In this section of the Ramayana, one of the things that really struck me—remember, I’m a sucker for sibling stories, especially brother dynamics—is the fierce protectiveness of Lakshmana towards Rama. I love the fact that it’s the ultra-loyal younger brother who’s always up in arms, ready to fight for his big brother. Like when he learned that scheming was going to prevent Rama from being crowned king, and he picked up his sword and bow, put on his battle dress, and aggressively roamed the streets swearing, “Rama shall be crowned, and whoever comes in the way will be annihilated. Let the whole world come, I’ll destroy everyone who opposes, and pile up their carcasses sky high. I’ll seize the crown and will not rest till I place it on Rama’s head.” I’d definitely be open to taking that fierce younger brother, the older brother he puts above everyone and everything else, and transplanting that bond to a fantasy or sci-fi setting with a more modern feel.
Then again, when Ravana’s love-struck sister was trying to find any way to get to Rama, I also started thinking about doing a story with some kind of enemy alliance, a team-up of two characters who should be number-one enemies and still feel that way themselves, but are more pressured to team up against some other mutual nemesis. The demon promised Rama, “If you marry me, I will teach you all the arts and tricks, magical and others, that make my people superb and invincible. I can teach you how to defeat them, but you must treat me kindly. You must accept me.” And I love the idea of a human and a monster teaming up to go after other monsters, with the allied ones spilling all the trade secrets in exchange for immunity and maybe a little something extra, something a little more sinister. We’ll see.
I also dug the line that Ravana gives here: When Ravana recognized the moon as the moon, he swore at him, “You are worthless, pale-faced, constantly worn out and trying to regain your shape again.” Naturally, I’d twist it around a little and make the moon in question into something a little more complicated—a ghost or wraith or some kind of creature that used to be a person once, trying to pull herself together and get herself back, be human again. Be everything she used to be. It’s a story that would let me play with it on different levels, too: It’s a metaphor, see.
The last line that really struck me was this one: “I am like a fish in a poisoned pond. Sooner or later I am bound to die, whether I stay in it or get out of it.” I don’t care about the context or the character who said it, and I’d leave all those trappings behind. But it seems like the perfect wrapper for some kind of noir-flavored story (read: my favorite), a character with nowhere left to turn and only bad options to choose from. Maybe some kind of crime story with family drama and connections tied into it; not sure yet.
Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.
Image Credit: "Dark Alley" by Tom Francis. Source: Flickr.
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