Week 4 Storytelling: Ravana and Shiva

Upon the birth of Ravana, Brahma granted him many powers, most of which could not be defeated by anyone including gods and others with supernatural powers. Ravana was an extremely temperamental child from the beginning. He was adopted so we do not know the genetic predisposition from his parents about temperament.

Ravana was married to Mandodari and together they birthed a son named Meghanada. It can pretty much be assumed that he was just as temperamental as his father that was hated by everyone around him. Everywhere that Ravana went, things were destroyed: people, animals, buildings, sanctuaries. 

One day, Ravana was in a particularly bad mood. He lashed out on everyone around him, including his son and wife. People fled as he burned buildings to the ground and caused major earthquakes. One of the people in the town, Freud, decided to further study Ravana’s personality. Freud went to a University in a far off land where he studied Psychology, particularly cognitive psychology. Thus, it is pretty understanding why he was curious to get inside Ravana’s (messed up) mind.

After getting a rich background in Ravana’s family history and studying his personality traits and habits, Freud came up with a psychological conclusion for Ravana’s temperment. Freud officially diagnosed Ravana with Borderline Personality Disorder which is marked by impulisivity and fears of abandonment. This explained why Ravana always made Mandodari stay near him, out of fear of her leaving him. Even that wasn’t enough since he abducted Sita, Rama’s wife. The root of his abandonment was clearly from being adopted at a young age, although his parents often times tried to deny their adoption. At the age of 7, Ravana found the official adoption papers in his parent’s room and that is when his extreme mood swings began.

Freud decided that the only way to get Ravana to calm down was to have a curse put on him. Ravana made Shiva so mad that she imprisoned him and even her bull, Nandi put a curse on him. In this curse, Nandi said that Ravana would be burned by a giant monkey. “A monkey?” Ravana scuffed, “Monkeys don’t even exist you fool!” Little did he know what was in store from the Hanuman in the upcoming episode.

One of the powers that Ravana received from Brahma was being psychic. Ravana knew of Shiva’s ex wife, Penelope. Penelope had passed away many years ago from a rare disease that the doctors could not cure. Ravana sung a song about her and Shiva was so touched that he let Ravana leave. From there, Ravana was on a mission to find Sita and abduct her…….

TO BE CONTINUED……..

Photo of Ravana found online 

Author’s Note: Ravana has been my least favorite character thus far in the Ramayana. Because one of my degrees in psychology, I decided to lay out a psychological stage as to why he acts the way he does. Normally I would write in the first person point of view, however, I decided that I didn’t want to come across as an absolute maniac. I intentionally included the name Freud in reference to Sigmund Freud, quite arguably the most famous psychologist known (although, ironically, if you talk to any psychology professor they all dislike his theories and know it is all rubbish that has been disproven). In my mind, giving Ravana some sort of psychiatric disorder or diagnoses makes him seem a little less terrible as a character. I put to be continued because I think I will continue the story to see how he thinks throughout his abduction with Sita. In the next story, however, I would like to write in a first person point of view now that I have laid out the fact that he has abandonment issues from his adoption as an infant. Because I had put so much psychology into this story, I decided to make Ravana be psychic also and that’s how he got away from Shiva.

Week 4 Reading Diary B: Buck’s Ramayana

The start of diary B readings for Buck’s Ramayana starts off where Narayan’s Ramayana begins. I like having some background information on Ravana. This part of the reading was much shorter than that of part A, the opening address. The exile of Rama in Buck’s epic seems a bit downplayed in comparison to Narayan’s. I was a bit underwhelmed with how he was forced to leave Ayodhya because of Kaikeyi, however, it does mention again that Rama tells his father not to be angry with her. Once again, we are able to see how great of a character Rama is. This epic gives more detail of Rama and his arrival in the forest. 

The reading part B ends with the death of Dasharatha which was of course sad to read again. I felt that this was moving a lot faster with much less detail than Narayan’s epic. I feel that if I read this epic before the other one I may not feel quite as strong of a connection to the characters. I am hoping that in the Week 5 readings we will get into more depth with the characters. I look forward to reading about the Hanuman again and the exile of Sita! 

Photo of Dasharatha found online 

Week 4 Reading Diary A: Buck’s Opening Address

At the start of Buck’s Ramayana, I am reminded of how overwhelmed I was at the beginning of Narayan’s Ramayana. There are so many different characters and so many different backgrounds that I feel it is nearly impossible to fully keep up with the story. However, because I now have somewhat of a background on SOME of the characters I was able to keep up (barely). In here we read about the birth of Ravana. He is a destructive person from the beginning which isn’t surprising at all. In here it also talks about his curse by Nandi, Shiva’s bull. We learned from the first version of the Ramayana that he was cursed and that it was said in his curse that he would be killed by a monkey so it was interesting to learn about that curse in retrospect! There was also a large battle that took place between Ravana and the god of death and it supposedly took place one year before the birth of Rama. I was glad to get a timeline of how Rama and Ravana come into play. This also included the wedding of Rama and Sita which I was happy to read about because Rama is my favorite character! This also clarifies that Rama and Sita are married throughout the whole abduction by Ravana. As ridiculous as it may seem, I was unaware that they were married throughout the whole epic (embarrassing, I know).

Photo of Rama and Sita's marriage found online