As a child, I first encountered the Ramayana through illustrated pages. One scene, in particular, has remained with me.
It is the moment when Ram and Sita return to Ayodhya after fourteen years. A washerman questions Sita’s purity, suggesting that after her time in Ravana’s captivity, how could anyone be certain she remained untouched. In the version I remember, there is a pause, a visible shock on Sita’s face. Then she says something like this: if the earth believes her pure, let it take her into itself. The earth opens. Sita is gone.
Over the years, I have heard countless debates about Ram, why he did not speak, why he did not protect her, why he allowed this to happen. Yet I find myself returning to a different question altogether.
What if this moment is not about him?
What if this story is about Sita?
I do not know whether this version is historically accurate or even faithful to the original text. But it has lived in me, resurfacing at unexpected moments, which tells me it holds an emotional truth, if not a literal one.
I have always seen Ram as Sita’s trusted source. Her anchor. Her love. When the washerman raises the question of her purity, I wonder if what shakes her is not the accusation itself, but what it implies about Ram, his standing, his integrity, his place in the world. Did she experience that moment as a stain not on herself, but on him?
And if so, did she act not out of weakness, but out of protection?
There is an easy impulse to judge her, to say she should have stayed, spoken, resisted. And perhaps that critique is valid. But I find myself less interested in what she should have done, and more attuned to what she may have felt.
Because love does not follow the world’s logic.
Love is not transactional. It does not calculate fairness or weigh outcomes. It simply is. Those who live inside love often move by a different code, one that does not align neatly with social reason or moral clarity. It carries its own rhythm, like the Five Lovers of Panjab, a devotion that cannot be explained by ordinary measures.
And perhaps that is what unsettles me most — how recognizable this feeling is.
When someone a woman has placed, on a pedestal of goodness, integrity, or moral clarity suddenly becomes the one who destabilizes her, the impact can feel seismic. Confidence collapses. Language disappears. The self feels suddenly uninhabitable, as though the only relief would be to vanish.
Why does this happen?
Perhaps it is not about purity at all.
Perhaps it is about worthiness.
Perhaps it is the moment when love becomes so vast, so consuming, that the woman chooses not to stand beside it. And in that imbalance, disappearing can feel like an act of fidelity, a way of protecting what love means, even at great personal cost.
It is not a language the world easily recognizes.
We are quick to dismiss these inner movements, to label them irrational, dramatic, unhealthy. But doing so ignores the raw power of love itself. Not who we love. Not whether that love is justified. But love as a force that can elevate, fracture, and undo us.
This story stays with me because it asks something uncomfortable of me: What happens when love is so absolute that it leaves no room for the self to remain intact?I don’t have an answer.
Only a deep respect for the inner worlds we are too quick to judge.
