A Powerful Tale of Love, Betrayal and Respect – Divakaruni’s The Forest of Enchantments is Sita's Ramayan
After reading ‘The Palace of Illusions’ by Divakaruni, I was really looking forward to reading ‘The Forest of Enchantments’, mostly because I was mesmerized by her portrayal of the deep emotions of some of the most talked about mythological characters, accompanied by an engaging writing style. Both the books force you to really take a step back and think about the characters and events from a fresh perspective. Mostly because we have read the Ramayana and the Mahabharata form childhood, we have a certain impression about some of the characters, which you will be forced to rethink. Coming back to ‘The Forest of Enchantments’, the book starts with Sita’s twins leaving for Ayodhya along with sage Valmiki to sing the great Ramayana written by the sage himself in King Ram’s court. Predicting that the epic written by Valmiki will not be even close to her version of the story, Sita sets on to write her own epic, The Sitayana. The Forest of Enchantments is Sitayana . We follow Sita...