Tomichan Matheikal's blog

By Copilot Designer Today is Ram Navami , the birth anniversary of Lord Rama. I have heard, read, and studied about Rama right from my childhood. Our Malayalam lessons, throughout the ten years of school, were full of stories from the Ramayana , both in prose and poetry forms. The children’s magazines that I read voraciously as a boy carried countless stories from the epic. Later I read the epic as translated by C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji, as he was known), freedom fighter and the last Governor-General of India. Recently, I have been reading — and continue to read — several books on the Ramayana to deepen my understanding of the epic, since I chose it as my theme for this year’s A-to-Z Challenge . I have a copy of the Valmiki Ramayana translated by Ralph T H Griffith for reference too. Lord Rama caught my fancy when India’s Prime Minister personally conducted the religious rituals for the consecration of a resplendent temple for Lord Rama on a 70-acre complex in Ayodhya, the birthpl...

  Sita's final departure by MS Copilot Designer Exile and the Kingdom is the title of a collection of short stories by Albert Camus. Camus was the philosopher of the absurd. We seek meaning in a universe that offers none: that is Camus’s philosophy in one sentence. We want order in our world, but what the world offers is chaos. An individual may feel like an exile, an outcast, or stranger, in one’s society. Kingdom in Camus’s stories is a metaphor for order and meaning in life; something that helps the individual to overcome his exileness . Rama’s exile is not like the exiles in Camus’s stories, of course. Rama does not experience the kind of psychological alienation that Camus’s characters do. Though the exile is imposed on him by an external force – which is the kingdom, literally – Rama accepts it voluntarily, unlike Camus’s characters who all rebel against it. Rama is never a rebel. He adheres to dharma steadfastly and stoically. In the case of Rama, there is a reversal...

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...

Illustration by MS Copilot Designer Chitrakoot is all that Ayodhya is not. It is the land of serenity and spiritual bliss. Here there is no hankering after luxury and worldly delights. Memory and desire don’t intertwine here producing sorrow after sorrow. Situated in a dense forest, Chitrakoot is an abode of simplicity and austerity. Ayodhya’s composite hungers have no place here. Let Ayodhya keep its opulence and splendour, its ambitions and dreams. And its sorrows as well. Chitrakoot is a place for saints like Atri and Anasuya. Atri is one of the Saptarishis and a Manasputra of Brahma. Brahma created the Saptarishis through his mind to help maintain cosmic order and spread wisdom. Anasuya is his wife, one of the most chaste and virtuous women in Hindu mythology. Her virtues were so powerful that she could transmute the great Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva into infants when they came to test her chastity. Chitrakoot is the place where asceticism towers above even divinit...

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...