Rama and Sita are no longer placeholders for chastity and virtue, but are human and they make excessive demands on each other, they are callous and take each other for granted all the time.
“For every incarnation of Rama, there is a Ramayana”, says AK Ramanujam in his essay ‘Three Hundred Ramayanas’. So, too, there should be three hundred Ramayanas for every incarnation of Sita, the latest being in the form of a curvy, coquettish, jazz-singing Betty Boop. Nina Paley's 2012 film Sita Sings the Blues (available for free) is a wonderful,…