Reading Notes: Narayan's Ramayana, Section C

With my reading notes for the Ramayana so far, I’ve just been marking quotations or passages that nab my interest, rather than looking at the piece as a whole. So for the first section of notes this week, here’s what I’ve got:

When Sita asks the disguised Ravana why “a saintly one like you” has chosen to live among the demons, “leaving cities where good men are to be found,” I wondered what kind of character would do a thing like that. Probably someone who has more in common with the demons, or who has something to gain from it—someone who sells the demons some good or service or something. I’m not quite sure yet. But I’m intrigued, which is a start.

This line about Ravana didn’t really trigger much of a plot in my head, but it does inspire the feel of a character, which could be used to figure out the plot: “All this only amused Ravana, who laughed and bantered and uttered reckless pleasantries.”
I also really, really love characters with some blind, self-destructive issue at their core, which is possibly why I loved the following snippet so much. There’s this young demon going around wrecking stuff, so a god appears to him and says, “You are shaking our foundation. What is your wish?” In response, the youth says, “I want to fight forever. Please grant me that power.” And that kernel of the character—I want to fight forever—suggests so much about him, and is totally the kind of person I’m interested in.

I’ve also had a Death personified/Grim Reaper concept I’ve been sitting on for a bit, and this response of Yama, the god of death, to Yali, is the perfect opportunity to revisit the idea and revamp it for this: “...with such stubborn strength that even Yama, the god of death, stood back, nodding his head in admiration.”

When Yali was taking Rama to task, he made an interesting point: “[A]re virtues intended to be practiced only on weaker creatures? When strong men commit crimes, they become heroic deeds?” I’m always down for a good crime story, and this could give me the chance to play around with one to some real meat to it.

Also, at one point the army stumbles across an isolated underground city, inhabited by one lone woman. When they wake her, she reveals that she used to be a goddess, but “for some mistake committed had fallen from grace and had been condemned to dwell underground” for a certain amount of time. The army ends up fighting its way out of the underworld, and freeing the woman from her punishment at the same time. I’m interested in the concept of someone stripped of godhood and cast down to live among the mortals, and how that would work out for them and the mortals around them.

Finally, the last thing that caught my eye was Jatayu’s brother’s story about their childhood, when he spoke about them being the sons of the charioteer of the sun god. I’m vaguely interested in doing a story about a couple of kids born to a similar rank/situation, who are tired of living in the sun, in the light. I’m not quite sure yet what they’d do about that, but I could be curious to find out.

Bibliography: The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic by R. K. Narayan.

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