Week 7 Reading Diary B: The End of the Ramayana

There was a lot of cool stuff about Pushpaka at the end of the book. I only briefly alluded to it in the introduction of my storybook, but I hope I can incorporate more about it within my stories in the upcoming weeks.

One thing I kept thinking during the final chapters is this: Why is everyone so mean to Hanuman!? Even Rama! I get that he’s kind of a jokester, but he saved the day a number of times. Rama would never have been able to save Sita and defeat Ravana without him. But he’s always bossing Hanuman around, and so are the other characters. And they’re not even nice about! Very demanding, even though he faithfully and unquestioningly does some unbelievable tasks for them that no one else could do. The only person who’s really nice to Hanuman is Sita. She is appropriately kind to him, and that’s good.

I didn’t really like the ending. I remember Narayan ended his story with a ‘happily ever after’ when Rama kills Ravana, returns home, and is crowned king. And he ruled many years, and he was awesome. The end. As best as I can recall, I think Narayan said something about there being more to the story but wanting to end it there on that happy note. I liked that better. Buck’s ending was kind of a bummer. Rama seemed, to me, to be sort of cowardly. The majority of the Ramayana is about Rama going to extraordinary lengths to save his wife, and then years later, he abandons her—pregnant with twins!—in the forest alone just because of scandal. So weird! I did enjoy reading about what happened with his sons, Kusa and Lava, but I preferred Narayan’s ending, for sure.

(Lava and Kusa)