In Andhra Pradesh, women sing tales from Ramayana in the privacy of their homes. However, they narrate Ramayana from the women’s perspective highlighting interpersonal relationships, rather than the war scenarios. Thus female characters are the main focus of their telling. For Instance Kausalya’s birth pangs, Sita’s bidai, and the wedding night of Sita and Rama get a lot more attention in these songs . Women’s Ramayana also openly blame Rama for Sita’s plight. They recall how Rama’s envy and suspicion of Sita’s character led to Sita’s banishment. The story is known as the revenge of Shurpanakha .The narrative begins when Rama, Sita and Lakshman have returned to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana.
Shurpanakha, the sister of Ravana, is angry and feels humiliated for Lakshman has cut her nose and ears and further more, her powerful brother Ravana, was killed in the war. Shurpanakha feels she needs to take revenge on Rama. Being a women, she is no match to Rama’s strength and skill in battlefield, and the only way she can belittle Rama is by disturbing his peace of mind and happiness. Identifying Sita, as the root cause of all her pain and tribulations, she decides to humiliate Sita to take revenge on Rama .
Taking the form of a hermitess Shurpanakha goes to Ayodhya, where Rama is now ruling as the King. She goes to Sita’s palace and asks for Sita stating she had met Sita during her days of exile in the forest. Sita is little hesitant to meet her, as she can not recollect any past meeting, but after some persuasion from her aides Sita agrees to meet the hermitess.
Hermitess asks Sita, about Ravana. “Oh great Queen can you describe the wicked Ravana to me ? Can you draw his picture for me” Asks Shurpanakha in disguise. “ No holy lady! I never looked at Ravana? replies Sita. But hermitess is adamant “ Try to remember Ravana for me Oh Queen!. I am sure you must have seen something of him ” Shurpanakha insists. But Sita replies she never set eyes on Ravana as she looked only at his feet. Hermitess encourages her to draw whatever she recollects of Ravana, so Sita draws the picture of Ravana’s big toe.
Shurpanakha then completes the picture –depicting Ravana as a handsome man with a broad shoulders and chest, with strong ankles and thighs. She then pleads Brahma the creator of life, to breath life into the picture so that she can fondly remember her dead brother in this life like image. Not knowing her ulterior design Brahma breaths life into the image which immediately comes alive. Shurpanakha now brings the picture to Sita’s palace and drops it at her feet and runs away saying, “ Do what you want with this picture”.