Book excerpt: The story of the Ramayana is a story of trial and tribulation, of the subtlety of right and wrong, of love and loss. The actions of Rama, the righteous but troubled prince of Ayodhya, have perplexed readers over millennia. Lost Loves is an attempt to come to terms with Rama and with the Ramayana – a text that Arshia Sattar has translated to acclaim. The essays in this book imagine what might have been the thoughts and feelings of Rama and Sita as they lived through those terrible years of trial and separation. They explore what happens to love in separation, and how public lives and private desires collide to devastating effect. By trying to see the events of their lives as Rama and Sita may have seen them, Arshia Sattar makes the existential conflicts of the Ramayana fascinatingly relevant and freshly inspiring for the contemporary reader.