Posessions as a coping method

Sita, being posessed by a ghost, was able to manage her fears and apprehensions about sexual relations and child birth, as well as adapt to her new life in her husbands village. Sita had many traumatic experiences in her short fifteen years, the death of multiple siblings, and the violent murder, raping, and suicide of her fellow classmates as well as her cousin. These past events along with her fears and the stress of marriage and a new life allowed for Sita to be posessed by the ghost of her cousin Taraka. In north Indian culture, people who have died by murder or suicide are the most likely to become malevolent ghost, and also more likely to linger and haunt their families and villages. After the birth of her first child, Sita's possessions turned into fits and became less and less frequent, having been possessed allowed for Sita's workload to be lightened, extra support from her marital family, and permission to visit her retired father every summer. It seems that while Sita's possessions may have been real in her own mind, that they also allowed her certain benefits and acted as a coping method to adjust to her new life at such a young age. When the writers checked in with Sita many years later they found her to be a confident woman managing her family and her childrens education. Sita herself said that her fits only came about "whenever there is a fight in the family or I see a dead body".