Skip to main content

Ravana



Fiction

Anand Shankar was trolled mercilessly in social media when he posted his story ‘Ravana’ in his blog.  He was a little known blogger and hence the tremendous attention that his present story drew came as a rude shock as well as pleasant surprise at once.

His story ended with Sita longing to return to Lanka because Rama suspected her chastity.  No, she didn’t return.  In fact, she didn’t even want to return.  A painful conflict arose in her consciousness.  This man, Rama, the Maryada Purushottam, the hero of a whole country, god incarnate, this man faltered when some silly gossip monger raised a question about my chastity, Sita reflects at the end of Anand’s tale.  Ravana emerges as a far better hero in her consciousness.  Ravana who stood before her in Ashok Vatika with love and admiration in his eyes.  And reverence that did not at all match his royal narcissism.  When he knew that his love for her could never surpass her love for Rama, he surrendered himself in devotion to Rama and begged to be killed by none other than his rival.  Ravana sacrificed himself for me while my husband is seeking to sacrifice me for his honour, Sita sat pondering at the end of Anand Shankar’s story.

Trolls marched in hoards accusing Anand Shankar of blasphemy, irreligion, demon worship, secessionism, anti-nationalism, and all sorts of things.  The euphoria over the attention his blog received soon gave way to jitteriness.  Anand wondered what his crime really was.  He contemplated for days and days.

Ravana’s ten heads appeared to him with various colours and expressions.  Anand saw his own blasphemy, irreligion, and other evils on those faces.  But very often he saw his trolls, the numerous nationalist organisations and their fanatic supporters, on Ravana’s faces.  Anand was confused.  Who is the real Ravana? 

Sita will be sacrificed again and again until the real Ravana is discovered, Anand Shankar began his next blog post.




Comments

  1. Rakhi JayashankarMay 12, 2017 at 8:14 AM

    Why do people react so mercilessly to imagination while they have nothing to do when 'seasoned' rapists go scotfree on grounds of minority.
    There have been many books which found mythology in different light Like Anand Neelakantan's books which were bestsellers. Then why this pseudo tears now? Is there more to it than we see on the periphery

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 12, 2017 at 8:20 AM

      I'm afraid there is more, Rakhi. There's a whole gang of paid trolls who work for a particular political party whose goal is to eliminate those who question the party's goals and objectives.

      Delete
    2. Rakhi JayashankarMay 13, 2017 at 8:38 AM

      Horrible. Can't explain this in better words

      Delete
  2. Rajeev MoothedathMay 12, 2017 at 9:00 AM

    Different viewpoints have become very difficult in the present times. Sad...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 12, 2017 at 9:06 AM

      Sad indeed. This zeal for suppressing dissent and diversity is taking the nation back by centuries.

      Delete
  3. Ravish ManiMay 12, 2017 at 9:18 AM

    Thanks for sharing this. I was expecting a link to Anand's said post. As these days I'm writing on slut-shaming, I see Sita's case as a victim of slut-shaming who committed suicide later.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 12, 2017 at 9:34 AM

      Didn't you see the first line: 'fiction'? 😑 Well, the reality is even more sinister.

      Delete
  4. Pranju chakrapaniMay 13, 2017 at 5:22 AM

    Hmm...a case study of Ravana, Sita and Shankara...oh I am heavily influenced by Dan Brown to see this initials everywhere nowadays.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 13, 2017 at 10:45 AM

      Even before Brown, a Malayalam novelist M T Vasudevan Nair rewrote the Mahabharata from the perspective of Bheema. It's good to see the other side too 😑

      Delete
  5. Rakhi JayashankarMay 14, 2017 at 6:58 AM

    Exactly. I have always felt M.T wrote the first mythological fiction in India. Anyways, waiting to see Randamoozham on screen

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...
16 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more