Asura has evoked many emotions in me, and writing all those emotions is not an easy job. I can write some things, but others I can only think. Hence this blog post will be detailed and will be broken into two parts & will take you through phases of what I felt for the book in whole:
PART I
EPICS - a Philosophy of life:
It is ironic
that I am writing a review on Asura after watching the age old tradition of Raavan
effigy being burnt yesterday for Dussehra (the festival which marks Raavan’s = Evil’s
death by the hands of Rama = Good). The excitement around me was electric;
scores of people had come to witness Raavan being burnt, and were visibly
getting impatient with glee as they expected to see the 3 effigies of Raavan,
Meghnaad (Raavan’s son) & Kumbhkarna (Raavan’s brother) go up high in
flames…perhaps just to enjoy some fireworks; or perhaps it is a tradition; or
perhaps it is the last glimmer of hope in the heart of a common man to see an
effigy being burnt & feel all is still well with the world. I even heard
some highly amusing conversations where some people claimed how they were
scared looking at the downcast sky (which is a rarity this time of the year)
& thought that if Raavan is not burnt or half burnt this year it would be
the mark of a really bad omen. So much of faith in humanity over an effigy
being burnt or not…as though the burning will suddenly restore unfounded equilibrium
in society!!
Interestingly
this popular notion of Raavan being an evil incarnate is widespread even when
Valmiki’s Ramayan (the original one), paints him as a victim of his own circumstances;
circumstances he creates for himself in his ambitions; his own 9 vices as a
human that he could not rise above. Nowhere in Ramayan it is said that Raavan
was a “bad guy”; he is merely an anti-Hero, an antagonist, a human who could
not rise above basic human emotions, embraced them with a full heart, got
engulfed in them & sank with them in full glory. The notion that Raavan
knew that these 9+1 vices will bring his end is actually true…he was a man of
supreme intellect, he knew that wearing the 9 vices – anger, pride, jealousy,
happiness, sadness, fear, selfishness, passion and ambition – ultimately &
obviously will result in the complete downfall of a human; yet he chose to
revel in them as a mortal & thus he was a dashanan (one with ten heads/traits including “intellect” as the
final head; it does not mean he was a human with actual ten heads). Wearing all
10 “heads” with equal aplomb he becomes a man loving & living up these 10
traits in no lesser measure; hence engulfed by vices; hence an anti-hero &
thus it is but befitting that his final showdown should be against a human,
born in the same World, born around the same set of vices, but one who chooses
to rise above them & hence his final battle & deliverance at the hands
of Ram. Please understand the tightly coded deeper meaning or symbolism – it is
not exactly a hero winning over evil; it is a human who rises above these 10
vices providing deliverance to another human not only stuck in them but also
suffering from them. It is then that you will actually understand Ramayan &
its intent.
This
philosophy of life has sadly seldom been read and understood generations to
generations, worse has fallen in all kinds of hands who added khandas (episodes) after khandas; has been gimmicked in calendar
art, musicals, stage plays, film versions, flash mobs, “nukkad” plays & has
become a highly distorted story of how Ram is a white saint & Raavan is a
black demon and how Ram’s side is all GOOD & Raavan’s side all BAD, and the
deeper meaning has got completely lost over the ages. Hence a whole generation has
come up who read different versions presented by authors today & think that
what they knew all along was morphed & wrong and what they are reading now
is truth; it confuses them & shakes their belief; a shaky belief built on
superstitious tales, fear of God & incorrect incidents thrust down their throats
as religion (when in actuality Hinduism is not even a religion but a thought
and thus has scope of argument, counter-views, interpretations & analysis
which is absent in religions otherwise); When the fact is that all this is
already mentioned in the actual texts and explains each incident with a logic
& philosophy.
To this end
Neelkantan’s book is a very good attempt & is in fact applause-worthy. We
need people like him, or Ashwin Sanghi, Amish et al to bring out logic from our
scriptures & present it to new generation who consider our history as
mythology and Ramayan & Mahabharat as just imaginative works of a fiction
writer that happened to be bestsellers. If that is the case, then how come so
many ages have come & gone & no such work has been produced ever again?
Problem is that logic is missing while relating these stories to children who
grow up with warped notions of their own texts. First of all Ramayan and
Mahabharat are NOT religious books; they are EPICS, they contain philosophy of
life explained through incidents that have happened in the history. The lives
of characters in these two epics set an example to support the eternal truth or
the philosophy of life; and philosophy of life is OPEN TO ONE’S OWN
INTERPRETATION. It CANNOT be forced on him/her – the minute this point is made
clear to the readers, people will stop being scared or overwhelmed of these
epics & will read them to form their own opinion.
To be continued with ASURA review & analysis.
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