The Ramayana Chronicles: 26 Stories, Endless Wisdom

I’m participating in the A2Z challenge of Blogchatter this year too. I have been regular with this every April for the last few years. It’s been sheer fun for me as well as a tremendous learning experience. I wrote mostly on books and literature in the past. This year, I wish to dwell on India’s great epic Ramayana for various reasons the prominent of which is the new palatial residence in Ayodhya that our Prime Minister has benignly constructed for a supposedly homeless god. “Our Ram Lalla will no longer reside in a tent,” intoned Modi with his characteristic histrionics.

This new residence for Lord Rama has become the largest pilgrimage centre in India, drawing about 100,000 devotees every day. Not even the Taj Mahal, a world wonder, gets so many footfalls. Ayodhya is not what it ever was. Earlier it was a humble temple town that belonged to all. Several temples belonging to different castes made all devotees feel at home. There was a sense of belonging, and a sense of simplicity.

Not now. “The dazzling lights on Rampath – one of the new pathways that have been created inspired by the four Vedas – the neon lights of fancy showrooms that have come up across the town and flashy signboards are disorienting the humble pilgrims who arrive with their minimal belongings,” writes Anil Kumar Singh, poet and teacher living in Ayodhya [Outlook, 21 Mar 2025]. Lord Rama’s new palace has displaced the smaller temples and gods now. Would Rama like what’s being perpetrated in his name?

My A2Z series is going to be a personal effort to understand the real Rama of Ayodhya, the Rama of Ramayana. In fact, I’m doing all that I possibly can to understand the present India. I have even joined a short course in Sanskrit and the Open Pathshala’s online classes begin this evening. Just the basics only. But I hope the course will help me deal with the Sanskrit I may come across during my pilgrimage to the real Lord Rama, though the Lord hardly spoke Sanskrit.

Who is the real Lord Rama? There are multiple versions of the Ramayana, we know. “The epic differs from culture to culture, age to age, place to place,” says Anand Neelakantan in his latest book, Many Ramayanas, Many Lessons. The Ramayana that I studied at school is Kerala’s version. Kerala was rarely subjected to invasions and hence the state’s literature is not defensive like its counterpart in other regions of the country.

Neelakantan says that “traditionally the Ramayana was never considered a story of good versus evil.” The good-vs-evil theme gained ascendancy when political subjugations began. “In places where classical Hindu civilization still flourished without the dominating influence of Islamic rule,” Neelakantan goes on to say, “the more critical traditions and subaltern tellings continued.”

Hinduism was not particularly concerned with gods and theism. Its endeavour was to reveal to us our own divinity. We are parts of an infinite, unfathomable, indescribable universe (anantham, ajnatham, avarnaniyam, as I was taught at school). Each one of us is a divine speck of that inscrutable reality. It’s a profound philosophy, the best we can get in theological realms. Yet what has happened to that profundity today?

My A2Z is not going to be political writing at all. I don’t intend to bring any politics into it. But given my intractable tendency to be ruthlessly realistic in my writing, I can’t guarantee absolute indifference to politics, especially when politics has lethally contaminated spirituality in my country.