Anand Neelkantan's ASURA Part 2: The book review & analysis

ASURA the book:

I was drawn to the book by its brilliant cover art & its title Asura: Tale of the Vanquished. I was happy at its intent that finally someone was trying to understand Raavan. However after reading some reviews of the book on Goodreads I was a little sad; many people thought it was a book that said Raavan was Good & Ram was Bad and I thought that maybe Neelkantan as an author is trying to play a cheap gimmick to create yet another bestseller and play on emotions by trying to twist the tale 360 degree. He is again doing what we have done since ages, only this time the white is Raavan & the black is Ram. Still with an apprehensive mind I bought my copy & I was in for a pleasant surprise. Surprise & shock that still some people are thinking & analysing the epic as Good or Bad only!! But then that is the beauty & bane of Hinduism, you are free to form your opinion & wear it on your sleeve, Good, Bad or Ugly, it is your philosophy of life and Hinduism being a thought & not a religion is open to that.

Now coming to the book, it contains two protagonists – Raavan & a fictional common man created by Neelkantan, Bhadra. To my mind this was a stroke of sheer genius. In the fight of heroes & anti-heroes, we hardly stop to think what a common man is thinking and how he is becoming a reluctant victim of the decisions that he has not even made; how his life takes shape not out of his own will but of the action of those who are high above him or rule him. The book started with such promise that it completely enraptured me as a reader. I was in love with the humanising of not only Raavan, but also of age old stories that now sound like folklore – of Asuras & Devas. The battle between Asuras & Devas & how Devas & their leader - Indra gained supremacy is stuff very brilliant & deep texts are made of. To think this was Neelkantan’s debut work was shocking & awe-inspiring. I loved how the author made the so called “mythology” into history by using logic. Asura – who were they, their legacy, their kings, all is absolutely apt as per history (approx..5000 BC). Who is Indra, what does Indra mean, what is Deva army and the reasons of Asura empire downfall are so logical that frankly I cannot think anyone can question that logic. View any dynasty closely and all go through a cycle – ruthless invaders out to annex land; with their masculine side ruling them they are only concerned with looting & annexing; once they have established their supremacy they settle down & start becoming magnanimous to win over people and establish a long reign; slowly their feminine side comes out, their cities becomes civilisations – order, architecture, studies, science, art & literature thrive. Their empires flourish, but they also lose zeal for fight. The younger generations are brought up on comforts & are largely unaware of the hardships their forefathers faced ; then comes a peak of civilisations, then stagnancy & then decline and gradual defeat by another invading force who declare themselves new monarchs & start a new dynasty. It has always been the case to this day & is even applicable to industries, economies & organisations, so why would it differ for Asuras & Devas?

Raavan is a half caste Asura who has a tall ambition of spearheading & restoring Asura civilisation back to its glory days. He is an intelligent man & challenges set notions & orthodox ways & instead of being given reason by his learned Brahmin father Sage Vishrav, he is shown contempt (as many of us our by our elders when we question society practices). Thus he forms a sense of deep resentment & vows to swim against the tide if this is what it takes to establish his Asura lineage to its former glory & more. This was a tall order at a time when Asura civilisation had seen its decline. It was holding the natural cycle of life by its horns & rotating it according to your own plan – it was not only swimming against the tide, it was swimming against an approaching hurricane & winning.

Thus Raavan needed all his vices of a human to accomplish this order. But gradually these vices start eating him from inside:

·        Anger – makes him irrational & unreasonable & take ill-founded decisions.

·        Pride – makes him oblivious to any other truth but his own & lashes out against those who seek to correct him or think otherwise.

·        Jealousy – makes him yearn for what others have – whether beauty, wealth or even peace of mind & ensure that he is continuously in search for something and is never happy.

·        Happiness – makes him afraid that he might lose its cause one day.

·        Sadness – makes him depressed despite having achieved in life.

·        Fear – gives him sleepless nights & constant sense of foreboding; he starts doubting anyone & everyone around him and thus his sense of right & wrong are warped.

·        Selfishness – makes him trample & use others to fulfil his own motive

·        Passion – takes him through extremes of emotions that make a person take ill-judged decisions.

·        Ambition – makes him ruthless, conceited & ill concerned of others’ feeling his pursuit of his private mission.

The last is INTELLECT which in Raavan’s case he uses in fuelling the above 9 vices to achieve his aim, rather than use it for greater good of society at large. But this was HIS life & this was HIS decision & he stood for it.

But there are times when Raavan does want to run away from all of this & many times he thinks what had happened had he not followed his 9 heads & only used 1 and had done small things that made him happy as a person. He was a profound musician & he often dreamt that had he not been doing this, he would develop some ragas (divine symphonies); he had been penning some deep texts on life & philosophy that would be revered in ages to come; he was an accomplished impressionist & often dreamt about taking off in the World as a backpacker & capture God’s bounty on his canvas – don’t we all dream such things in our own way but are unable to accomplish it because Life as we know it comes in the way – in short we are so struck by above vices in our own way that we all become our own Raavans.

To contrast this, is a fictional common man character Bhadra, developed by the author. This man is a common Asura, with a common & happy life, a common way of living (at times revered & coveted by Kings from a height) that is rudely & viciously snatched away from him in the wars of the tribes. A lone survivor, he vows revenge & makes it his life’s mission to assist Raavan in every way possible to seek revenge against Devas.

It is uptil here that the novel holds immense ground and draws you in, post which it just starts spiralling down wards, when in the end it just loses its plot somewhere.

The middle part of the novel is far too plodding, aimless & repetitive. I yearn for the powerful beginning & tone of the book. Raavan as an emperor comes across as burdened with too much & his family life seems too dark & unhappy. In fact Raavan from strong willed & independent thinker with big dreams in his eyes, suddenly starts looking like an aging man bordering on schizophrenia. He cannot decide whether to be happy, elated, sad or angry in reaction to just one sentence someone is uttering. He is constantly bitter, unhappy, violent & angry and goes on more or less like this till good part of the story. As another human I cannot imagine his sad life & would never want to part of his family or Lanka, if this is what his family life & his subjects’ life was. His loveless marriage to Mandodari is as cold & lifeless as one can imagine. It lacks sensitivity, understanding, passion, love, trust & everything a couple should share. It seems like they are two strangers living under a roof of luxury & just living entrapped.

But what really brings down this book is Bhadra. I haven’t read a more disgusting character than Bhadra ever. He witnesses the murder of his child & gang-rape of his wife by Deva army & yet he also does the exact same thing as a soldier in Raavan’s army in his campaign against North…so what exactly am I supposed to pity? Or does the author want to say that every man sees his problem as the biggest & does not judge his own actions that might be worse, because that is also true. As a character Bhadra is a coward, lecherous, drunkard of man who gets what he deserves…so why make him a protagonist? Am I supposed to judge a whole civilisation on the basis of this vermin of a character? He sides with Raavan, then plots against him; he laments his wife’s rape & yet proceeds to do the same to other women; he has talent, but does not want to work hard & then accuses Raavan & his kingship for his troubles; he lustfully beds a whore & falls in love with her & yet beats her up mercilessly at every turn; he kills her lover’s boyfriend in such a ghastly manner that sends shivers down Raavan’s spine, and then he beats up her lover whenever he wishes. What is this? Were all Asura men like this? I cannot believe that.

Bhadra is too insignificant a character to narrate half the book & after half the book ends, Bhadra’s chapters evoke unnecessary irritation in me. I do not wish to read the repetitive rants of a slimy man in a book that wanted to set logic to tales in the first place.

End of ASURA:

This was my anti-climax. The end of ASURA, and I am not saying this because I am a Vaishnav (a believer & follower of Vishnu sect). The premise of Asura was that nothing is good & nothing is bad, all is grey and the powerful note on which the book started piled expectations sky-high. But then the author got caught in the same vicious cycle as my aunts, uncles or neighbours who in order to establish Ram’s goodness start painting Raavan in black colour unnecessarily. Ram & Lakshman’s characters are so ill developed that it appals me as a reader. Had there been lesser chapters of Bhadra & were those replaced in properly sketching Ram as more than a just Deva minion prince, the novel would have gone to another level in our era.  Had there been some monologues of Raavan & Ram, both thinking how they are right & other is wrong & some vice versa thoughts & how this war is necessary & imminent for reasons beyond rescuing Sita alone, it would have been a work par excellence; as it would have actually completed the philosophy of Ramayan.

Instead he paints Ram as a hapless child-king, without much brains of his own & a puppet in the hands of some Brahmins. If that is the case, and was Ram merely a puppet, then how come his legacy rules to this age & date? How come his name has evoked so many schools of thought across the globe & how come He is a case study amongst renowned scholars who are not only Hindu or for that matter Indians but from outside the sphere of Hinduism as well? Is it only because a few Brahmins wrote nice verses for him? Let us not be so gullible to assume that Ram was just a product of good Vedic marketing & no other King could ever got the same done for himself over the years; like we become gullible enough to believe that Raavan was a “bad gangsta like person” (heard a teenager say that some time back & I almost fainted).

If the author & many readers argue that it is from Raavan’s & Bhadra’s point of view & hence open to their version & hence incorrect interpretation, even then, to my mind the book failed its beginning when the focus did not suitably shift to Ram & Raavan alone when time required.

Many stories in the end are distorted, the major one being Shambukha’s tale. Also Mandodari’s molestation is far-fetched & is just a version out of many versions of Ramayan (that is if you choose to believe the Thailand Ramayan instead of Valmiki’s original text). But that is ok as the author can take his creative liberties at any point to present his thoughts.

My ruse was that Asura was an excellent book when it started & became an average, plodding literature in the end, which was painful.

Depiction of Women in Asura:

While I know that the author was merely presenting a situation of women in that era, it is appalling how cruel the book is towards women. I understand that a correct portrayal of society at that time was required, which can often be unpleasant & uncomfortable, but did the book have to be so unnecessarily violent towards women, especially at a time when we as Indians are dealing with improving the mind-set of our men towards women. Yes women were raped when a victorious army took over, but Bhadra’s tales of thrashing his wife with aplomb & then getting drunk made me feel sadistically good when he gets his just fruits in life much later. Many violent dialogues from Raavan’s thoughts are appalling, for instance when he listens to his wife & feels like grabbing her by hair & banging her head bloody….did it need to be so graphic? If yes, I would like Neelkantan to tell me why? According to an intelligent man like Raavan, he hates Asura women & their free spirit & brands them amoral as he does his sister Soorpanakha, and is initially amused at the sight of her severed nose & breasts; and then he is wondering why Sita, a Deva princess is so devoted to her man, and questions her sanity. What do you want man? According to you a woman fall in two categories only: amoral & moral; and both does not seem to work for you. You laugh at Soorpanakha’s plight when you have also raped & allowed rape of women by your army, and then you think what kind of a husband Sita has who cuts off women’s nose?

The point is, whether Sita is captured or Mandodari is violated, one thing is for sure, in this game of ego inflated men, it is women who have relentlessly suffered & also because we women remain quiet & take it as our destiny in life.

TO SUM UP:

ASURA is DEFINITELY A WORTHY READ, despite its many fallacies.

I am surprised that Neelkantan has achieved this just in a debut novel, & despite all hiccups I expect only better work from the author. Here is waiting for his next “Ajaya”, a novel spoken through Kauravas of Mahabharat.