One person wrecked my life — and I can't move on until they admit what they did.

It is the first night out of Ayodhyā. Lord Rāma and Mother Sītā are asleep on a bed of grass and leaves, on the bare ground by the river. Guha, the chief of the forest people, is keeping watch, and the sight undoes him. He turns to Lakṣmaṇa and pours it out: the palace with its jewelled roofs, the beds soft as milk-foam, and now this — the prince and princess of two kingdoms lying in the dust.

Then he names the cause. Kaikeyī, he says, has done a hard and crooked thing; she has become an axe laid to the tree of the Sun dynasty; she has made the whole world grieve. The poet does not soften him. Guha is right about the facts, his grief is honest, and readers have agreed with him for five hundred years.

Now notice who answers. Lakṣmaṇa has left his wife, his mother and his home to walk barefoot for fourteen years because of that one woman's demand. If anyone on that riverbank is owed a confession, it is him.

He does not say Kaikeyī was right. He does not tell Guha to cheer up. The poet tells us how he spoke — madhura mṛdu bānī (मधुर मृदु बानी), sweet and gentle words — and then what he said: no one is the giver of joy or sorrow to anyone, brother. Everyone lives out what their own deeds have made.

Hear that for what it is, and for what it is not. It is not a verdict on Kaikeyī. It is a refusal to make her the author of his life. Guha has handed one person the pen — she did this, she caused all of it — and Lakṣmaṇa quietly takes it back. His story will be written by his own karma (कर्म), his own actions from here, not by hers.

Then he goes further than you may want him to. All of this, he says — meeting and parting, gain and loss, friend and enemy — is a tangle of illusion. Dohā 92 gives the picture: in a dream a king becomes a beggar, a pauper becomes the lord of heaven, and on waking there is neither gain nor loss. So look upon this world. Then the practical line: asa bicāri, reflecting on this, do not be angry, and do not lay blame on anyone in vain.

Be honest about how hard this is. You may hear it as 'what happened was your own fault', and it is not saying that; the poem has just let Guha name the wrongdoer and never corrects him. What it questions is the second thing, the one still costing you: that your peace is in their keeping, waiting for a signature they will never give. 'Everyone lives out their own deeds' cuts both ways. Their account is theirs. Yours is still open, and you are the only one writing in it.

You are allowed to argue, as Guha did. The difference is where the argument ends. The one who had most to forgive is already free of it, and not because anyone apologised.

First, separate the two sentences. Write them down: 'What they did was wrong,' and 'I cannot move on until they admit it.' Keep the first. Lakṣmaṇa never asked Guha to give it up. Put a question mark after the second, because it is the one the poem is talking to.

Second, find the pen. List three things in your life still being decided by what happened six years ago — the city you stayed in, the risk you will not take, the person you hold at arm's length. Beside each, write who is actually deciding it today. It is not them.

Third, retire the speech. It has had its thousand performances. Say it once more, out loud, to an empty room, and then rule that it has been delivered. When it starts up in the shower, you can say: that one's done.

Fourth, take back one deed. Not forgiveness — nobody is asking you to feel warmly toward them, and you may never. One action, this week, that you have been waiting for the apology to permit. Apply for the thing. Book the thing. Call the person. That is nija kṛta karama: your own deed, writing your own next page.