66697602-The-Ramayana-R-K-Narayan

North Indian small towns and cities but also in the remote Fiji
Islands and Trinidad, where descendents of nineteenthcentury
Indian immigrants try to hold on to their cultural links
with their mother country.
I remember the performers with bare torsos, walking in an
exaggerated, mincing style on their toes; Hanuman “flying”
across the stage on a transparent wire; and, at the end of ten
days, the burning of the big ten-headed tinsel effigy of
Ravana. Armed with a bamboo bow and arrow, I imagined
myself to be Rama, pursuing the forces of disorder. But it
was only later I realized that though there is much of the
fairytale in The Ramayana to engage the child—the prince
thrown upon fate, the kidnapped princess, flying monkeys—it
also has a complex adult and human aspect. Far from
representing a straightforward battle between good and evil,
it raises uncomfortable ethical and psychological questions
about human motivation; it shows how greed and desire rule
human beings and often make them arrogant and prone to
self-deception. Even the idealized figure of Rama hints
paradoxically at the difficulty of leading an ethical life.
Most versions of Rama’s story begin with Dasaratha, the
heir-less king of Kosala who, on the urging of his spiritual
advisors, performs a sacrificial ritual that enables his three
wives to conceive sons. The firstborn, Rama, is the ablest
and most popular of Dasaratha’s offspring, who proves his