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Reading Diary B Week 7: Sita's Abandonment

Did Bharata ever wear shoes or just not these sandals?  Were these his favorite sandals or just symbolic of his loyalty and affection for Rama?  What happened to Kaikeyi?  Is she alive, resented, hated, or loved?  Maybe all of these emotions.  By who though?  Did Bharata forgive her?  Did they make up? What was that conversation like?  Did she apologize or was she still sure that she was right in protecting herself and her son? 

Sita’s abandonment?  What!?  Really Rama?  Really Lakshmana?  At least Lakshmana spoke against Rama but he still obeyed his orders?  Possible story topic?  The book shows Rama as being greatly affected by this decision.  Make it very dark and sad.  I mean Rama knows that Sita is innocent, but he feels like he must obey this higher creed of kings over what is right?  Wow, I didn’t know that this happened when I wrote my story a few weeks ago about the beginning of Buck’s version of the Ramayana.  This seems like a really deep and dark conversation.  Would be good to write this Rama’s perspective as losing his wife and child.  He must obviously be greatly affected by this.  What goes through his mind as he makes this type of decision?  Or possibly do this from Lakshmana’s perspective?  What was he thinking as he sends a woman he has known for years, someone who he possibly thinks of as a sister or at least sister-in-law, a woman who is carrying his nephews, to her death?  Man that must be a hard conversation.

Sita and her son Lava. Source: Wikipedia

Reading Diary A Week 7: Monkeys, Bears, and Sita

Lots of monkeys and bears fly with Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, and Pushpaka to Rama’s coronation.  What?!  Possible story?  What were they thinking?  They had just been revived?  Some thankful?  Some resentful?  Death can brings peace to some.  One telling a story of this event from many years in the future.  What was Sita thinking?  What was Lakshmana thinking? 

Sita is able to let her hair down.  It is a sign of beauty.  Quote: “he unbound her braid, her sleek dark hair was combed out, free and scented, and her skin was again like warm gold,” (Buck 370).  Very sexual in a very subtle sense, especially her hair.  I love that description of skin as warm gold.  It hints that Sita is looked upon as highly valued like gold, and now that she is in Rama’s presence she is warm and inviting.  This is a great contrast to when she was a prisoner of Ravana.  Sexually inviting?  Possible story topic?  Was she happy with Rama?  Is this his view of Sita?  Sita’s view of herself?  Would she be sexually open to Rama after being a prisoner of Ravana a rapist?  He couldn’t rape her, but I believe that she still would have been highly uncomfortable to be a prisoner of such a creep or a prisoner of anyone.  Was Rama sexually open?  Sita had just done the trial by fire, but was that good enough or is Rama just focused on getting back to Bharata and saving his life.  The narrator just making bland statements to make the story move along in a happy tone? 

Ravana capturing Sita. Source: Wikipedia

Famous Last Words Week 6

            I’m so glad that this week is over.  It has really been tough to recover from such a busy weekend.  I am so ready for Spring Break.  It is so close but so far away, and there are so many hurdles to jump before I can get there.  This week hasn’t been too bad, but I need to sleep for a week.

            After reading a few projects this week from my fellow classmates, I am very impressed with people’s writings so far.  I felt like the storybook projects that I read were really creative and intriguing.  Although almost everyone is still on their Introduction, I was very impressed with the narratives that some people have created and how they have planned to insert their individual stories within that narrative.  I also felt the same with the few Portfolios Projects that I have read this week, which were also good.  Usually, when you read someone else’s story you can easily see grammar mistakes, but I had a tough time critiquing other people’s work because the problems were less obvious.  Everyone’s writing skills have definitely improved.  I feel the same way with my Portfolio Project.  This week I got a really good review from Laura.  It makes me nervous because I feel like my work will probably not always be that good.  I just don’t want her expectations to be set too high because I really don’t know if I can bring that kind of writing week after week.  It is a bit terrifying because it is a lot of work to write like that every time.  I just worry that I may get overwhelmed and start to slack and then she’ll question me more harshly because of it.  Oh well, I guess I dug myself into that hole without really knowing it.  I just want to sleep this week off.  

A lovely picture of a bed.  Source: Wikipedia

Famous Last Words Week 5

          This week has been very blah for me.  Nothing has really happened, except that every day I wake up more tired than I was the day before.  I wish I could get out of this funk of being tired and wanting to do absolutely nothing.  I have heard people say that an easy way to get more energy is to fake it at first.  They say that eventually, the real energy will come.  That sounds great, but every morning I am struggling to put on mascara, which is a big deal for me because otherwise I would have no eyelashes.

            As always, I would like to be more ahead in this class, but I’m happy where I am at the moment.  I’m a little anxious about the Projects.  I chose to do a Portfolio and I’m happy with my choice but I’m just anxious to see other people’s projects and their reactions to my own.  I think the first week of projects went ok.  I didn’t receive too much negative feedback and overall, I was pleased with what was said. 

            Something interesting that I did in another class was that I got to watch the film New Jack City.  The film is about a cocaine dealer within Harlem destroying his own community through the selling of drugs.  I like the film because it truly doesn’t glamorize drug culture.  Instead, it shows a man who tears down his community through selling cocaine, killing all of those who oppose, even his best friend since childhood, and essentially becoming a drug lord who controls the community.  The one thing that I found interesting about the film was how he bought the community off.  At one point in the film, the drug lord gives food to the entire community and at another time he buys off the local reverend by giving his daughter her dream wedding.  However, his true colors are eventually shown because later on in the wedding scene he uses a flower girl as a human shield during a shoot out.  I found this film to be interesting and I wonder why it is not as remembered as other films from the 90s.  

Wesley Snipes plays the drug lord within the film New Jack City.  Source: Wikimedia

Storytelling Week 5: The Valakhilyas' Plea

They come during the night in great hordes devouring any creature in their path.  They have destroyed us in so many ways.  We cannot go out anymore.  We are truly prisoners within our own forest, our own home.  The Rakshasas have taken everything away from us by destroying our safety. 

            They are horrible beasts who come in all forms.  Some stand taller than the trees of the forest with hands and feet that destroy any life.  Others crawl and slide on their stomachs, slurping up any creature on the ground with long tongues that have viscous spikes attached to them.  Some can even fly, picking up small animals by their necks and quickly crushing them.  But the most dangerous Rakshasas are the fast ones.  They can sprint on all fours or just two legs.  They have hands with a large claw used for gripping, tearing, and killing.  There are also Rakshasas with large red eyes, tiny black eyes, and some who have no eyes, only black pits that give no hint of a soul.  However, all of the monstrous Rakshasas that inhabit our forest have an unquenchable blood lust.  They stop at nothing.  They have no boundaries.  They only care about feeding on weaker creatures like us and they are never satisfied. 

            The things they do to creatures...terrible things that cannot be imagined by a sane mind.  We have witnessed our own being skinned alive without hesitation from the Rakshasas.  At first, they were fast deaths followed by fast consumption, only leaving piles of bones.  But they became hungry for suffering.  They tortured our people, played with them before feasting.  Now, they skin their victims alive slowly, tearing inches of skin off one piece at a time.  The screams are something that no one has ever heard before.  We are not sure if they are the screams of the poor creature who is dying or the Rakshasa.   They are agonizing and painful to hear.  None of us can forget those horrific sounds and some of us hear these screams in our sleep.  We cannot imagine how the Valakhilya who is dying must feel, and we never want to. 

            During the day, when we scavenge for food, we find bones, so many bones.  They are stripped of flesh.  Some are even hollow as if the Rakshasas have sipped the marrow from every bone.  You cannot imagine how many piles of bones we find.  We find small bones from our own kind and larger bones from humans, birds, deer, bears, and tigers.  Some piles have smaller Rakshasas within them.  How can such ruthless creatures who lust for death and blood even from one of their own exist.  If they can kill their own, they will surely destroy every trace of us, the small and innocent Valakhilya. 

            Rama, we are scared, terrified.  The life we live now is hopeless and meaningless because we know that a cruel and torturous existence is all that is left.  Please, Rama!  You cannot deny us our safety, our lives.  If you do not help us, we will die either from the Rakshasas or from our hopelessness.  

A Rakshasa depicted in the art of Yakshagana.  Source:Wikipedia.

Author’s Note

For this week, I wanted to retell the Valakhilyas’ plea to Rama.  Rama meets the Valakhilyas, who are tiny sages, in the Dandaka forest after his exile.  Within Buck’s version of the Ramayana, I found his use of detail and description of the Rakshasas from the perspective of Valakhilyas very intriguing.  However, I wished that there would have been more detail on what the Rakshasas did to the Valakhilyas and other beings within the forest.  For these reasons, I wanted to expand this detail in order to show how horrific these creatures really are.  I mainly did this by giving more detail and description of the type of destruction and fear the Valakhilyas have to deal with.  Overall, I wanted to expand this section of the Ramayana.  I didn’t include the dialogue from Rama, Lakshmana, and Sita because that was not what I wanted to focus on.  Instead, I just wanted to convey the type of distress that the Valakhilyas have to endure.  Essentially, I wanted to make it thematic, descriptive, and highly detailed.  At times, I did struggle because I didn’t want to sound too redundant.  I don’t believe that I was, but if you feel like some parts are redundant please tell me.  This retelling of the Valakhilyas’ plea is true to plot. 

Bibliography

Buck, William (1976). Ramayana: King Rama's Way. 

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