Ramayana, now from a feminist pen

Samhita Arni was all of 12 years when she illustrated and penned her very first book, a retelling of sorts of the Mahabharata for young readers.

Having grown up in an artistically diverse environment, she had begun exploring her creative faculties early on. And now, 15 years later, she's taken a bigger stride and embarked on a project that clearly shows how the young author has matured - not just as a writer, but as an individual, and above all, as a woman.

Her latest venture, a graphic novel called Sita's Ramayana, depicts the Indian epic from a completely feminine perspective. Samhita has joined forces with a Patua scroll artist named Moyna Chitrakar from West Bengal, to bring this work to life.

Full report here Times of India

Ramayana literature is the key

All India Konkani Parishad  and the Konkani Language & Cultural Foundation, Mangalore  are jointly organizing a two day National Seminar on the Ramayanas in Konkani, at the World Konkani Centre, Mangalore on 2nd and 3rd October, 2010.

The Seminar, which  will have Sessions on Literary, Linguistic and Folklore aspects of  the Ramayana literature and oral traditions in Konkani will be inaugurated by  Dr. M. Veerappa Moily, Union Minister for  Law and Justice, and  the author of Ramayana Mahaanveshanam in Kannada. Dr. H. Shantaram, President of the Konkani Parishad will preside over the function and Mr. Uday Bhembre, eminent writer will deliver the keynote address.

The session on literary aspect will be chaired by Dr. Harischandra Nagvekar. While Dr. Sunita Bai (Kochi). Mrs. Priyadarshni Tadkodkar (Goa) Dr. Sonia Sirsat (Goa) will  present papers.

Dr. William  D’Silva will  preside over the Second Session on Linguistics Aspects of  various Ramayana  versions in Konkani, in which  papers will be presented by Dr. Rocky V. Miranda (Mysore), Dr. Madhavi Sardesai (Goa) and Mr. Gokuldas Prabhu.

Full report here Mangalorean

24 hours with Rama

xThe other day, Pushpa Singh’s living room in Vasundhara Valley Apartment Society, near east Delhi’s Anand Vihar, was turned into a makeshift temple. She and her husband, Kshetra Pal, were hosting Ramayan Paath, a continuous reading session of Ramcharitmanas, a Hindu epic on Lord Rama.

Written in Avdhi, a Hindi-language dialect, it was composed by the 16th century saint-poet, Tulsi Das.

Living in a gated residential complex, the 63-year-old bridge champion sent telephone invites to friends, neighbours and also to the security guards of her ‘apartment society’. A priest was hired for a new pair of dhoti, kurta and Rs.101.

The Ramayan Paath is an important event in the Singh’s social calendar. Her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter had come the day before. Her niece arrived from Aligarh. The reading lasts for 24 hours.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Ramayana goes 3D

The story of prince Ram and his fight with demon king Ravan is all set to hit theatres this Dussehra in an animated form.

Produced by Ketan Mehta, Ramayana - The Epic will release on October 15.

The movie has Manoj Bajpayee, Juhi Chawla, and Ashutosh Rana lending their voices to the lead characters of Ram, Sita and Ravan.

"The legend of Rama, the original Indian superhero, is the most popular Indian story ever told. 'Ramayana - The Epic' is a spectacular audio visual experience far beyond anything ever attempted in India with skills and designs matching international standards of computer animation and digital visual effects," says Ketan Mehta.

Full report here MSN

Seminar on Konkani Ramayanas

Konkani Language and Cultural Foundation in association with All India Konkani Parishad will organize a two-day national seminar on Konkani Ramayanas at World Konkani Centre in Mangalore from October 2. Union law minister M Veerappa Moily, who has to his credit `Ramayana Mahaanveshanam', a epic poetry in Kannada will inaugurate the seminar. Uday Bembhre, Konkani scholar, will deliver the keynote address.

Mattur Krishnamoorthy, director, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and Indologist, will be the chief guest at the valedictory function on October 3. In Konkani, Ramayana narration is found both in verse and prose. The story has been told in full or part in folksongs of the Kudubis and ritualistic forms like 'Godde Ramayana' of Kochi, 'Sita Suddi' and 'Sita Kalyan' of Northern Kerala/South Canara and the Ramayan Ranmale of Cancon.

Some other texts of Ramayana too are available in written form in Konkani `Ramayanachyo Kannyo', ascribed to Krishnadas Shama is a 16th century prose. During the 1930s, late Kamalammal wrote the 'Raghuramayana' in Ovi style verse. There have also been adapted versions by late Narahari Vittal Prabhu of Gokarn and recently, the translation of Ramacharitmanas by K Ananta Bhat of Kochi.

Full report here Times of India 

De-mystification of the epic

With parents named Ram Chandra and Ram Pyari “to whom Rama was a Reality”, it was natural for Ram Varma to come out with his own version of the ancient tale. He pares off what he considers to be “interpolations” to project his vision of Rama. Not a bad vision really. Rama is the hero, Ravana is the villain. There is no tampering with the basics. The cosmetic changes, however, are interesting.

IN TUNE WITH VALMIKI
Writers before him have tried to fill in the blanks about the domestic life of Rama and Sita. Less than half-a-century ago we had the Telugu poet, Viswanadha Satyanarayana writing about the conjugal felicity of Sita and Rama in his epic, Sri Ramayana Kalpavrukshamu. Thus, the details of a married couple in love in this book are very much in tune with Valmiki's story-line. Of the other changes, mention ought to be made of Kaikeyi using a play within the play (as in Shakespeare's Hamlet) to discover the intentions of Dasaratha in handing over the crown to Rama. Ironically, a hack named Kritinidhi writes the mischievous script for the Dushyanta story.

In Ram Varma's narration, printed in three columns, there is no poetry as such and we even get a hiccup when Dasaratha bursts out: “O God, it's all been mucked up!” It is a relief that Ram Varma has avoided the fire-ordeal and has Rama himself go to the Ashoka Vana and tell Sita of Ravana's death.

Full report here Hindu

Before He Was God: Ramayana—Reconsidered, Recreated

Varma’s intense engagement with his subject yields moving insights, while humorous and tragical interludes lend immediacy.

Before he was God: Ramayana -
Reconsidered, Recreated
Pavan K Varma; Rupa
Rs 995; Pp 344

Epics like the Ramayana gain in resonance with every recension. Retired bureaucrat Ram Varma has laboured long and hard to produce his Ramayana, conceived like a “Baramasa” tribute. It follows the course of a seasonal appreciation, from Chaitra and Vaishakha through the searing summer and the rains until Phalgun, where Rama sheds his human form in the Sarayu river. This is a feisty personal appreciation rendered in verse, though rhyme and meter tend to be uneven. Yet, Varma’s intense engagement with his subject yields moving insights, while humorous and tragical interludes lend immediacy.

Varma’s version here discredits and discards Sita’s  “agni-pariksha”. Instead, he has Sita sent into a second exile, then returning to her father Janak’s court for shelter, where she discovers her “real” mother Rohini. Her husband then recalls Sita from the forest to fulfil her ceremonial role in the Ashwamedha yagna. This compassionate resurrection exemplifies the very spirit of bhakti, where each devotee is free to image and fashion the object of his worship. The powerful illustrations add to the evocative quality of this book.

Full review here Outlook

Literary merits of Panchtantra

Panchtantra is a literary work per excellence. It has the framework that encompasses fable narrative to prove its premise. It is an art of narrative fiction which leaves its mark even on the literary styles of contemporary writers as on Gautam Bhattia’s Panchtantra: A Twenty First Century Parable. The traces of story telling in the similar style are also found in Mahabharata, Ramayana. From the time of Rigveda, storytelling has emerged as a feasible form of knowledge diffusion. Panchtantra is a literary composition because it promotes Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha which is the merit of a literary composition. It is another truth that women are kept out of this circle of knowledge.

Literary works according to Indian poetics are known to produce an aesthetic whole. The vitalization of prose with verse as used in Jataka Kathas and Panhctantra also stamps its literary qualities by delighting readers with wonderful fusion of prose and verse in literary style.

Symbolism is an important element of a literary work. The Panchtantra, a collection of fables makes symbolic use of animals as characters in the language suitable to literary and instructive goals. A fable has been a favorable genre of literature. Walter De La Mare observes in Animal Stories that even Plato prefers raconteur to Homer and says that Plato excluded Homer from his Republic and gave Aesop a place of honor, hoping that the young would absorb fables along with their mother's milk ... since one cannot at too early an age acquire a love for wisdom and virtue.

Full report here Pakistan Christian Post 

Ramayana season in full bloom

Traditions have the power to cast their spell over people, no matter how far and removed lives are from the old word orders. For ages, the arrival of the rain-drenched Karkkidakam has meant a month-long recital of the Ramayana to the believers in this part of the world. The fast-moving copies of Ramayana texts in the city’s book shops in the ‘Ramayana month’ proclaim the survival of the ritual through changing times.

 DC Books has sold a sizeable number of Ramayana texts this season.  Says sales assistant Sudeep, “This year, we have brought out an annotated prose version by Professor Vattaparambil Gopinatha Pillai, which is topping the sales chart. The first 5,000 copies have been sold out and a reprint is set to reach the stores. The hard-bound regular verse text is expected to do well like always; last year we sold around 20,000 copies.”

 DC also stocks a verse text in old Malayalam font with bolder printing for senior citizens, so that failing eyesight should not hamper the observance of the ritual.

Full report here New Indian Express

Venomous tongue of Rai

Women empowerment, though it is in its infancy, is worrying some males to extreme. They are so scared that they are not able to judge before opposing the rights of women to be considered as human. Those males do not like to see the female autonomy. To prove their point, they quote from the scriptures of India in which Indra goes unpunished after raping Ahilya. This lesson from scriptures shows that woman should worship husband like a God no matter how immoral he is. Tulsi Das makes his hero Ram discard Sita to teach women to follow male dictates without a voice of revolt.

In modern times women are trying to come out of their shells, making a concrete space for themselves by articulating their own desires and dreams. These wishes and dreams were lying buried in the cave of women’s heart for ages. Males of this conformist society do not like women to disregard their domestic duty to make their career. Women when require cooperation of males in carrying out these household responsibilities, try to take another root to avoid it. Males can not sacrifice their careers for family and women do not have right to make career at the expense of family

This difference in choice now does not work at the scale it worked before. But fanatics are still living in the age of Manusmriti and Panchtantra. They still try to apply rules and lessons of scriptures for feminine gender. So does Vibhuti Narain Rai in his interview that shows his ethical death when he makes degraded comments about women writers. His comments humiliate every female writer. He hurts every sensitive ear and revered name in the field of writing from Sarojini Naidu to Imtiaz Dharker.

Full letter here South Asia Mail 

A grandma's tale

Everybody enjoys listening to grandmas' tales; tales of mystery, of romance, tales from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata …but most importantly often with a moral in the end. Well, Nandavanam is a grandma's tale, but one that was written by a grandma in her youth. The Malayalam novel, which has a fine blend of mystery, drama and romance, was written by 95-year-old Bharati Amma in her teenage years.

Says Bharati Amma with a smile: “I started writing the novel when I was 15 years old and completed it when I was 16. I wrote the story on scraps of paper. I didn't let anyone see the story when I was writing it as I was afraid their remarks may affect my thought process for the story and also my interest. When the novel was ready, I transferred it into ledgers a relative gave me.”

Full report here Hindu

Moily's Ramayana, an intense search for equality in democratic setup

Dr. M. Veerappa Moily, a lawyer by training, entered politics in the sixties, occupied important positions in his home state Karnataka rising to the office of Chief Minister in the nineties. He moved to the Centre to head the Administrative Reforms Commission and at present is the Minister of Law and Justice in the UPA Government.

Moily has dedicated himself to the cause of the exploited and the marginalized classes of our society throughout his career. Born in such a class himself, Moily has intimate knowledge of the problems faced by the marginalized classes. He has articulated their problems in many of his writings.

Moily is the author of two collections of poetry, four novels, and a collection of discursive essays in English -- and now-Ramayana Mahanveshanam, an epic in two volumes. His book on Ramayana was originally published in Kannada and now has been translated into English by Dr. CN Ramachandran, Mrs. Padma Sharma, Dr. Laxminarayana Bhat, C. Naganna and Dr. Vijay Sheshadri.

Full report here Sify

Creating a Classical Indian Canon

In the library sales from the crumbling houses of Calcutta, or Delhi, or the hill-station homes, the keen-eyed book-buyer would often come across sets of bound classics. These were usually in the printer’s binding — vellum, blue leather and gold — or occasionally bound in red with the owner’s initials stamped on the spine or on the frontispiece.

Over the decades, the contents of these classics changed. Everyman’s Library of classic works was a favourite, as was the Modern Library set; but depending on the owner’s tastes, you might have complete sets of histories, or the World’s Greatest Short Stories, or Masterpieces of World Literature, or a complete set of Greek mythology. You would very rarely find a similar set of Indian classics — individual books, almost always the Mahabharata, the Ramayana and perhaps the great poets or favourite Hindi, Gujarati and Bengali writers.

Full report here Business Standard 

Tellers of tales weave a success story

On a breezy March evening, a crowd squeezes through a traffic jam to enter an open-air auditorium in a narrow street in Chennai, gradually occupying all the 500 seats.

“This episode of the Ramayana tells us how to deal with knots in our lives,” the artiste on stage, Vishakha Hari, says in a sing-song tone in Tamil, throwing a philosophical spin to ancient poet Valmiki’s second book of verses that starts with epic hero Ram’s planned coronation, but ends with his banishment to the forest.

“It talks about rules and regulations,” she says in English to the nodding crowd. Most people remain glued to their seats through the two-and-a-half-hour performance that ends close to dinner time.

Telling tales may be labelled as a dinosaur in today’s high-tech and sensationally visual world of movies, television shows and Internet videos. But a new crop of performers is flavouring this lost art form with relevance and stamping it with commercial viability through strong DVD sales and spiking demand from schools and corporates as a catalyst for creativity.

Full report here Mint

'Husain knows his Ramayana better than many pundits'

Photographer and designer Ram Rahman is M F Husain’s friend. More to the point, he is an activist — for the freedom to speak. A founder-member of the artists’ body Sahmat, he laments India’s shrinking space for creative freedom in conversation with Nandita Sengupta . Excerpts from the interview: 

What is it about M F Husain’s clutch of paintings that keeps him away from his country? 
Husain is one of the few artists who has a popular connect because he comes from a different background. He has crossed every tradition, worked on every religion, mined all these religious traditions and mined all iconographic traditions. The irony is that he is not a revolutionary painter. Conceptually, Husain has never transgressed. He has reinterpreted existing iconography in his own style. That’s all. But he has a connect.

There are two issues here. First, the titles of the paintings. Second, the politics of protest. Husain named his Durga sketch just that, ‘Durga’. ‘Durga in union with Lion’ is the interpretation on the website of the Janajagruti samiti, which run their main campaign against Husain. Bharatmata was not a title Husain gave. ‘Hanuman rescuing Sita’ was also an untitled work. The title was given by an art critic who didn’t have the guts to come out in the open. Husain is not stupid. He knows his Ramayana better than many pundits. He was making a flying Hanuman. The title is incorrect. Did Hanuman rescue Sita? No.

Full interview here Times of India

Influential Indologist

The passing away of the French scholar Madeleine Biardeau, translator of the Ramayana and an outstanding specialist of the Puranas, is a loss to understanding Hindu India.

Madeleine Biardeau, the widely respected French Indologist, passed away on February 1 in France. She was 88. Born in Niort, in the West of France, in 1922 into a middle class family of small entrepreneurs, Madeleine Biardeau joined the prestigious Ecole normale supérieure of Sèvres (restricted to girls then) at Paris, in 1943, where she studied philosophy. There she discovered the classical heritage of Indian culture with a group of young Christian women who were attracted by the so called spirituality of the East.
Madeleine Biardeau, who was close to the Left Catholic milieu and had a strong secular feeling in spite of being herself a practising Catholic, departed from her friends and started learning Sanskrit intensively in order to study Hindu philosophy to which she devoted a great part of her academic life. But she did not intend to consider Hinduism only from her academic milieu far from India. Aware of the ancient tradition of scholarship that was still alive there, and very curious about the country and its people, she joined the University of Travancore for two years, in the1950s, learning much from the Pandits with whom she read Sanskrit texts. It was the beginning of a lasting intellectual and personal relationship with India, which she visited almost every year until the 1990s.

Full report here The Hindu