The Personal

Excerpts From the Diary of Sita <3

Dear Diary,

Ughhhhhh seriously... why did Ravana have to friggin kidnap me? Like I just got my hunk of a man, then all this cray stuff starts to happen to me? Like HELLO, Gods and Goddesses? Are you seeing this?? I guess that is what I get for trying to be a good girl and help a dude out. Then all of a sudden this huge guy with ten heads..... no joke. TEN. HEADS. I mean who has that?! Then get this, he also had like twenty arms, and let me tell ya they were all SUPER grabby... this dude was so touchy like eww. He also wouldn't shut up about how amazing his stupid chariot was, like I wasn't riding on it already to Gods know where. Mmmm but it's a good thing that yours truly is totes a genius! Ravana doesn't know this, but while we soared through the sky, I literally threw all of my jewelry and gems and like everything I could to leave a trail for my man to follow so he could come save me. :) I told you, GENIUS!

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Diary,

Finally we got to our stupid destination, Lanka I think. I have my own guards.... yes, that's right, I have some demon women watching me. Who do they think they are? Then again, I can't complain too much because these homegirls aren't too lame I guess. BUT GET THIS, then Ravana came in and totally made a fool of himself lol. This guy tried to use so many pick- up lines on me it was totes hilarious. I gotta thank my homie Brahma for putting a curse on Ravana, because if not I probs would have been in some big trouble otherwise (if ya know what I mean). Apparently he tried to "get it on" with some nymph of Indra's heaven... and babygirl was NOT consenting. Regardless, the demon ladies were actually pretty chill with me after that whole parade. Trijata keeps it real, but I will admit that I still blubbered like a baby all night.... I MISS MY BEAU.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Diary,

Today I was happily surprised to see the monkey sidekick to my man, Hanuman. I'd never met him but trust me, errrbody knows him! So I gave him one of my hair dillies and told him how much I was swerving Ravana. The poor dude then got his tail set on fire, like who does that?! I prayed to the fire and long story short, Lanka was totes burned up. Luckily my monkey-man got to the sea to quench his tail. The poor guy thought that I was killed in the fire and like raced back to me. Adorbs right? But forreal even Ravana's own brother wants me to just go back to my man and end all this cray cray stuff. But nooooo Ravana has to go and prove something of himself and blah blah blah. So his own brother joined my Rama's side, like that's so rad!! Then of course something had to offset the semi-good things that happen to me... ugh! Stupid Ravana literally told me that my man was pushing daisies, and lemme tell ya it was so believable! Then when some rando came to tell Ravana they needed him to fight, I knew it was all just smoke and mirrors the whole time. Who knows what will happen to me next... I'm so over it.

Author's Note: I decided to use a podcast on Samhita Arni's graphic novel, Sita's Ramayana, as my resource for this page. I chose to use this podcast because it provided an individual focus on Sita as the sole, main character in the Ramayana. Samhita Arni attended college in Italy and received degrees in religion and film studies. She has written three books, but this graphic novel stuck out to me because she wrote the text after the illustrator Moyna Chitrakar (who is amazingly unable to write or read!) created the images for the book. Samhita was brought up with the Ramayana, but she wasn't interested in it until she grew older. When she was twenty-two years old, she realized that there was more than one version of the Ramayana, and so her fascination was heightened. The Ramayana is such an important force of molding the people of many cultures, and so I am not surprised to know that Rama and Sita are characters that are to be thought of as examples in everyday society. Samhita sort of broke the frame of patriarchy by showing us this wonderful feminist version from a female (Sita's) point of view, which is why I also switched up my own portion of this story with Sita speaking as our beloved "Valley girl."