Sita is expelled from her home in Pulpally by a local chieftain, Pakkathappan. As she descends the hills, Ram and Lakshman catch sight of her, but they don’t talk. On the way, Sita meets Ravan, who is smitten by her. They fall in love and happily head to Lanka. Ram is crestfallen, for he too falls in love with Sita. Thus begins an epic, which eventually has Sita returning to Mother Earth.
This is how the Adiya tribe of Wayanad know their Ramayana. Their story is set in places such as Pulpally, Thirunelli and Mananthavady. Ayodhya, for them, is in Kodagu. The Adiya Ramayana, which has no written version, is a constantly evolving tale of a bunch of people who had to go through a slew of unfortunate events such as landlessness, poverty and injustice. However, like the popular version of Valmiki’s Ramayana, it is also a tale of love, loss and man’s constant struggle with values.
This is a subaltern retelling of the great Indian epic, which has over 300 versions. Ram, Sita, Ravan and the others live on in these stories across languages, regions and cultures.
The month of Karkidakam is synonymous with a religious reading of the Ramayana. Based on the belief that reading the Lord’s name would help tackle the cruel month which gave nothing but rain, poverty and disease, the tradition is still carried on in many homes in Kerala. Some schools read the Ramayana to help children get back in touch with tradition. With left-leaning Sanskrit scholars too organising alternative readings of the epic, it is a good time to take a look at The Ramayana and its relevance today.
Hemjit Bharathan, freelance writer, has been reading the Ramayana for over 10 years during the month of Karkidakam as a spiritual practice. He reads an English translation, but ensures that he completes the 500 page book by the end of the month. “I feel reading it gives me a certain inner strength. As I read it every year, I learn something more from it. It is a never-ending source of knowledge.”
Literature and art
The Ramayana has lent itself to imagination, creating generations of art that behold it in their own unconventional ways. The lines between religion, myth and creativity have blurred leading to staggering works of prose, poetry and painting.
Writer Anand Neelakantan says the Ramayana has influenced him in more ways than he can count. “I was attracted to the character contrasts in Ramayana rather than the nuanced and layered characterisation of the Mahabharata. The Ramayana we have heard at home is so black and white. It is uni-dimensional. Valmiki Ramayana, I would say, is deliciously different and closer to life than the devotional Ramayana.”
In his Asura: Tale of the Vanquished, Anand looks at the epic from Ravan’s perspective. “These epics teach the underlying unity of all things—good, evil and everything in between. We stop being judgmental and become more accepting. The day we reduced these grand epics to a simple good-versus-evil tale was the day we made the first step towards decay as a society.” His TV show, Siya Ke Ram looks at the text from Sita’s point of view and Mahabali Hanuman, another TV series, looks at it from Hanuman’s perspective. His next novel will be on Vali and Sugreeva.
Historical context
The question whether the Ramayana should be read as a historical text, a work or art or a religious one is pertinent, says scholar, writer and critic Sunil P Ilayidom. Society today has quite a few lessons to take from it. “Ramayana is a pluralistic tale. And Ram was a personification of humaneness. He was not a masculine, strong, war hero as he is portrayed today, but a compassionate being, who had a tragic life.” It was during the Bhakti movement that Ram was ascribed divinity, says Ilayidom. “The Ramayana is the only epic that starts with the word ‘No’ (against violence). The verses begin with Valmiki crying ‘No’ as a hunter shoots down a pair of love birds. It is essentially a tale of compassion, and those who believe in the Ramayana should believe in the message it conveys,” he says.
Musical Ramayana
For someone who has been reciting the Ramayana in musical form for All India Radio since 1985, Kavalam Sreekumar, says the epic reveals something new to him at every reading. To him, it is one of the finest stories that speak of human relationships. “There are certain passages in the Ayodhya kantam that still make me tear up. It is this humaneness that makes it relevant today.”
Sreekumar’s audio format is popular across the State, he even has it on YouTube, but adapting the Adhyathmaramayanam musically was a challenge, he says. “I am essentially a musician; I had to be cautious so as to use music only as a medium to convey the larger message to the listener.”
As Ilayidom sums it up, read religiously, historically or poetically, the human values it espouses cannot be overlooked.