Sita's Promise - a Dance Drama by Uma Parameswaran
Sita's Promise, links
epic India with modern Canada through myth and dance. Rama,
Sita and Lakshmana - the main
characters in the Ramayana - during their forest exile find
a wounded Arctic tern that has lost its way in its
northern migration. They resolve to take it back to its home;
they travel northwards through India to the Himalayas,
where Jatayu, the sacred eagle, carries them to the tern's home by
the shores of the primeval ocean that
we now call Lake Agassiz. The native children dance for Sita
and ask her to stay with them. Sita says she must go
but promises them that she will come again,
"to this lovely land of lakes, blue skies and snow.
I, through my people, shall surely come again, and we shall build
our temple and sing our songs with the children of all the different
lands who make this their home."