who don’t have sufficient knowledge with our Puranas and Ithihas. We are all know about the super natural qualities of Sita Annai. If people find fault with Ma Sita itself, then who else they would keep faith? Ma Sita is nothing but our earth mother. If Bhudevi (Earth Mother) contains bad qualities, then how we would live in this planet? Only because of her good nature, we are all able to survive in this world. We can praise Ma Sita more and more, and she is much greater than our biological mother! Since even if our own mother fails to take care of us, Ma Bhudevi (Sita Mata) will take care and would give all sorts of prosperity at her(our) place.
During the last century, some people who claim themselves as Atheists, wrote a stage play called as Keemayana, and played it, and by doing that, they criticised our great epic Ramayana!
As per the words of Tulsidas, ‘who knows about my divine mother, and who can tell about the sweet nature of my dear mother Sita Mata, and it can be said only by our great Lord Rama himself, since he is the best life partner of Ma Sita’.
“OM SRI SITAMBIKA SARVAMBIKA JAGATHABIKA SARANAM, ‘SARANAM”
WRITTEN BY
R. HARISHANKAR