The Story of a Princess-1

I don’t really remember my parents. The maids tell me that’s because I was only a few days old when my surrogate father found me lying in a field. Is my father a farmer? Oh, no, no! He’s a king. Then why was he ploughing a field? They tell me it was a religious ritual of some sorts. They perhaps even told me its significance. But I do not remember any of it. All that I remember from that discussion all those years ago, when I first started questioning and thinking about what went on around me, is that my father found me lying in a newly ploughed field, and took me home with him. He was a childless man, and I was a parentless child and we found solace in each other. Because he found me in a furrowed field, he called me ‘daughter of the Earth’, and named me Sita. Because his name was Janak, I was also called Janaki, daughter of Janak.

He loved me like his own daughter. I had all the comforts and privileges due to a princess and received all the education that was imparted to princes in those days, much to the amusement of my maids. Whether Nyay-shastra or sword-fighting, you name it, I had it. I never could really understand why he insisted that I learn all that, until much later, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy it or wasn’t good at it.

Having so much to do also meant that I didn’t have time for idle thinking, and this I appreciated because this meant not having to think about the mystery of my birth, or why my parents left me alone in that field that day. You see, unlike my father, I never could really believe that I was ‘born of the Earth’, without any human parents. This might also be due to the whispers I heard around me, behind curtains, around a blind corner, whispers that would hush-up as soon as I neared them.

Sometimes, though, I felt like I wasn’t really Sita, the 10-year-old child, but a very, very old Spirit. Sometimes I felt this spirit talking through me, making me say things I would not normally say, things that my father said were way beyond my years, things that sometimes made my teacher tell me off. Of course, I would apologize immediately, but the thoughts of the Spirit stayed with me, making me see things in a totally new light. You could say that I owe my education to this Spirit as much as to my teachers.