Week 12 Storytelling: The Death of Sati

Once upon a time, there lived a very powerful and proud king named Daksha, who was blessed with many beautiful daughters. The youngest of these was Sati, and she was the most virtuous and pure of all her sisters. Unbeknownst to her father, Sati had devoted every part of her being to the Great God Shiva, who returned Sati's great affection. Their love was revealed at Sati's Swayamvara, where she chose Shiva to be her husband. Daksha was furious at his daughter for out of all the wealthy princes and lords, she chose Shiva who had very little material wealth. Daksha cursed his daughter and forced the two to leave his kingdom and never come back. This was, of course, a very ineffectual punishment, as Sati and her husband were very happy in their home far from the rest of the kingdom, and also Shiva was the Great God, so the idea that Daksha's punishment would matter at all is utterly ridiculous, but I digress.

After some time, the couple was visited by the great sage Narada, who somehow managed to be an insufferable gossip despite his infinite wisdom. Narada told the great Shiva about an upcoming feast that Daksha was planning to hold to honor every member of his family, and then Narada proceeded to be a huge jerk by trying to rub it in Shiva's face that he wasn't invited. Shiva, having fallen asleep during the conversation, paid him no attention. But Sati was consumed by her "woman's curiosity," and yes, that is apparently a real thing according to the story. Shiva told his dear wife that she had to stay home, but this greatly upset her. She was so frustrated she turned into the ten-armed goddess Durga, also known as the goddess of death. Ignoring the wishes of her husband, who happened to be not only a god but the GREAT god, Sati went back to her father's kingdom to attend the feast. To this day, no one really knows why she thought this was a good idea at all. One could only assume that she was very hungry, or just really into feasts.

Once Sati arrived at her father's kingdom, wearing the simplest of dresses and no jewelry, she was greeted with the ridiculing laughter of her many sisters because apparently all of her sisters were like mean high school girls. Daksha then rose and addressed his daughter, his voice dripping with rage. He was furious she had dared to show her face in his hall, for she was just the lowly wife of a beggar. Sati could not stand her father's condemnations of her husband (who was still the GREAT god) and refused to listen further. Apparently, Sati was such a dutiful wife that even hearing her husband be slandered could be considered infidelity. She then spontaneously combusted as an act of suicide, adding a whole new meaning to the phrase "going out with a bang." Shiva was meditating during all of this, because I guess he couldn't be bothered to go protect his wife's honor.  But to his credit, he did decide to summon a demon army to kill Daksha in revenge, so I guess it's all good.

Sati is rejected by her father; source: wikimedia

Author's Note: This story is based off of Sister Nivedita's story Sati, The perfect Wife, available here.
My story is a fairly straight representation of the original; I didn't change any major plot points or anything like that. The story to me just seemed like one wild overreaction after the next, so I wanted to try to play that up in this version. Most of my other stories have had more straight-forward humor, so I tried to make this one more dry or sarcastic. It was also my first time using a more biased narrator to comment on the story. I really like the idea of having a narrator as a character who engages with the story so that was something I wanted to try this week. At first, I thought I would write a children's-story style piece (hence the once upon a time) but I think it maybe turned into a more satirical story. The character of Narada in particular was such an amusing portrayal of the wandering sage archetype we've seen so much of, so I had to include him and how he plays into the plot. I also decided to try writing a story without any dialogue to see how well I'd be able to still convey the story. I've gotten a number of comments on how good my dialogue is, but that makes me think I should practice the prose more.