The story traces their journey from the mentally stimulating and gender impartial environment at the court of Mithila, a place where they interact with learned sages (men and women) and learn to question and argue intelligently to the patriarchal household at the palace of Ayodhya.
The narrative starts with the childhood of the four sisters – Sita, Urmila, Mandavi and Shrutakirti at the palace of Janaka and Sunaina, king and queen of Mithila. If Rama went on an exile to fulfil the promise given by his father to Kaikeyi, citing it to be his dharma to fulfil his father’s wishes, Urmila exiled herself in the palace, so that Lakshman could fulfil his promise of always protecting his brother. While reading the various traditional renderings of Ramayana, one often wonders why is there so little said about the brave and self-sacrificing wife of Lakshman, who upheld dharma as much as Rama did.
Book Review: The Other End of The Corridor by Sujata Rajpal.
However, she is a significant contributor to the events in the story and definitely, one of the strongest characters. Urmila is a character that finds little mention in Valmiki’s Ramayana, and the various local versions. Sita’s Sister is a part fiction, part reality rendition of Ramayana from the perspective of Urmila, Sita’s younger sister, second daughter of King Janaka and Lakshmana’s wife. With Sita’s Sister, she repeats the magic this time with the Ramayana. Kavita Kane has a flair for viewing epics from a hitherto unexplored character’s point-of-view, a fact that she proved with the immensely popular Karna’s Wife – a narration of Mahabharata from the perspective of Urvi, Karna’s second wife.
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