Skip to main content

MY corner: King of Ayodhya


My Corner: Transports me to wordy realms: Just me, a book and my imagination.

Book Review

King Of Ayodhya By Ashok K Banker

The complicated art of epic telling and retelling makes it an entangled mesh of imaginations. And the protagonists- their foresight has to be accommodated too. The protagonist of the epic, Rama, the future King of Ayodhya, hardly knows whether to smile or sigh as he crosses the living bridge of leviathans into the realm of rakshasa, “he was resigned to the knowledge that virtually everything they did would be turned into lore and legend, with all the accompanying flights of imagination and exaggeration that poetic licence allowed.” As Rama, traverses the making of his own legend he seems almost amused by what story -tellers would make of his feats as the defender of Dharma. Thousands of years later, Ashok K Banker’s retelling of the epic in the modern idiom only underscores what Rama had already envisaged.

Even if you have grown up listening to the Ramayana, each new telling will not cease to surprise you. And Banker explicates in this notes that it is through the works of Valmiki, Kamban, Tulsidas, Vyasa the tradition of telling and retelling the Ramayana began. “If it changes shape and structure, form and even content, it is because that is the nature of the story itself: it inspires the teller to bring fresh insights to each new version, bringing us even closer to understanding Rama himself.”

In the last of Banker’s Ramayana series, “King of Ayodhya”, Rama leads an army of vanars and bears onto the unassailable shores of Lanka to rescue Sita from the clutches of Ravana. No army had dared to land on the island of rakshasas before. At the behest of Ravana, the sea lord Varuna sends a tidal wave (tsunami) to destroy the bridge that they had built and kill thousands. The army manages to cross with the aid of greybacks but what awaits them is sorcerous engineering of Ravana-he commands the island of Lanka to reform into a new shape under the feet of Rama’s army killing many more. The language of the times seeps into the book-tsunami, hybrid, engineering etc..

Banker’s characterization of Ravana makes him a formidable foe but an interesting one too- the ten headed Ravana is well versed in the shlokas- he can chant them backwards, perfectly inverting every syllable to reverse the energies of Brahman. Besides being a destroyer of worlds and conqueror of realms he is artistic too, “with his many talents and gifts, he was a great artist as well, not to mention a gifted poet and musician, a connoisseur of all arts.’’ It is against such an evil force that Rama and his mortal army have to fight. In the inexorable battle of good and evil only one force will triumph….and Ravana knows there is no escaping the inevitable outcome. “This war is not about any woman, and never was. This war has been waged forever. It is the eternal war, mother of all wars. It is not merely about me, or Rama, or our differences. In another time, he and I were friends much beloved of each other: in another time, we may be so again. We shall be so. Yet in this age, and this place we are at war. And neither of us, if pressed hard, can answer honestly and truly why. For the reason goes to the very soul of ithihaas itself. And as you know the word for history means simply: That is what happened.” Explains the demon Ravana just before he leaves to keep his appointment with death.

Banker’s awe of the legend manifests in the lucidity of the composition and this is magically transported to the minds of the readers - the legend of Rama of Ayodhya grows enormously larger and larger as one negotiates the army of words.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: An Autobiography Of A Sex Worker by Nalini Jameela

I am 51 years old. And I would like to continue to be a sex worker.” This is how the candid and defiant opening statement in Nalini Jameela’s autobiography in Malayalam, Oru Lymgika-thozhilaliyude Atmakadha, goes. It at once throws a challenge at society’s double standards — harsh on prostitutes and soft on the clients. Nalini Jameela, who is the coordinator of the Kerala Sex Workers’ Forum, reveals her sordid story with no trace of compunction. Nalini was a 24-year-old widow when she entered the profession to feed her two children. At that time she did not think about the repercussions of her act. She writes, “I was earning Rs 4.50 at a tile factory near Trissur. My mother-in-law served me with an ultimatum to either give her five rupees a day to look after my children or leave the house. I recounted my woes to a friend, who introduced me to Rosechechi. Rosechechi promised me Rs 50 if I spent time with a man. The first thought that came to my mind was that my children would be looked
8 comments
Read more

Kochi Muziris Biennale: Whorled Explorations

London-based artist Hew Locke was in for a bit of shocker when he reached the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014 site, Fort Kochi in Kerala. His installation,  Sea Power , was apparently crafted from his imagination of what the historical kingdom of Cochin would have been. Indeed, he had yoked his imagination to that of a 17th century German printmaker. The printmaker had in turn conceived the kingdom of Cochin based on the tales of another. “My work is imagination based on the imagination of an image that was perhaps real. It was double fiction and I thought the prints were elaborate romantic imagery...but I discovered when I arrived in Cochin that this double fiction has elements of reality. People still wear lungis and walk around bare-chested,” says an amazed Locke. Hew Locke’s beaded frieze of mythological and historical figures that gently sway in the wind is a response to the biennial theme, ‘Whorled Exploration’, and suggests blips in the seminal mov­ements of history. Whorled Exp
Post a Comment
Read more

SnooTea: Just My Style

(Photographs by Minu Ittyipe) It began on a lark to spiff up my morning cuppa. Oh well, I just wanted a change from what I had been drinking all my life. I am not complaining about the faithful brew that I stir up with tea dust, it does merrily improve with two extra spoonfuls of sugar but I was just plain bored with the regular. My concept of a cup of tea was corralled in the traditional Indian style- coppery coloured liquid topped with plenty of milk and sugar but now there was in me this undeniable thirst for a more delicate bouquet. Tranquilitea, Coonoor Curiously, though grown in our own backyard, few of us have heard of the orthodox leaf tea, forget the Silver Tips, Golden Tips and the White Tea etc.. that quietly find their way to the export market. To make a foray into this relatively unknown terrain, I headed for Tranquilitea, a tea lounge in the Nilgiris, for a cup of “Tippy” tea. On a sober note, you are cautioned not to confuse “Tippy” with the more commonplace “Tipsy” for
61 comments
Read more