Ramayan 01 Prince Of Ayodhya [Paperback]

If there is a flaw in this book, it is in Mr. Banker's fuzzy translation of slokas but the essence of the text is not lost in translation.

I bought the book at an airport bookshop to read on a plane ride from Mumbai to Delhi during a recent family trip to India. Having finished the book only a couple of days ago, I feel lucky I picked up this book and not another. For one, it added to the whole India experience. My 9-year old daughter, who can't seem to ever finish re-reading the Harry Potter books, is going to enjoy this one when she gets to be a teenager!

"As I read and reread the Ramayana, I saw the greater story that lay beneath childish abridged versions and stiff-mouthed academic analyses."

"I was unable to consume alcohol, not even a glass of beer. I also wear white when writing or revising, and I visit a Hanuman mandir faithfully."

(All this from a person who wrote an online novel that started with the words - "Rashmi Brar wouldn't take off her bra.")

There is no dearth of re-tellings of the Ramayana. There are several adaptations in English, the best being the one by C. Rajagopalachari. (Web link - http://www.hindubooks.org/books_by_rajaji/ramayana/index.htm) Each author has his variations from the original (there is a superb essay by A. K. Ramanujan on this topic), with the Dravidas of South India going so far as to claim that Sita was the daughter of Ravana! But I expected a magical re-telling of the story "in the tradition of Tolkien" as promised. And I immediately bought the first instalment from a bookstore. I was a little bit apprehensive about the publisher though - Orbit, the publisher in the UK, is known for science-fiction novels.

But what lay in store was a travesty of the great lyrical poem that is the Ramayana. The book was just too descriptive and contrived to sound inspired. Sentences like - "coarse white dhoti girding his loins, wooden toe-grip slippers on his feet, matted unkempt hair swirling around his craggy face, the long straggly white beard, the red-beaded rudraksh maala around his neck" - just strangle you like a python. Stories like a "false Vishwamitra" are irritating deviations from the original. There is also inconsistency in use of Sanskrit words - sometimes "penance", sometimes "tapasya". In some passages Hindi words are used - to what purpose I can't fathom. The list is almost as long as the book itself. But what's going for the book is the reader's patience to unravel the story from the puzzling writing.

The Ramayana is a simple story and can be simply told. Yet its beauty is in the poetical telling of the story. Probably I expected something akin to Fitzgerald's translation of the Odyssey... The fault might not be entirely due to the writer as the "fun" part of the Ramayana (battles etc.) come towards the end.

Mr. Banker might have had a spiritual elevation in writing the book - I certainly did not experience any reading it. It rather seems like one more exercise at re-packaging Indian literature in edible form for the West. But it falls short of even that.

Aah! The irony of it all - "But what about the dangers of substandard work being hyped out of proportion, simply to cash in on the "India wave"? From recent signs, this has already begun to happen." - Mr. Ashok Banker, "Cooking the Books", The Week (surprised?), January 25, 1998. (Web link - http://www.the-week.com/98jan25/biz1.htm)

Adios,
Prabhu.

PS - I just read Mr. Banker's reactions to Kumar's review - can he please stop filling half the page with single-liners about his book? And also respond to the issues raised by Kumar rather than trying to dismiss them? The Ramayana is not a topic for a Pocket Essential.

Also, in case I committed some kind of copyright violation by extracting a fragment sentence from the book, please inform me - I shall remove the same.

A little cutie which Mr. Banker himself might not have noticed when adding the "K" as a middle initial - Joseph K was a banker in Kafka's "The Trial"!