Sundarkand Path

The Sundarkand is the fifth of the seven kandas of the Ramcharitmanas, and the only one customarily read on its own — from the opening Sanskrit shlokas to the closing doha, in a single unbroken sitting. It follows Hanuman across the sea to Lanka: the leap, the search through Ravana's city at night, the meeting with Sita in the Ashoka grove, the burning of Lanka, and the return bearing her token. Read aloud at an unhurried pace, the sixty dohas and the chaupais between them take most households between two and three hours.

Households keep this path for Tuesday and Saturday evenings, for the days before a long journey or an examination, and through the years a chart is read as being under Sade Sati. Commentators explain the name sundara — beautiful — as belonging to the kanda in which a servant's devotion is shown plainly and without ornament. What the household is asked to bring is attention. The reading is done aloud, together, with the lamp kept alight from the sankalp to the aarti, and nobody leaves the room between dohas.