The Forest of Enchantments

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

he gave the best back rubs, knowing without being told exactly where my body ached.

Suspicion is a terrible disease, a canker that can totally destroy a relationship.

wished Ram had been there to wave goodbye to me. But he’d left before sunrise, while I was still half asleep. Apparently there was some kind of trouble at the border. He’d left even before I could say I love you. A needle of unease pricked my heart at that thought.

‘But why didn’t he tell me any of this?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t he explain what was going on? I would’ve understood. I would’ve been angry, yes, but I would also have sympathized with him.

Together, we might have come up with a better plan. And even if we couldn’t have come up with a solution, at least I would’ve been part of the decision, not a victim of it.’ I choked up with tears. I tried to swallow them, but they kept coming.

‘You go back and tell him this, Lakshman: He sentenced me to banishment because people were whispering that I might have betrayed him. But he’s the real betrayer. Who’s going to sentence him?’

‘Don’t be afraid, little ones,’ I whispered, pushing my way determinedly into the dark, even though I had no idea of what it held. Hot tears scalded my cheeks. ‘I’m going to live for you. I’m going to guard you with my last breath. I’m going to love you enough for mother and father both, so you feel no lack. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know to be princes. But more than that, I’ll teach you what you need to know to be good human beings, so that you’ll never do to a woman what your father has done to me.’

Endure your challenges.

All these had happened without my choice, but I’d survived them. Wasn’t that all we could do as imperfect human beings?

couldn’t control what was done to me. But my response to it was in my control.

I pondered the word endure, what it meant. It didn’t mean giving in. It didn’t mean being weak or accepting injustice. It meant taking the challenges thrown at us and dealing with them as intelligently as we knew until we grew stronger than them.

These boys would be raised like no other. Their greatest teacher would be their mother.

every darkness is edged with light.

Motherhood taught me something new about love. It was the one relationship where you gave everything you had and then wished you had more to give.

All this time I’d believed that I’d successfully steeled my heart against him, but ah, that wasn’t true. I still loved him as much as when we’d been forest-dwellers in our little moonlit hut in Panchabati.

Rage rises up in me until my whole body is scorched, for some kinds of burning don’t require a fire. Not a word of love, not a word of apology for the sorrow he has caused me. Not a word about the unjust and cruel way in which he sent me away. He hasn’t even called me by my name.

Anger and self-pity are useless emotions, so I push them away and speak calmly, even though my heart is breaking all over again.

I bless my daughters, who are yet unborn. I pray that, if life tests them—as sooner or later life is bound to do—they’ll be able to stand steadfast and think carefully, using their hearts as well as their heads, understanding when they need to compromise, and knowing when they must not.

‘I forgave you a long time ago,’ I say to Ram. ‘Though I didn’t know it until now. Because this is the most important aspect of love, whose other face is compassion: It isn’t doled out, drop by drop. It doesn’t measure who is worthy and who isn’t. It is like the ocean. Unfathomable. Astonishing. Measureless.’