What happens to an epic such as Ramayana in the age of globalization and technology? We know well by now of the new lease of life that the epic received with its televised avatar in the 1980s. Shubha Vilas the author of this new series on the same epic seems as fascinated by the tale of Rama as so many other writers and artists. His project reminds me of the great works of Hindi novelists such as Narendra Kohli and of Amrit Lal Nagar. Going by the blurb of the book under review, the narration is that of the ‘riveting drama of Rama’s exile‘ and is aimed at teaching us ‘how to handle reversals positively‘. The book is a sequel and is the second part of a series that the author wishes to complete. The nine chapters of the book are organized according to the sequence of events as outlined in Valmiki’s Ramayana and other regionally popular versions such as Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas and the Kamba Ramayana.
The book makes for a not so smooth reading. Vilas writes while facing obvious difficulties of translation. His language in the book is colloquial and at times quite informal. Vilas seems to be in a hurry to address a modern audience that in his view does not care so much for the poetics and details of presentation as much it cares for the ultimate product that can be quickly read and done away with. Take for instance the scene from the first chapter where Dasaratha has had a bad dream. Vilas calls it a nightmare–
“Between his delusions and his consciousness, Dasaratha realized that he was in fact fighting two monsters- the monster within and the monster outside, Everything had become a big blur. Which of these two monsters was he fleeing from?“(p.2)
Another instance from the book dealing with the Kaikeyi-Manthara episode where he writes:
“Kaikeyi was disturbed by Manthara’s constant babbling. She said “Don’t go in circles or mince any words; just speak clearly, without fear. What’s on your mind?” (p. 86)
It is not that one gets merely a sense of ‘loss’ in this translation, one also gets a sense of an imposed contemporaneity as far as an attempt at adapting the text for a new age audience is concerned. It ends up sounding like a desperate bid to make the epic sound fashionable and hence marketable. Instances abound where the flow of sentences is interrupted by words and terms (read expletives) written in ‘quotes’ which do not add to the quality of the tone and tenor. Despite these weaknesses, the innocence and the personal attachment and admiration of the author for the epic is amply visible throughout the text. It would have turned out to be a much more enjoyable read had the author spent some more time reflecting on the readership that he wishes to generate. Ramayana in my opinion cannot merely be a new age self-help book bereft of its music. It has to necessarily have a magical rendition to it for there lies its real character. Reversals of fortune and ensuing problems in life may well be addressed by reading about monks who sell and do not sell their Ferraris. I don’t really know much about those things. Coming back to the question that I ask in the beginning I have this to say- what we have come to call the era of globalisation and of new technology, is an era where frivolity goes unnoticed. The epic is bound to lose out substantially on its aura and beauty!
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I have read a number of your writings. I belong to an age where satisfying the needs of the person at the consuming end matters more than anything else and hence I write to you with a wish list of things I want you to pen down in the work that you take up next. I sincerely hope that you would not take to heart a petulant reader’s intrusion into the world that you alone are and should be the master of. See if you can be accommodating enough and touch upon themes I so want to read about. If you could write a short story dealing with the bane of our times. Yes, I mean privacy. If you could clarify through the wisdom soaked nib, nuances of all the lies we say to each other all the time merely to keep our cupboards with hidden skeletons locked and away from the public view. Would you be interested in painting the portrait of an artist as a young man who does not realize and has no belief in his acumen. It would fascinate me no end reading about his encounter with a real life successful artist who cannot do justice to his oeuvre merely because of the shallowness of his approach and the powerlessness of his style. See if you can talk about vanities that have come to count for distinction. Thackeray is dead and gone. I want to read about a pair of women professionals who live a dying life each day in order to proclaim their status of being alive to the rest of the world. If you could put in a chapter where they cry hoarse about their birth as humans first and as women later. Will it be possible for you to devote a section of your book to overgrown children who look half their age and think along varying shades of grey. Write about a tree that looks at all these people standing silent and firm. Bring in the buffalo chewing its cud and pondering deep over the next big thing that the internet would be able to do for it. I don’t think including all of these requests into a piece of writing would be feasible, but then, yes, at times you must attempt a failed novel, a prosaic poem and an autobiography that is a disaster of all sorts. After all nonsense matters as much.
The plot of the second novel by Hogashino revolves around the investigation of a ‘murder by poisoning’ case of Yoshitaka, a reasonably rich Japanese man. Married to the pretty woman that Ayane is, Yoshitaka is in an extramarital relationship with Hiromi, his wife’s pupil assistant at the patchwork training school run by her. The novel opens to the reader with a feel of the apparent discord and unease that has crept in the fabric of Yoshitaka and Ayane’s married life. The Ikai family comes to the couple’s house for a party following which the wife leaves for her parents’ place in Sapporo for a break. After she leaves, Hiromi meets Yoshitaka and the following day he is found dead on the floor in his house. Kusinaga, the detective from Tokyo takes on from here and investigates the case with his assistants Utsumi and Kishitani. It is established that the man has been killed by poison in his coffee. The wife and the paramour both emerge as the suspects. Interestingly it so happens during the course of the investigation that Kusanagi, the detective gets enamoured by the beautiful wife and his observations are subsequently guided by this feeling he develops for the woman who is a suspect in the case. The remaining plot is further foray into the investigation during which arise some necessary and emotional and at times not so necessary and not so emotional situations before the murder mystery is cracked.
Personal Concerns 