Shoorpanakha

Why do I do this to myself? Shory wrung her hands, one of her nervous habits, alongside twisting the simple golden loop of a nose ring she wore to feel more powerful and distinguished. However, she did not feel powerful in that moment. She felt helpless and ignored.

For the last year and a half, Shory had done her best to please Rama without revealing her feelings for him. After all, she was a lowly coffee-fetcher, and he was an executive in the company. His newest romantic interest, Sita, was the prettiest face behind a reception desk, and had a beautiful caramel complexion that shone next to Shory’s pea soup colored visage.

Shory did not know what she expected from the weird, toxic illusion she created about Rama. She over-analyzed every glance, spent nights lying awake remembering the tone of his “Thanks, Shory!” when she delivered his morning latte, and dreamt of Sita burning to cinders. She knew it was wrong, but she was a demon, and fire and brimstone dreams always invaded her sleep.

For the first time in her life, Shory did not like looking different. She felt more aware of her green skin, her pierced face, and her long, demon claws. For the first time, Shory was considering a change.

She sat hunched over her desk, trying to look busy, waiting for Rama to leave for the evening. Once he began his walk toward the elevator, Shory gathered her things and followed behind him, trying to look natural with a heart that was racing in her chest. It was her moment – they were alone in the elevator, Rama rocking gracefully on his heels and eyeing his watch. Shory felt hideous beside him, but who would not? He was a god… literally… and his head glowed like a small warm sun.

He grinned and nodded politely at Shory, but there was no recognition or intent in the gesture. She swallowed around the lump in her throat and prepared her next words carefully. Still, they came out in a croak.

“How are you today?”

Such a simple question required so much strength, and she felt the energy whoosh out of her. Rama only smiled and nodded. So easily, Rama demolished the rest of evening.

The next time she saw Rama, she made sure she looked different. She combed the tangles in her thick black hair, she wore her most dazzling black getup, and she caked her face with paint that was as close to Sita’s sweet, bright complexion as she could find. She found Rama in the lunchroom, eating alongside Sita. As she approached him, a collective snicker rippled through the room.

“You look… different,” Sita said, barely maintaining a smile.

“Next time,” Sita’s friend, Bev, chimed in, “make sure you take care of that nose too.”

Everyone laughed, with the exception of Rama and Sita, who merely looked embarrassed. Why didn’t he stand up for her? Why would Sita allow her friend to be so cruel? She ran out of the office, humiliated. She did not plan on facing them again without making a huge change.

Weeks later, she returned to work. Her PTO had run out, and the bandages had scarcely come off her face before her first day back. The surgeon had never operated on a demon before, clearly, because he hacked at her face in the sorry excuse for a nose job. As she saw her coworkers sizing her up once more, she steeled against their burning gazes. She prepared for this moment, and her nerves were made of steel. The time had come to cut the ties. One thing her long and painful recovery from surgery taught her was that butchering herself for the affection of others was almost a greater sin than their bullying and rejection.

In that moment, as she approached the place that once imparted such anxiety and heartsickness, her affection for Rama disappeared. Her respect for Sita as a kind beauty evaporated. Like a true demon, Shory found room in her heart to discard them all, and move beyond their opinions of her.

She stayed in the building only long enough to slap her resignation letter on Rama’s desk.

“A week?” he shrieked, after reading it. “We can’t find someone to do your job within a week!”

“Too bad.” Her yellow eyes sized him up for once, and, with an iconic toss of her jet-black hair, she walked away from the coworkers that never appreciated her. It was time for Shory to do what she always wanted to do – make jewelry and sell it online.

Author’s Note:

Originally, Shoorpanakha was hardly a footnote in the storylines of Rama and Sita. I felt that they way they treated her was uncalled for – Rama and his brother encountered her in the woods, where she petitioned for Rama’s affections. They treated her with disgust and disrespect, cutting her nose and mutilating her body. I wanted to make Shoorpanakha more human-like, obviously, because it is hard to feel pity for a demon who wanted to split up the happy couple the story focuses on. If she were a male demon, Rama would have killed Shoorpanakha. Instead, they decided to disfigure her, at Sita's suggestion. Weird as it may seem, I felt bad for her! I wanted Shoorpanakha to have human-like reasons for her actions, and a human-like response to Rama’s shunning.

From here, I expect that she will find success in whatever venture she takes on, with the moral of the story being that she let go of what others thought of her and decided to be wholly herself. In the original story, Shoorpanakha was wrong for propositioning Rama, but her feelings for Rama were the issue. I wanted that moment, for my story, where she no longer cared for him because of how he treated her.

Revision Note:

3/13/18, I made the corrections suggested by our instructor, tossing out some verb-agreement issues as well as reworking sentences that utilized passive instead of active voice.

I replaced "shines" with "shone" in the second paragraph. I swapped out "mug" for "visage," also in the second paragraph. I swapped out "cinder" to "cinders" in the third paragraph. I reworded the passive voice in the sixth paragraph, "Rama demolished" instead of "was demolished." In the seventh paragraph, I swapped the word "differently" for "different." I removed all passive voice that I could find.

I also reworded the author's note, to indicate that Rama himself wasn't the only one who decided what would happen to Shoorpanakha. He had help from his brother and Sita. Rama himself had no qualms with killing women, as exemplified in his treatment of Thataka.

Lastly, I added more about Shoorpanakha's decision to resign. I felt, upon rereading my story, that there was no logical progression from her decision to slice up her own face for the sake of Rama and her suddenly-steel resolve to leave them all behind. I wanted the reader to understand that, after seeing the horror show of a nose she landed with, she decided never to hurt or change for another unworthy person again.

Bibliography: Narayan's Mahabharata. Print.