Book: The Ramayana Secret
Author: Anurag Chandra
Publisher: Om Books International
Pages: 215; Price: Rs. 295
You pick up a book called The Ramayana Secret out of sheer curiosity. What could possibly be secret or new about a story that has been retold thousands of times, in as many mediums as possible — orally, texts, verse, drama, etc. and that is deeply embedded in the Indian consciousness? But then you take cognizance of the ‘imagination’ factor — humans have been given the imagination to interpret and dress a story, each in their own unique way through the prism of their distinctive cultural, intellectual and emotional upbringing.
So here is Anurag Chandra, an educator and entrepreneur, presenting the familiar story of this land (an epic as any writer knows can only be borne out of actual events and not thin air) with an additional layer of complexity. Chandra concocts the existence of two earths — the inner earth habited by celestial beings and the outer earth by mortals, and builds up the Ram-Ravana war as Ram’s effort to retrieve some important secret texts containing knowledge that if used wrongly can bring great harm to the world; Ravana has come somehow to be in the possession of these texts and has gained some of the celestial knowledge, leading to his formidable strengths. So Ram is a being from the inner earth who enters the outer earth with this mission and once he has completed it, and handed over these texts to the sages with whom these should rightly reside, leaves Ayodhya and returns to the inner earth, where he has been preceded by Sita.
To Anurag’s credit, he condenses the epic, supposed to be one of the largest epics in world literature consisting of around 24,000 verses, into 215 pages of simple, lucid prose; Anurag focusses on the main events, with due stress on the positive values that are associated with the different characters in the epic, even Ravana. An important thought-provoking passage comes towards the end of this novel, and is attributed to Ram, who says in response to a question by Lakshmana: “Wars will stop when human beings gain spiritual awakening. That will happen when their consciousness shifts from their mortal bodies to the eternal soul. The realisation of oneness with all of existence will rid them of attachments and they will experience the power of their inner self. They will no longer run after seeking external power. Till that day comes, I am afraid, conflicts are here to stay.”
Largely, it’s the dynamism and inherent drama of the original story of Ramayana that keeps one reading this book, and revisiting familiar events; the inner-outer earth and texts motif (is that inspired by Da Vinci Code) does not really command much attention or thought. It seems foisted on the original epic. However, the book scores high still, and is recommended especially for young readers, as it reinforces yet again the value system that sustains this world of ours. And any such reinforcements are welcome, with their implication of a better world!