It is often said that love knows no boundaries. True love pervades the stories that we read. While the archetypal story is prevalent for thousands of years, the story of love has been around since the inception of time. Each of us experienced that childhood notion of a white prince charming coming to the rescue, girls and gays alike (with straight men being a minority).

What does it mean to be in love? For two beings to embody one? To be enshrouded in passion? Questions many have felt, but few can answer. We begin to act in unexplainable ways “sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow” (1089). We revert back to our childhood years, calling each other “baby” and other terms of endearment. We maintain a state of elation, as if we found Shangri-La and never left it. We become each other’s world and the universe beyond that is alien. Nothing matters beyond the lovers’ realm.

In the Ramayana, love bridges the gaps of the story. Sita says, upon hearing Rama calling in distress, “’If I lose Rama, I will kill myself’” (1032). This plays upon the concept of love encompassing two beings and melding them into one; hence, when one is gone, so will the other. Following the disappearance of Rama and Lakshmana, the Dark Angel Ravana “[comes] to take [Sita]” (1034) and offers her a throne “greater than the one which you have lost through your husband’s folly” (1034); but Sita utterly refuses. Love, after all, reigns supreme and humility is her handmaid. Crystal calls it “the single most important moral” in the stories, which I too believe to be true.

The Ramayana is called the “Quest for Sita” because for the majority of the epic poem, Sita is absent from Rama’s side. The physical separation of the two generates the conflict of the poem. The driving force behind both the good and the evil forces revolve around the plight for Sita, all for love or lack thereof.