Nandini Sahu’s Sita (A Poem) is one of those influential texts of our times that bare the pretensions of such long-standing narratives, perpetuated in the forms of myth, memory and critical discourses, that present the man-woman power dynamics in our society as one that is rightfully unequal. On the face of it, some attempts are made by the age-old narratives of patriarchy to show its initiatives for establishing gender equality, or at the least its willingness to do so but as one inquires further into the matter, patriarchy comes out unadorned and we witness some of the finest cases of illogical argumentation. Naïve explanations­–men and women are biologically different, hence unequal­, and should be so–follow. This paper tries to explain the importance of Sita (A Poem) as a text that offers an alternative modernity–a narrative not essentially counter, but genuine­–that takes us beyond the usual feminist discourse, one that, while reinterrogating the myth of Ram-Sita, demythifies many associated folk narratives. Through a conscious deconstruction of this text, I also intend to bring to the table the subtle ways in which myth, memory and critical discourses fuse together to create a ‘reality’ far removed from reality.

Keywords: Mnemo, Myth, Folklore, Patriarchy, Masculinity.