Retelling an Epic -- Ashok Banker's Ramayana

I have never liked the Ramayana, ever i snce i was a young girl and heard the epics at the knees of my grandmother. She told the ramayana with such devotion and fear for bad deeds that it made me squirm. I did not want to be sermoned yet again through a story that too.

I loved the Mahabarata though, and got the entire gang(consisting of all the sisters, brothers, relatives of all shapes and sizes) to request for those stories. Not too much protest there, everyone liked the Mahabarata. It was such fun, and real, and most importantly you could enact it the next day. I made copious mental notes and organised the entire troop the next day in the woods to either create the chakravuyvha, or rode into battle with Krishna as Arjuna to defy the arimies of Kauravas. There were nuances that you could incorporate, ideas that you could improve upon and you could actually be mean, nasty and all the rest without being reprimanded by some "maryada purushotam"

30 years later my son then 12 years old was so engrossed in a book that he blackmailed me to do all his chores for the weekend. Suprise! that was book written by Ashok Banker, on the very epic that i had no liking for; The Ramayana. I read all the seven books in the series subseqeuntly.

Banker makes Rama, Sita and the other characters all seem so real , human and so fallible. I loved the fact that they too suffer from self doubts, from pressures of making decisions, and not necessarily being right all the time. Having them think like human beings rather than Devas was interesting and definitely enjoyable. Yes they did have super powers and it was bestowed upon them for doing all the right things. But it was more like a reward for good work than their birthright.

The tale is told in the best traditions of storytelling,making no pauses or stops to tell the reader about Rama the AVatar. (Thank the Lord) The first six books engaged me with its story of a fairly simple tale of a man and his trials.I waited with bated breath for the seventh book and finally got my hands on it the moment it arrived ont he stands.

It is a good read, engaging and interesting but Banker resorts to what other authors have done before him. Deified Rama. What saves this book is the way the characters of Ravana, Surpanakha and others have been potrayed. The Anti Hero is so machivellian that he invokes admiration inspite of his destructive intentions. Banker's, Ravana is unabashedly ambitious, intelligent and uses all means that he has and some more to WIN. A war is a war is a war.

I am glad that banker has resisted the temptation to write about the Uttarakhand and has ended his epic retelling of the Ramayana with the winning of Lanka.