Cooling Counsel Burns Sita like Autumn Moonlight
Ayodhya Kanda, Doha 78
Doha 78 · Movement 2 of 2
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The counsel offered to Sita is cooling, well meant, sweet, and gentle. Every speaker wishes to protect her from pain.
Yet it cannot please her because its conclusion is separation. Like autumn moonlight that scorches the chakavi bird through the night, soothing words become torment through the absence they require.
Good intention alone does not determine how counsel enters another heart. The women see bodily safety; Sita feels the loss of life's centre. Protection itself has become a wound. What cools one measure of suffering intensifies the deeper one she has already named.
Autumn moonlight falls softly, yet to Sita every gentle word of separation burns.
Read the passage from the Manas
-सिख सीतलि हित मधुर मृदु सुनि सीतहि न सोहानि। सरद चंद चंदनि लगत जनु चकई अकुलानि।।78।।
This counsel, so cooling, so well-meaning, so sweet and gentle, did not please Sita at all. She grew distressed, like a chakavi bird touched by the moonlight of autumn.