Once again I need to seriously shorten my posts...Let's get to it!
New thoughts on the whole golden deer situation:
I still feel bad for Maricha; the guy is smart and logical and reasonable and he gets dragged into it and killed anyway (albeit he accepts Death gracefully). What justice in the world?
The description of the deer was breathtaking. I probably would have begged for it/hunted it. Granted I wouldn't have killed it, but semantics.
And Sita, always crossing the line. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Interesting how in this version, Ravana can directly pick up Sita, where in the last he could not. Possible meanings of this difference?
Poor Jatayu, so close to triumph and rescue only to fail. But I guess he might be happy that he died a warrior's death, as cliched and trite as that sentiment is.
And here we also see a version where Sita leaves a lovely trail of jewels, all catalogued quite nicely. . .
Onto Hanuman! Woo wooo!! Haha. But in all (but not really any) seriousness:
Gotta love Sita's spunk with Ravana; to Hell with him, indeed! Interesting little side story with Indra. Now we know how Sita survived and why she wasn't attacked, though, so that's cool and such.
Deer are such tattletales.
Who knew Rama was a romantic? That's right, everyone! But a strong quote here: "You have given away your life for me, and despite that my life herself has been taken from me. . ." There's nothing better than great, passionate prose.
Another adorable elderly lady enters the scene. Savari tells of the glorious white monkey, Hanuman, and rehashes the tale of Vali and Sugriva. And poor little baby Hanuman! Left all alone and hungry! To think he may have been burned by the sun in thinking that it was a mango. . . Silly monkey, haha. Moving on from deprecation (sort of), Hanuman sure was a flighty child--pun intended.
Dudhuvi is too headstrong and ridiculously aggressive. Sorry, but he deserved what he got. Meanwhile Sugriva gets the short end of the stick after committing no wrong--though he ends up acting badly and harshly and traitorously and stuff, so perhaps he deserved his punishment as well.
"Truly, a friend is protection against injury and a help for sorrow." A kind sentiment, and partially true, but more an empty reassurance than anything. Thank you, Lakshmana.
The fight between Vali and Sugriva is much abbreviated in this version. The death still seems a little unfair, but isn't nearly as conflicting as in Narayan's version. And Vali's last words are thoughtfully succinct and somehow more meaningful because of it. Woo conciseness!
"'Surely that is wrong, to part two people in love'. . .'As wrong as war'. . ." My punctuation there is surely wrong as well, but it's an interesting quote. We favor individualism so much that such a separation of two individual lovers seems as terrible as two or more nations sacrificing thousands for some cause; true or false, and right or wrong?
Now to begin the search:
Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day!
Oh, Sugriva, drinking your life away--how impressive. Drunk for over three months? Is that even possible?!
Various animals go in various directions to search for Sita. Most definitely (or at least most likely) some symbolism here, but I don't know/care enough to see it.
Turns out my vision of the underground kingdom was slightly off; eh, what are you gonna do? But this was a much more satisfactory depiction, so thumbs up to Buck once again! And the whole concept and character of Maya truly fascinates me. Therefore that story was automatically awesome.
We end with a monkey telling a bear a story. Totally normal. . .
No comments:
Post a Comment