Storytelling for Week 5: Ravana's Love Letter

Ravana's Love Letter

Dearest Sita,  

As I write this letter I am gazing at you from a window in my extravagant palace.  The fire is roaring and the servants are being most obedient.  The only thing missing is…you.  I gaze at you in the garden day in and day out, your courage and determination is unparalleled by any other human or asura woman in the entire universe.  (And I would know since I have lived quite a long time and have known  a variety of human and asura women.)  

I just want you to know that your point has been made loud and clear.  Whenever you get done moaning about how I should not have stolen you from the forest feel free to come inside the Palace of Lanka.  I understand how we did not get off the right foot but I am willing to make it up to you, if you give me a chance.  You know I would never intentionally hurt you, and you also know that I literally cannot physically harm you unless you give me your consent.  So please, my dear Sita, do not let our love story end before it even begins! 

I know the garden must be cold at night.  A woman like you was not made to live among shrubs and worms.  You should be here ruling over multiple universes beside me.  I want every king and queen from here to Timbuktu to look at us with envy.  When we are married, men will quake with fear of my incomprehensible strength but they will also marvel at how beautiful you look beside me on the throne.  

I hope to have ten sons with you, one to match each of my heads.  Our sons will bear my strength and women will line up to be their wives.  We will carve up the world and split it into ten pieces to give each of them a quadrant to command while both of us rule over its entirety.  I have done so much with my life but I wait here incomplete without you beside me.  

I know you still wonder about Rama, but you are destined to be next to me while the human world burns.  It baffles me how you have not thanked me for rescuing you from that life of peasantry.  The kind of life Rama made you endure.  You lived in a comfortable human palace before, but Sita you have no idea what I can offer you.  However, if a forest life is what you really want I will have Maya build you an entire palace in a garden.  

I hope after this letter I will see you at the gates of the palace soon.  

Your Most Humble Adorer, 

Ravana

(Ravana approaches Sita during her captivity from Wikipedia.) 

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Author's Note:  I wanted to write about Ravana's point of view after he kidnaps Sita because he must be absolutely astounded that she does not want to be with him.  So I figured with Valentine's Day just around the corner why not write about it through a love letter.  Ravana is very arrogant and I wanted to show how he really cannot grasp how this woman refuses to be with him.  I wanted the reader to take away that Ravana is so focused on himself throughout the entire love letter that he will never understand WHY Sita will not belong to him.  Just like at the end of the epic when he cannot grasp that he could be defeated by a human.  

Bibliography - 

Buck, William (1976). Ramayana: King Rama's Way.