Creating a modern-day reenactment of an age-old epic is a challenging task especially if it’s the long and arduous life-story of a Hindu goddess. American cartoonist, animator and illustrator Nina Paley is doing just that with “Sita Sings the Blues” — a 72 minute creative, beautiful and humorous animation on Sita’s story from the Ramayana. In a conversation with Hafta Magazine in Manhattan, Nina discusses the moral ambiguities of the central characters from the Ramayana, the genesis of the project and how she is retelling Sita’s story.

The genesis of Sita

Nina first encountered Sita in the form of Amar Chitra Katha comics in the summer of 2002. She had just moved to Trivandrum with her American husband and initially wasn’t particularly impressed with Sita who she thought to be a weak and submissive woman. But it took a series of disparate events and encounters — personal crisis, the resulting grief, homelessness, couch-surfing, and the discovery of a prolific 1920s jazz singer — to come up with Sita’s account of the Ramayana. Around the time she was in Trivandrum, Nina’s husband called off the marriage through email while she was on a business trip to New York.

Distraught, heartbroken and homeless, Nina found the ambiguities in the Ramayana mirroring her confusion. Couch-surfing in New York, she came across Annette Hanshaw’s soulful girlish voice singing the blues. Personal crisis, Annette Hanshaw and Sita merged in Nina’s mind to form a single animated short film called “Trial by Fire”.

“Trial by Fire” was supposed to be a one-off film based on Sita’s walk though the fire with Annette Hanshaw soulfully singing “You are Mean to Me.” But the popularity of the film led Nina to develop the story further to a full-fledged 72 minute feature “Sita Sings the Blues”. The completed film will have 10 songs (5 of them already online), 15-20 minutes of dialogues (featuring several fake Indian miniature paintings that the incredibly talented Nina is creating herself) and 15-20 minutes of what Nina calls “experimental funky” stuff.

The greatest break-up story ever

The image of Sita evokes diverse contradictory emotions among women. On one level, with her loyalty, love and righteousness, she embodies the ideal of perfect wife and woman. On another level, she is seen as weak and submissive, who meekly suffers at the hands of her husband. In conversation with Hafta Magazine, Nina explains that it’s these ambiguities in the Ramayana that fascinates her, allowing that even Gods are not infallible and perfect.

For example, Nina cites the example of Rama’s banishment of Sita as unambiguously wrong.
Being the king and champion of the downtrodden, Rama could have stood by his wife and set an example instead of listening to a wife-beater washerman. Instead he asks his brother Laxman to leave her in the forest. And, in spite of her sufferings, Sita is not a weak or meek woman. She single-handedly raises her children and with her final act of defiance by asking the Earth to open up and swallow her, Sita rejects Rama and indicts him for his past behavior.

Still, in spite of being a feminist version, Nina insists “Sita Sings the Blues” has no political message. Neither is she criticizing the institution of marriage. Instead Nina wants her interpretation to be a story of love and heartbreak. “No matter how perfect you are as a woman, you will not be rewarded,” Nina insists. For her, Sita’s love, loyalty and obsession for Rama and the suffering she has to go through for him make it the greatest break-up story ever — one that has found resonance in her own personal life and which might evoke similar sentiments in many women.

The Indian Betty Boop

Ultimately “Sita Sings the Blues” is a creative animated feature and Nina retells Sita’s story with music, color and humor. Nina’s Sita is a saucy, buxom, curvaceous Indian version of Betty Boop with long beautiful lashes, blue eye-shadow, hopelessly in love with her man, playing the saxophone, crying dollops of tears and singing in a lilting tragic voice “Daddy Wont You Please Come Home” while captive in Lanka. The editing, colors and details are beautiful and, if you haven’t already, we urge you to see the videos online. The buxom Sita has raised a few eyebrows but Nina is inspired from old Indian temple art where full-bodied female forms are depicted and celebrated.

Still, Nina’s subject matter has generated some controversy. (The Uttara Kanda and banishment of Sita has always been controversial with some maintaining that it does not exist in Valmiki’s original version) Some are outraged that an American woman could tackle the Ramayana in such a humorous manner, thus interpreting it as irreverent and offensive. Interestingly, Nina tells Hafta Magazine that all the outrage has come from men while women, for the most part, are finding her interpretation interesting. More than criticism, she has been overwhelmed by the positive response by South Asian expatriates in the US where the Sita videos are much more well-known.

For now, Nina is hard at work trying to finish this feature by end of next year, so much so that other forms of animated shorts (she has made popular award-winning ones like I Heart My Cat, Fetch and The Stork) and her past life as a syndicated cartoonist are on hold. She works independently from her one room studio and being a low budget, independent project, money is a problem. The Guggenheim Foundation recently awarded her a fellowship which covers her living expenses for a year (which means she does not need a freelance gig to pay the rent) but she is still looking to raise money for sound and other expenses.

Nina’s website describes her as “ America’s Best-Loved Unknown Cartoonist” but with Sita Sings the Blues, she might be changing the “unknown” description soon. So what next? Nina shrugs, “Maybe something completely different.”

("Sita Sings the Blues" can be found at http://www.ninapaley.com/Sitayana/)

(Saswati Bora used to be a journalist but now works as a researcher. She dreams of one day learning Spanish, cooking a mean fish dish, and not getting depressed while looking at her bank account. She lives in Washington DC and maintains a blog at: http://saswatibora.com/pblog/index.php) 

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