_Armies of Hanuman_
'A milestone' asserts the back cover and that is as accurate a description as any. Ashok Banker has finally written a book which failed to enrage me. Who'd have thunk, eh?
Perhaps the reason is that this book departs so far from the original that it no longer feels like a travesty of the original. Instead it reads like fan-fic. Banker's 'dried coconut shell' of an offering, not as useless as it may initially sound. After all, carpets and doormats, mattresses and footmats come from that humble shell. And so Ram gets to have a new adventure.
When the original story continues, so do the distortions. Indrajit, famed for his beauty, valour and self-control, is an ugly wild thing. Vibheeshan is a celibate rakshasa with zero self-control and the morals and reactions of a Victorian Virgin. The character has been butchered, m'lud.
Ram also takes a few hits: Laxman finds him preachy and prissy, and Ram stages world's first 'tell-it-all' show when he tells the monkey hordes how he and Sita had been thinking of producing heirs. Just what a Suryavanshi prince would tell rank strangers to persuade them into a military alliance. Guru Vashishtha must have covered it in 'Strategy and Etiquette 101'. Sheesh!
The language has been cleaned up a bit, but only a bit mind you. His characters still 'mindwill' things [as opposed to 'spleenwilling' them of course], utter dialogues like Shantam brother, crush 'ripe sundried tomatoes' when they run away from demons, kill gotras of guards, and exult over cute 'younguns/littleuns/olduns'.
The conceptual errors continue too. Bankers insists on treating the rakshasas as vampires and Ravan can easily cross the lakshman-rekha once Sita invites him in. Then there is Banker's insistence that the three guiding percepts of life are dharma, arth and karma. Sigh. Someone please tell him that the lastun is supposed to be kaama, desires. Karma is action, what you do to attain these goals. Or, alternately, ask him to explain how the arth, dhrama and karma of a kshatriya prince can be violated by killing a deer? Really when Banker starts holding forth on Indian society/customs, all one can do is pat him on the head and say, 'Don't worry your pretty l'll head about it.'
Only one sentence made me go 'Aargh!' , the one which describes how Parvati danced at Kama Dev's urging. Idiot. That just shows what he knows about Parvati - nothing. Still, there were a few good bits [Sita's abduction, the vanar sena] and it wasn't as bad as the earlier ones.
Currently reading Baldwin's _What the Body Remembers_. 'Tis sad, beautifully so.
ETA: 'Tis the fifth day of the month and I'm on my sixth book. At this rate, the shelf wouldn't last me long. Sigh.
Perhaps the reason is that this book departs so far from the original that it no longer feels like a travesty of the original. Instead it reads like fan-fic. Banker's 'dried coconut shell' of an offering, not as useless as it may initially sound. After all, carpets and doormats, mattresses and footmats come from that humble shell. And so Ram gets to have a new adventure.
When the original story continues, so do the distortions. Indrajit, famed for his beauty, valour and self-control, is an ugly wild thing. Vibheeshan is a celibate rakshasa with zero self-control and the morals and reactions of a Victorian Virgin. The character has been butchered, m'lud.
Ram also takes a few hits: Laxman finds him preachy and prissy, and Ram stages world's first 'tell-it-all' show when he tells the monkey hordes how he and Sita had been thinking of producing heirs. Just what a Suryavanshi prince would tell rank strangers to persuade them into a military alliance. Guru Vashishtha must have covered it in 'Strategy and Etiquette 101'. Sheesh!
The language has been cleaned up a bit, but only a bit mind you. His characters still 'mindwill' things [as opposed to 'spleenwilling' them of course], utter dialogues like Shantam brother, crush 'ripe sundried tomatoes' when they run away from demons, kill gotras of guards, and exult over cute 'younguns/littleuns/olduns'.
The conceptual errors continue too. Bankers insists on treating the rakshasas as vampires and Ravan can easily cross the lakshman-rekha once Sita invites him in. Then there is Banker's insistence that the three guiding percepts of life are dharma, arth and karma. Sigh. Someone please tell him that the lastun is supposed to be kaama, desires. Karma is action, what you do to attain these goals. Or, alternately, ask him to explain how the arth, dhrama and karma of a kshatriya prince can be violated by killing a deer? Really when Banker starts holding forth on Indian society/customs, all one can do is pat him on the head and say, 'Don't worry your pretty l'll head about it.'
Only one sentence made me go 'Aargh!' , the one which describes how Parvati danced at Kama Dev's urging. Idiot. That just shows what he knows about Parvati - nothing. Still, there were a few good bits [Sita's abduction, the vanar sena] and it wasn't as bad as the earlier ones.
Currently reading Baldwin's _What the Body Remembers_. 'Tis sad, beautifully so.
ETA: 'Tis the fifth day of the month and I'm on my sixth book. At this rate, the shelf wouldn't last me long. Sigh.