The Forest of Enchantments

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Love was full of contradictions. Sometimes the person you loved weakened you and sometimes he or she made you a stronger person.

what a chameleon thing love was, lifting us up one minute, casting us down the next.

Ram’s hand tightened around my wrist, his grasp like iron. I knew I’d have a bruise later, but that was the least of my concerns. Stand up against this huge injustice, I wanted to say. But he shook his head, indicating he didn’t want me to speak.

So many emotions swirled inside me, I could hardly breathe. But topmost was outrage. Ram and I had never fought, but I was ready for it now.

Apart from honouring my father’s promise, which is my duty as his son, I want Koshal to have peace.

I need you to be strong now, and calm. I need your support, my wife.’

beneath all the resolve, he, too, was worried. He, too, didn’t know how things would turn out. He, too, was reeling at this betrayal.

My duty was clear, and it was an easier one than Ram’s. It consisted only of one thing: helping Ram get through this challenge.

I held his face in my hands and kissed him. I didn’t care who might see us.

Such was love’s magic—the giver gained more than the receiver.

‘That’s what Kaikeyi’s counting on—your overdeveloped sense of decency. You need to fight her. All

Duty. Right. Those are the terms that Ram understood best, so I used them. But beneath them I was saying, I love you. I need you. Don’t abandon me.

His face was thunderous, but I wasn’t afraid. I put my arms around his neck and pressed my lips against the warmth of his chest, pushing aside his silken coronation garments to kiss the small, crinkly curls of hair that I loved.

this, too, was true of love: it could make us forget our own needs. It could make us strong even when the world was collapsing around us.

My only solace in all this hardship was the company of my husband, and his sensitivity to my difficulties.

Not everyone’s as righteous—or simple—as you. When will you learn that?

I learned a new fact about love that day: it could kill. Sometimes it could kill instantaneously.

Could love, which I’d taken to be powerful and everlasting, be so frail as well?

Could you pluck it out of your heart as easily as you’d pull a weed from a bed of flowers?

I thought of my love for Ram—and his for me—which defined my entire being. It frightened me to imagine this happening to us. I’d ...

But dreams are fractious things and reveal only what they wish.

it’s not enough to merely love someone. Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we’re willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.

Ram knew what I was thinking. He did that frequently nowadays, perhaps because we spent so much time together. Or was it because he loved me more?

Ram shrugged, modest as always. ‘The subject never came up. And in any case, I didn’t do much.

When you put your hand in the fire, knowingly or unknowingly, do you not get burned? Such is the ancient law of the universe. Of karma and its fruit. The idea of motive is irrelevant to it.’

once mistrust has wounded it mortally, love can’t be fully healed again.

He picked wildflowers and braided them, with inexpert tenderness, into my hair.

He travelled for miles to find honeycombs for me to suck on, for he knew I had a sweet tooth.

Such is the seduction of love: it makes you not want to think too much. It makes you unwilling to question the one you love.

That’s how love stops us when it might be healthier to speak out, to not let frustration and rage build up until it explodes.

I wondered if loving someone too much prevented you from seeing them less clearly than an objective bystander.

How entangled love is with expectation, that poison vine! The stronger the expectation, the more our anger towards the beloved if he doesn’t fulfil it—and the less our control over ourselves.

I didn’t want to die. Not without seeing Ram one more time. That’s how the bonds of love tie us down.

‘Have faith. Forces are aligning in the heavens and on earth. But such things don’t happen overnight.

gazed at it longingly, remembering my nights with Ram in the forest, how the moonlight had rained down on our lovemaking, sometimes passionate, sometimes tender, in our little hut. How my husband’s skin had glowed in its beams like shining honey. How afterwards—and this was just as precious—we conversed late into the night.

When you loved someone, it didn’t matter what you discussed; it was all fascinating. My heart ached for that companionship. My body, too—weaker each day in spite of the sudha Indra had brought me—ached with its many hungers.

And Ram wouldn’t have to risk his life for me.

‘Oh Ram,’ I whispered. ‘I’m so tired. I love you just as much as on the day of our marriage—no, more, because of all that we’ve been through together—but I don’t have the strength to continue like this. I need a sign. Something to give me a little hope.’

The monkey spoke, startling me. ‘Ram, Ram,’ it said, patting its chest gently as though my beloved resided there.

Love’s a pretty powerful weapon—it can cut through a lot of things.

was deeply thankful that Ram loved and missed me—the opposite would have been unbearable—at the same time; I didn’t want him to suffer even a moment of heartache because of me.

Love and happiness might not be in my control, but at least my dignity still remained mine.

Love is the spade with which we bury, deep inside our being, the things that we cannot bear to remember, cannot bear anyone else to know.

But some of them remain. And

they rise to the surface when we leas...

Forgiveness is more difficult when love is involved.

I knew now that love—no matter how deep—wasn’t enough to transform another person: how they thought, what they believed. At best, we could only change ourselves.

The wind blows through the forest And comes to rest on the branches of the pomegranate tree in our father’s garden. The day has come, it sings. The heroes are on their way. Faces of gold, eyes glimmering like mountain lakes, Will they bear our hearts away with them to our destinies?

He gave me a beautiful pearl necklace as a gift of gratitude.

At night when we lay in bed, he was careful of my comfort and asked me many times if I was eating right and resting enough. He kissed my stomach, which was just starting to develop a curve, and whispered tenderly to the baby, telling it all the things they’d do together—riding horses, practising archery, hunting in the forest. He was convinced it was a boy. ‘What if it’s a girl?’ I teased him. He looked a little taken aback. Then he rallied. ‘I guess I can do all the same things with her too.’