Week 6 Reading Diary A: Hanuman in Lanka

I decided to continue with Buck’s Ramayana this week because I’ve really been enjoying it thus far. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Sampathi and Jatayu’s mishap with the sun for the Storytelling assignment. So I thought it was fun to read Buck’s description of it this week, and I was kind of happy to see that I hadn’t written anything too contradictory to his version.

One story that I think I might retell for this week is that of Mainaka the mountain. It was a neat idea that all of the world’s mountains used to have wings, but they were careless with them, so Indra cut them off. I really liked that he explained that the severed wings turned into clouds. What a weird and cool origin story for clouds! Like, “Where did clouds come from?” “Oh, they’re mountain wings.” I think that’s funny. I might write about that.

I enjoyed reading about Hanuman’s initial trip to Lanka in Buck’s version because he included a lot of really cool detail that gave me a better idea of what Lanka and its inhabitants are like. I also liked that Hanuman just wandered around as a cat for a good portion of it. He’s such a likeable character in any form.

I also found it interesting to see more of what Sita’s imprisonment was like. We didn’t hear a lot about it in Narayan’s book, and that was something I was sort of left wondering about. I read a few Storytelling blog posts that reimagined it that were really good and piqued my curiosity. So I liked that Buck painted a picture of it for the reader through the eyes of Hanuman.

(Hanuman Encounters Sita)