So No One Told You Life Was Gonna Be This Way

Royina didn't remember that she was a goddess. She never did. She didn't remember being Sita. She just knew that when the van pulled up next to her as she was leaving Central Park on her way home to her Lower West Side apartment and a man leaned out to grab her, it felt all too familiar and very wrong.

"Let's go have some--" the man began, but he didn't have time to finish his sentence before Royina reached up, grabbed his hair, and pulled his face down into her knee. She shoved the man backwards into the van and ran all the way home. Her head was a blur of street maps she had memorized long ago and screams she was biting down. She told herself it was the bite of the almost cold air at her eyes as she fled that was making them water.

When Royina slammed the door of her sparsely decorated apartment closed and slumped against the wall, it took Himil a moment to acknowledge her. He waited until the scene in his show was over and paused it, waiting to be sure it had stopped before turning to her.

"Hey, what's up?"

Royina took a few more deep breaths to steady herself. "Some guys in a van tried to grab me as I was leaving Central Park. I'm so glad my mom made me take those years of Kalarippayattu. It felt so natural. I just acted." She felt powerful, she realized. One look at Himil, though, made her deflate a bit.

"I told you I don't like you going out there alone. I thought you were going with a friend."

"Shayla had to leave."

Himil let out a long sigh. "Why don't you listen to me? Did they...touch you?"

Royina pushed herself to her feet and curled her lip at Himil. "What, are you worried I'm unclean now? I'd expect something like this from my million year old father, but you? You should know better! I can defend myself. And even if I couldn't, it's not like I'm a virgin. You knew that when you and I started dating!"

Himil scoffed. "Woman, you're impossible. I don't understand it."

Royina's face fell. The anger drained out through her toes, replaced by an empty feeling. "I was proud. I thought maybe you'd be proud of me too. Why aren't you proud of me?"

"Proud of you almost getting yourself raped and murdered?"

Royina swallowed the tears that were threatening to spill. "I wish the ground would swallow me up, Himil. I wish it would take me from you." Royina's voice trembled.

"I wish you could be a proper woman like my sisters," Himil bit back.

Royina disappeared into their shared room, emerging a moment later with a bag. "A proper woman? You mean a paper woman. Maybe you should marry one of your sisters instead. Here's your ring."

She was out the door before the tinkling of the ring bouncing across the floor ended.

*****

The children barked their vocalizations almost in unison, and Royina smiled. She looked out the window at the busy street. The leaves were orange and red and yellow, and a woman was peering into her window, watching the children do their Kalarippayattu exercises. Royina waited until she caught the woman's eye, and then beckoned her inside.

"Would you like to try a class? The first session is free, and the adult class starts in twenty minutes."

The woman smiled and nodded, and Royina's heart soared at the excitement and hope that she saw in the woman's eyes.

Here in her studio, she taught women how to find the strength inside them, and through that, she felt stronger herself. She was so glad to be here. This was what she was truly supposed to be be doing in this life.

Author's Note: This story is another life of Lakshmi, known in the Ramayana as Sita. In this story, Lakshmi has been reborn as Royina, and Indian-American living in New York, and she is almost kidnapped once again, as she was before in the Ramayana by Ravana. This time, however, she is actually able to escape her assailant by using the martial art that her mother had her learn, whereas in the Ramayana she grew up as a princess and was tricked into leaving her house by the charity that she was obligated to perform. In this version, rather than being a rather docile queen, she is independent and leaves her romantic partner who tries to hold her back. When Royina says she wishes the ground would swallow her up, this is an allusion to some versions of the Ramayana in which Sita, once she has been abandoned and found again by Rama, has the ground swallow her rather than undergo another test at his hand. The martial art she learned as a child and teaches in the end of the story, Kalarippayattu, is an Indian art. It focuses on stances, kicks, and incorporates some weapons as well. It has been featured in movies. I believe it is best that it is up to reader discretion as to whether or not they want to read Himil as Rama reborn. Though this is more of a continuation of the Ramayana than an adaption, my source for the Ramayana was Narayan's version and Paley's film.

Photo: New York City Skyline by Andreas Komodromos