What Ashok Banker thinks can pass as the Ramayana

In the grand old days of Treta Yuga when Dashratha and Ravana were kings, the Brahmins used to levitate and had blue light coming out of their finger nails which was, of course, Brahman Light. If the sages in Ashok Banker’s Ramayana remind you of the creation of Wolverine by the evil scientist, you are not alone. Nor are you alone if the Sita’s wondering into the jungle dressed as a man with her female guard and meeting Rama remind you of Shakespeare’s Rosalind or Ravana’s head appearing thru fire to talk to Manthara seem to be picked out from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or Ravana’s taking over Dashratha’s body and being then released by Vashishtha looks to be uncannily similar to JRR Tolkien’s Saruman taking over Theodin’s body and being released later by Gandalf. And all of this in the space of less than 2 books (out of a total of 5), and after omitting how Ram seems to belong more to the Matrix than to the Ramayana and omitting Manthara (and cannibalistic* Kekayi!!)

If this version confuses you considerably, because you too remember a mention of Valmiki’s Ramayana; Kamban’s Ramayana and Tulsidasji’s Ramcharitmanas, in the preface – then we are in the same place. But you see, Banker only promised to retell the Ramayana in such a way, that everything in his Ramayana belonged to either one of the three versions or what he understood of them. While we thought he was mostly going to talk about what belonged to one of the three versions; he clearly decided to talk about what he understood of them.

*only in Banker’s retelling.