- you, lord, are all-compassionate and supremely wise; can a shadow be torn away from its substance? Where can the sunlight go, divorced from the sun, or where the moonlight, forsaking the moon?’

Having submitted her loving entreaty to her lord, Sita spoke these winning words to the minister: ‘You are as much my benefactor as my own father or my father-in-law; it were most improper for me to urge something in reply.

Yet, sire, take it not ill of me if in my grief I am constrained to address you. In the absence of the lotus feet of my lord all other ties of kinship are of little account.

I have seen my father’s luxurious magnificence and the jewelled crowns of mighty kings bowing at his footstool. Bereft of my lord, my parents’ home, which is such a blissful abode, delights me not even in an unguarded moment.

My father-in-law is the emperor, Kosala’s monarch, whose glorious renown is manifest in all the fourteen spheres, whom even Indra (the king of the gods) comes forward to receive and cede him half of his own throne.

Such is my father-in-law and such is Ayodhya, my home; agreeable is my family and my mother-in-law love me as my own mother; yet apart from the dust of Raghunatha’s lotus feet none of these affords me pleasure even in a dream

On the other hand, rough roads, the forest regions and the hills, the elephants and the lions, impassable lakes and streams, wild tribes such as Kols and Bils, deer and birds – all these are delightful to me in the company of the lord of my life.