Neringa Ramayan

Most of you know of my [awesome awesome] penfriend from Vilnius, Neringa Zenkevičiūtė. So, intially, the format of our letters was, in addition to talking about life, culture, science and english, we would each tell each other one story or tradition or festival from our respective mythologies. After the usual descriptions [holi, diwali etc] I hit upon an ingenuous idea. I would tell her the whole of Ramayan, in parts. Apart from being my favourite epic, it has the advantage of being big, so I was set for the next few emails. It turned out to be larger than I expected, and I stopped in between [plan to re-start soon], to be continued later. Right now, I am at the stage where Hanuman finds Sita in Ashok Vatika. Till then, I will paste the [arbitrarily defined] chapters from our email conversations. 

                                             

... Chapter 1: Genesis of ram  [lol]

So, long long time ago, in place called Ayodhya which is in the northern parts of india, there was a wise and great king, dasarath.

Dasarath was a model king, he had 3 wives. 3 wives! you will now ask, how many children :P :P ;) 

but sadly, he had no children. :( 

So, he decided to pray to the gods, and did a big huge pooja...

Out of this pooja (which is done on a yagna or pyre) comes out the fire god...

this guy tells the king, take this sweet and ask your queens to eat it. if they eat it, they will get pregnant. [!]

so, they eat and duly have the requisite 4 kids...

eldest = Ram... then, in order, Bharat, Laxman and Shatrughna.

amongst these, laxman is a big fan of ram.

so, they grew up, learnt the princely skills and in general had a jolly good time.

one day, a sage person came to dasaratha's court. Vishwamitra. He said, some rakshas are doing harm to my prayer and meditation, send you son to kill them. Your son will learn under me and will be of great help to us. With a heavy heart, but the obligation as king, the king sent Ram and laxman with vishwamitra, the kids being in thier teens at this time.

they (obviously) killed the rakshas and learnt a lot new skills and literature under the sage. turns out, the sage and his disciples decide to go to this swayamwar in a nearby kingdom. 

SWAYAMWAR -> 

nice concept, from ancient india. Rich people and royal families, when their daughter had to be wedded, held a public function called a Swayamwar. Here, the family would hold a function, and a yagna [pyre puja]. They set a set of tasks for the possible suitors depending

on the family. then, after a day of festivities, after observing everyone, all the suitors would stand in a line, and the girl would get to choose. Whoever she chooses, would get to marry her. 

so, nearby kingdom, there is swayawar. Being sages, they plan to attend the puja. They take our young and dashing princes along...

the task at the swayamwar is: The king, Janak, has a huge and venerated Bow. This bow orignally belonged to Shankar [one of the three principle gods] and is quite big and heavy. Janak says, any person who can string this bow can marry my daughter.

so, people try... no one succeeds... Actually, most of the people cant even pick it up.. its quite heavy.. 

those who can, can barely do so, let alone string it.

Our hero, Ram, steps up. He picks it up. While stringing it, he exhibits such strenght, that the bow splits up! 

After this, Ram and the daughter, Sita are married off in a lavish ceremony.. [thier parents have no clue... and to top off the wierdness, since laxman is there too, the king marries off his younger daughter urmila to laxman!!!]

anyway, the princes retunr triumphant to Ayodhya and there is much pomp and ceremony and sita generally becomes the darling of the masses...

This is the initial happy part..

the next is a bit of a sad story, which i will relate in chapter 2... 

later

 bye!!!

...

p.s. : All conversations pasted here [verbatim] after taking due permission from all parties involved. :-)