Week 2 Reading Diary: Narayan's Ramayana

Right off the bat I felt a lot of sympathy for Dasharatha. Him having three queens and not being able to have a son could be a tragic story in itself. I liked the horse sacrifice to the gods in the attempt to have sons. All three queens eventually had children. Kaushalya was the mother of Rama; Kaikeyl was the mother of Bharata; Sumitra was the mother of Lakshmana and Shatrughna. However, Rama was the most beautiful. I feel like I could make a quite hilarious sitcom between Dasharatha not being able to have children, then all three queens having children but one being the most favored (Rama), and Sumitra having two children while the other two queens only had one. Maybe a quantity versus quality battle going on between the queens would be a good dialogue… mix that in with jealousy between the relationships of King Dasharatha and the other queens. I think it would also be fun to have fights against the different brothers, particularly with Rama since he is the most handsome. Rama was required to with Vishvamitra, which made Dasharatha terribly sad. Rama, along with his brother Lakshmana, had to go to with Vishvamitra. The group came upon a horrible woman, Thataka. Rama eventually killed Thataka. They eventually came upon a group of other demons and defeated them as well with the help of Rama’s celestial weapons that he earned when defeating Thataka. It would be fun to make the story in a modern time period just to give it a little twist.

Rama defeats Thataka with the help of Vishvamitra and Lakshmana

Circa1750

PDE Ramayana
Author: Laura Gibbs