Her skin was the colour of red hot iron; her hair bronze-tinted. She was of heavy build, powerful, invincible, and had mastered magic. She was outspoken, even foul-mouthed at times. Such was Surpanakha. Being a rakshashi, she had never fully understood the ways of humans. She did not know, for example, that in the human world women are supposed to hide behind a façade of modesty, that they are not supposed to express pure, naked desire. Which is why she had come out from behind the bush and had approached Ram, aroused by a crushing desire for his lithe, muscular, honey-skinned body.

She was not really good with words. Her proposal to Ram for sexual intimacy was so direct that had she said the same in 2010, the likes of the Shiv Sena would have staged a furious protest. “Tumi sundar purush, ami tomake dekhibamatro kaamer bashabartini hoia upasthit hoiachhi (You are handsome, I was overcome by sexual yearning for you the moment I saw you, so here I am)” — she said to Ram. Should she have been more subtle? Had it not been for Surpanakha’s unabashed candour, the war of Ramayan might not have taken place.

It is but obvious that both Ram and his brother, Lakshman, found Surpanakha repulsive. She was not exactly beautiful, at least not in the conventional sense. But what really annoyed the two brothers was her brazenness. A typical ‘womanly’ proposal, shy, elusive and indirect, would have been easy to evade for the noble Ram. But here was a woman who expressed her desire as directly, and with as much arrogance, as a man would have. Ram did not know how to deal with her. The best he could do was mock her crudeness. So the two brothers decided to play a game with her.

Ram told her that since he had his wife, Sita, with him, he could not indulge Surpanakha. He advised her to approach Lakshman instead. Surpanakha — the desire for a male body burning inside her — did not really care which of the two brothers she went for. As she approached Lakshman, he sent her back to Ram saying, “I am just his servant. You will be better off as his second wife than my first.” Thus Surpanakha was left begging the two brothers, one after the other, to sleep with her. Yet, she was not the least ashamed.

Failing to make her realize her folly, the two brothers decided on a different method. They pitched Sita against Surpanakha, in the hope that the latter would back off realizing that she was indeed no match for the former in terms of beauty. But Surpanakha, being ignorant of human ways, failed once again to comprehend that the only ground on which two women could compete in a human world was beauty. She tried to display her strength instead by attacking Sita, hoping to defeat her in a fight. Lakshman drew his sword and slashed off Surpanakha’s nose and ears in response. It is hard to say whether he did this to protect Sita or to punish Surpanakha for daring to show off her might in front of two men.

Bathed in blood, Surpanakha ran through the forest howling in despair, numbed by grief and scorched with anger. This is when she understood human ways. She decided to seek Ravan’s help to avenge Ram. At last, she had learnt the womanly trick of indirectness. A villainess was born in her. This is the villainess we so religiously hate when reading the “Aranya Kandya” of the Ramayan. She is seen as the ugly, sex-starved woman. I too hated her when I read the Ramayan for the first time as a child. It was a second reading at a more mature age that made me discover the woman in Surpanakha without being judgmental.

The recent furore in Andhra Pradesh over the depiction of Draupadi as a woman enjoying sex in the book, Draupadi, by Yarlagadda Lakshmi Prasad, shows how preconceived notions plague our reading of the epics. Society wants mythical heroines like Draupadi to be ‘pure’, with no sexual hunger, and the likes of Surpanakha face the wrath of Valmiki and his readers for the sheer blatancy of their craving for another human body. Perhaps it is time for us to grow up and face the real woman.