What is Sita Gufa?

There is a cave in the Ramayana’s own telling of these years, before the deer. It comes on the day Khara marched on the hut with fourteen thousand rakshasas to avenge his sister Shurpanakha’s nose. Ram saw the signs before he heard the drums, and he told Lakshman to take Sita and his bow and go to a cave in the hills, somewhere hidden by trees and hard to get at, and not to argue. Lakshman went. He took Sita into the cave and they waited there, the two of them, listening to the noise of fourteen thousand rakshasas and one man outside, not able to see any of it, not knowing.

When the noise stopped, Lakshman brought her out. Ram was alive and the rishis of the forest were around him thanking him, and there was nobody left of the army. Sita went to him and held him and would not let go.

That is how the Ramayana uses a cave here — a place Sita was put for safety while Ram fought.

After Khara died it was Shurpanakha who went to Lanka. She stood in Ravan’s court with her nose and ears gone and told her brother that he was a fool sitting there enjoying himself while his people were being killed. Then she told him about Ram, and about Lakshman who had done this to her. But what she really talked about was the woman she had seen sitting at the door of a hut by the Godavari — skin like gold, a face like the full moon, so beautiful that there was no one like her anywhere. A woman like that was wasted on a man in bark cloth, she said. Go and take her.

Ravan sent his ministers out and thought. Then he went to an old rakshasa called Marich, who lived quietly now, and who had once met Ram’s arrow and survived it. Marich begged him not to do it. He said Ram was death itself with a bow, that anyone who went against him would not come back, that Ravan would lose everything. Ravan would not listen. In the end Marich said, then I will go, and I will die, and he got into Ravan’s flying chariot and they came to the forest by the Godavari.

Near the hut Marich turned himself into a deer. Not a real deer — a deer with jewelled horns and silver-dappled skin, a sapphire belly, emerald hooves, a mouth like a red lotus. It walked in and out of the trees close to the hut, coming near and then drifting away, always where Sita could see it.

Sita was picking flowers among the ashoka and karnikara trees. She saw it and stood still with her eyes wide, and then she called out for Ram and Lakshman to come quickly.

Lakshman looked at it once and said it was Marich. There is no deer like that anywhere on earth, he said. It is a trick. Sita did not care. It had taken hold of her heart, she said. She wanted it alive to keep, and if it could not be caught alive she wanted its golden skin to sit on. She said she knew it was a cruel thing for a woman to want and she wanted it anyway.

And it took hold of Ram too. He looked at it and said that if it really was Marich, Marich had killed enough rishis in this forest and should die, and if it was a deer, Sita should have it. He told Lakshman to stay at the hut with Sita and with Jatayu, the old vulture, and to guard her and not move. Then he picked up his bow and went after it.

The deer led him a long way from the hut. It would let him come close, then leap away. It would crouch in the grass as if it was tired, then be gone into the trees, then show itself far off. At last Ram drew an arrow and shot it through the heart. It leapt as high as a palm tree and fell, and as it died it turned back into Marich, and Marich, with the last of his breath, called out in Ram’s own voice, loud enough to carry all the way back to the hut. O Sita! O Lakshman!

Ram stood over him with his hair standing on end. He knew exactly what that cry was for. He killed another deer, an ordinary one, and started back as fast as he could.

At the hut Sita heard the cry. That is his voice, she said to Lakshman. He is in trouble. Go.

Lakshman did not move. Ram had told him not to leave her. He said it was not Ram’s voice, that no one on earth could beat Ram, that the rakshasas could copy anyone’s voice and did it exactly to trick good people. Calm yourself, he said. He will be back soon with the deer.

Then Sita said things to him that she would never have said on any other day. She said he was refusing to go because he wanted Ram dead, so that he could have her. She said perhaps Bharat had sent him to do it. She said she would sooner die than let another man near her.

Lakshman stood in front of her with his hands joined. You are like a goddess to me, he said, I cannot argue with you. Your words go through me like burning arrows. May I find you safe when I come back. And he bowed to her, and he walked away into the forest after his brother, turning to look back at her again and again until the trees hid her.

Think what that walk was. He knew it was a trick. He knew what leaving her meant. He had promised Ram. And there was nothing left he could do with what she had said to him except go.

Ravan was waiting for that. He came up to the hut in the last of the evening light dressed as a wandering sadhu — matted hair, a saffron cloth, a staff, a begging bowl. When he stepped into the clearing the wind dropped, the leaves stopped moving, and the Godavari, which was running fast, went quiet.

Sita was sitting on a carpet of leaves, crying, looking into the trees for the two of them. She saw a holy man at the door and did what anyone does. She gave him a seat. She brought water for his feet. She offered him fruit and roasted grain. And he stood there and praised her — her skin, her eyes, her waist — in words no sadhu uses, and asked her who she was and why a woman like her was alone in a forest full of rakshasas.

She told him, honestly. And then he told her who he was. He said he was the king of the rakshasas, that she should come to Lanka and be his queen, that Ram was a man who had thrown away a kingdom for a woman’s word and had nothing. She refused him. She went on refusing him. At last he struck one hand against the other and let the disguise go, and there were ten heads and twenty arms and a robe the colour of blood.

He took her by the hair with one hand and by the legs with the other, and his golden chariot came, and he lifted her into it, and it rose. She screamed for Ram, who was far away in the forest. She screamed for Lakshman, who was on his way to him. She called on the trees to tell Ram what had happened, and on the Godavari with its cranes and its swans, and on every animal in the forest. And then she saw Jatayu, asleep on a tree, and called to him.

Jatayu woke to her voice. He was very old, and he knew he could not win, and he said so. But he spoke to Ravan first, the way an old man speaks to a young one who is about to do something he cannot take back. This is Ram’s wife. You are a king. A king does not take another man’s wife. Put her down. And then: while I am alive you will not carry her past me. Stop and fight.

They fought in the air. Jatayu broke Ravan’s bow, killed the mules, and brought the chariot down. Then Ravan drew his sword and cut off both his wings, and the old bird fell, and Ravan picked Sita up again and flew south.

Ram and Lakshman found the hut empty and found Jatayu later, dying, on the ground. He told them it was Ravan and that he had gone south. Ram burned him the way you burn your own father, and the two brothers went down to the Godavari and gave water for him. That is where the search begins.

This is what Nashik tells.

Sita stayed in this cave for some days during the exile. Ram used to hide her here whenever he had to leave her, because a woman alone in that forest was never safe. She worshipped Shiva every day and would not eat before she had, so a Shivling was put in the small second cave for her. And it was from here that Ravan, dressed as a sadhu, took her.

People also say that a passage once ran from this cave underground, all the way north to Ramshej, the hill where Ram slept.

The cave is in Panchavati, close to the Kalaram temple and the old banyans. From outside it is nothing much — an opening at the foot of a short flight of steps. You go down, and the steps are narrow and the roof is low and you bend as you go. Inside, in the first cave, are Ram, Sita and Lakshman. In the second, smaller cave is the Shivling. It is dark and close in there, and you understand quickly why this is the place Nashik chose for the story of a woman who had to be hidden.

Across from the cave is a room painted with the scenes of that day — Ram killing Marich, and Ravan carrying Sita away.

Then come back up into the light. The Kalaram temple is a few steps away, Ramkund is down at the river, and Tapovan, where the story turned, is a little downstream. The Ramayana connection has the whole of the exile in one place.