66697602-The-Ramayana-R-K-Narayan

“You have acquired extraordinary powers through your own
spiritual performances but you have misused your powers
and attacked the very gods that gave you the power, and
now you pursue evil ways. Is there anyone who has
conquered the gods and lived continuously in that victory?” 7
How often in Narayan’s fiction does one come across a
similar pragmatic realism, a gentle refusal to regard good
and evil as unmixed, and a melancholy sense of the real
limitations of life? It is this ethical and spiritual outlook that
attracted countless people to The Ramayana for more than
a millennium. In Narayan—the sage of Malgudi who always
knew how to connect our hectic and fraught present to a
barely remembered past—this ancient tale found its perfect
modern chronicler.
NOTES
1 A. K. Ramanujan, Paula Richman, ed., “Three Hundred
Ramayanas,” Many Ramayanas (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1992), 46.
2 R. K. Narayan, The Indian Epics Retold: The Ramayana,
The Mahabharata, Gods, Demons, and Others (New Delhi:
Penguin, 2000), xi.
3 R. K. Narayan, The Ramayana (New York: Penguin,
2006),90.