Indian Epics Blog

Especially after reading Narayan's Ramayana, I am even more interested in doing this topic. I still really like the 'Animal Characters' topic and using the different personalities that have popped up in our readings so far, but wanted to do more research on this one. *I also put all the potential sentences from the stories in quotation marks. Three Possible Tales of Motherhood (1) The Wives of King Dasharatha : I think Kaikeyi has more of a story in Narayan's Ramayana, but I wanted to give each one of these mothers a 'piece' of their own story. Firstly, in this version of the Ramayana, Kaikeyi is first described as very loving, without a seeming ounce of spite, but as soon as she believes Kooni's words on what King Dasharatha's crowning of Rama meant for her and her son, it is as if becomes cold and heartless. I was thinking to perhaps explore how she might have been feeling while she convinced the King to crown her son instead of Rama, and ultimately ...

Sri Sita, daughter of Bhumi , wife of Rama, and mother of Lava and Kusha. Source : Flickr Reincarnation In the previous blog post we did on storytelling, I mentioned I really wanted explore this topic, and learn more about it. One of my favourite storybooks at the beginning was based on this topic, and I am still very interested in reading and writing about it! Specifically, I like the concept of Samsara  because while I have heard about reincarnation before, this term was new to me. "To exist is to wander through an endless cycle of rebirth and redeath" was a sentence that came to mind when I first read about Samsara. If I do use this topic, I would hope to tie in karma as a part of samsara (and thus reincarnation ), because it seems to be a central factor in the many "lives" of reincarnation. I am not sure yet how I would retell any specific stories, but contrasting reincarnations and incarnations such as looking at the reincarnation of Sita (Vedavati) vs h...