Poet and Author #AmitMajmudar speaks to Outlook about his new book '#Sitayana' which narrates the Ramayana through different perspectives.
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00:00 I don't think anyone would ever expect the Sanjeevani plant itself to have a perspective
00:05 and try and tell Hanuman, "Hey, I'm over here."
00:07 You know?
00:08 Welcome to Outlook Bibliophile.
00:09 I'm Mahima Monga and we're here with Amit Madhmudar and we're going to talk about his
00:20 most recent book, Sita Yana.
00:22 Hello, sir.
00:23 Hello.
00:24 Thank you for having me.
00:26 It's a pleasure.
00:27 So, when we talk about Sita Yana, it's written in a poetry format, right?
00:36 It's written in prose.
00:37 Okay.
00:38 But the way I've done it structurally is every chapter is told from the perspective of a
00:45 different character in the Ramayana.
00:47 The only character whose perspective I don't inhabit is Shri Ram himself.
00:52 I did that in order to keep Ram somewhat enigmatic.
00:58 But the focus is very much on Sita.
01:00 She's the most frequent narrator.
01:03 But everyone is involved.
01:04 So you have Hanuman, Lakshman, Mandodari, basic Ravan, everybody.
01:09 I also read that there's a perspective from a squirrel.
01:12 Right.
01:13 And that's one of the things that I wanted to do.
01:15 I wanted to, instead of just having the usual suspects, if someone were to say, "Okay, I'm
01:21 going to write the Ramayana from the perspective of all the characters," you would expect them
01:26 to have Ravan, Lakshman, Sita, and all of them.
01:29 But I don't think anyone would ever expect the Sanjeevani plant itself to have a perspective
01:34 and try and tell Hanuman, "Hey, I'm over here."
01:38 Similarly, the squirrel, that's a very famous squirrel, and then Ram touches him and his
01:43 fingerprints become white on the squirrel's back.
01:48 No one would expect that particular character to have a voice, to have a perspective.
01:55 I even include Indra.
01:58 Indra has a role in the Ramayana insofar as he was defeated by Ravan, and then he was
02:04 subsequently defeated by Ravan's son, Indrajit.
02:07 Originally Indrajit's name was Meghnath, but then he got the title of Indrajit for having
02:11 defeated Indra.
02:12 And so the final battle between Ram and Ravan is narrated actually by Indra, who's taking
02:17 this great pleasure in watching Ravan finally get his revenge.
02:20 It's like a bird's eye view.
02:22 Exactly.
02:23 And that allows me to follow Ram and Ravan on this sort of cosmic chariot chase, because
02:31 in the Ramayana, Indra actually loans his chariot to Ram to fight Ravan, who has the
02:41 Pushpa Viman, which is something that he got from his brother, Kuber, whom he deposed.
02:47 And so Ravan had this superior weapon, this superior vehicle.
02:53 So Indra's like, "I need to equalize the battlefield."
02:58 So that's one of the things he does.
02:59 So that gave me the idea that after he loaned that chariot to Ram, he had to have been watching
03:04 as Ram fought Ravan.
03:07 That's another thing that you'll see in the Sita Yama.
03:10 Well, writing about mythology, it requires a lot of research into the subject, because
03:17 it's so vast.
03:18 Right.
03:19 And so I'd like to ask you, what was your process of research?
03:23 What books did you read, references?
03:25 Right.
03:26 So one of the great things for me for writing Hindu mythology as a practicing Hindu is that
03:34 it puts me in the parampara of Ramayana poets throughout history.
03:38 Parampara is like the Sanskrit word meaning from one to the other.
03:45 And so it's almost though it's handed down.
03:47 And the peaks, there are innumerable tellings of the Ramayana in every dialect of India,
03:58 modern and going back to medieval times, going back to classical times.
04:02 They've done it in drama, dramatic form, all this sort of things.
04:09 But for me, the main sources were the Valmiki Ramayana, which is the original, the Adhika
04:14 Vivalmiki.
04:15 Then there's the Irama Avataram by Kampan, which I read in translation.
04:21 It's a Tamil epic, the Tamil version.
04:24 And then there is the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, which is also very famous as of the Hindi
04:29 dialect, which I kind of sort of understand, but I still kind of need translation to help
04:33 me with that.
04:35 And I also remember when I was a kid, there was Ramanan Sagar's Ramayana serial on television,
04:40 which was this big television event.
04:43 And I actually lived in India for like a year and a half when I was eight or nine.
04:49 And I remember what it was like to gather around the television.
04:53 So pop cultural types of things, and then these ancient classical texts, and it all
04:58 kind of came together.
05:00 And that's just a lot of the reading that I did.
05:03 And I did that a lot of that early, like in my teens and 20s.
05:06 Then it kind of, I wrote a Ramayana when I was in my mid to late 20s.
05:10 It was a very long version.
05:12 And then more recently, I had the idea to do it this way.
05:15 So I did it again this way.
05:18 So you've grown up in the US.
05:21 And so do you feel reading about Indian mythology and, you know, really connecting to it is
05:27 just somehow keeping you, keeping your Indian roots alive?
05:32 Right, right.
05:33 And so like, would you like to talk about your connection?
05:37 Sure, sure.
05:38 I think my connection to India is very religious.
05:41 I come, you know, my wife, my wife is even more religious than I am.
05:46 She's made me more religious over the years.
05:48 And we definitely consider ourselves, you know, Hindu Americans, you know, we're born
05:53 and brought up, both my wife and I are born and brought up in the United States.
05:56 So India has a very, very strong pull for us through the religion, right?
06:03 And Hinduism and India are very closely intertwined.
06:08 And I think that's a lot of the draw for me.
06:11 It's also, it's a, it's a world that is connected to some of the deepest things I believe.
06:17 And this is where so many ideas that structure the way I think about the world originated
06:22 - karma, reincarnation, you know, all of these ideas, and then these gods and goddesses,
06:27 who were my gods and goddesses, right?
06:30 And so mythology, the myth, you know, the mythology of India, that India produced over
06:35 centuries, has always been, you know, the wellspring and kind of source of my art.
06:42 And I, and I can feel it every time I return to it.
06:44 You know, I've written all sorts of different things.
06:47 I've written poems on every topic under the sun, and I've written historical fiction and
06:51 contemporary fiction.
06:52 And I've gotten successful in that.
06:54 But it never comes as easily and as fully and as, as, as, I guess, passionately as when
07:03 I return to like the source.
07:04 And I believe that the source for me, and for my art is here in India.
07:11 Especially with authors, it's always said that you should write about what you know,
07:16 and you know, follow that it's like, right, you're gonna be more comfortable.
07:19 Yeah, and also another good piece of advice is to write the book that you want to see
07:24 in the world that isn't there.
07:26 And so I saw a need for a poetically accurate translation of Bhagavad Gita with a concise
07:33 commentary that wasn't very esoteric and was clearly written.
07:37 And so I wrote that and that was God's Song.
07:39 And that's come out just a few months ago here in India.
07:41 And then with the Sita Yana, I wanted, you know, I thought that it would be nice to have
07:45 a very richly written, but at the same time, fast moving and intricately structured version
07:52 of the Ramayana that people could kind of, you know, that people might enjoy and that
07:57 would be entertaining, and have a lot of variety of voices in it.
08:01 And that book didn't exist.
08:02 And so I wrote that.
08:03 And that was Sita Yana.
08:04 Well, it is said that Indian mythology, whatever is written, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana,
08:13 it's all just a really good piece of literature, which was then, like, you know, turned into
08:19 religion at some point.
08:22 So what is your take on that?
08:23 Do you really feel that, you know, the religious side to it came in, like, you know, it had
08:30 something to do with just the literature or like the people's belief that it actually
08:36 happened?
08:37 Right, right.
08:38 So, so, so that's a very, very, you know, deep question, you know, and we could sit
08:44 here for an hour and a half while I parse the various parts of that question.
08:50 I think that we need to remember that just like the classical religion of the Greeks,
08:57 which had the Homeric epics as their basis, Hinduism too, originally was a religion of
09:06 the poets, okay?
09:08 And so, in fact, at one point in the Gita, Krishna refers to the Kavi, which is, you
09:15 know, it's a term for a poet today, but it was also a term for like the highest level
09:20 of religious understanding as well at that time.
09:23 And he says even poets are confused about, he's talking about the nature of action or
09:27 karma.
09:28 And he said even poets are, even Kavi, Kavis are confused about this, right?
09:32 And that's his way of saying, like, look, even the really, people who really know religion
09:36 don't know about this, right?
09:38 And just as classical Greek religion had its basis in these supernatural epics that gave
09:45 an identity to the ancient Greeks, right?
09:48 The Hindus had a very similar relationship to their ethics.
09:54 Now, every historian will tell you that Dvaraka really exists, Ayodhya really existed, right?
09:59 And there's every reason to believe that Ram and Krishna really existed, right?
10:03 And then on top of that, you know, these wars, these conflicts, they certainly happen in
10:10 some form, but the form in which they have power, meaning, symbolism, religious import
10:17 is the form in which we know and love them, you know?
10:22 And that's in the end what matters, and that's in the end what lives.
10:27 And it's no coincidence that the Ramayana is being rewritten millennia later, you know?
10:35 It's because there's something different about it.
10:37 It's not just history, and it's not just poetry.
10:40 It's some hybridization of it infused with the spirit, right?
10:45 And that's what's mysterious, and scholars have a very hard time finding out what it
10:51 is that makes these epics have this effect.
10:55 And that's why they try and reduce it and say, "It's just literature," or "It's just
11:00 history," or "It never really happened," because they're dealing with some other entity
11:05 that they don't have terms for.
11:08 I think that's the way.
11:09 That's the brief version of what I would say about that.
11:13 So, these days, religion is quite politicized.
11:20 And so while you were writing Sita Yana, did you have that thought in mind that, you know,
11:25 maybe it could have a political backlash at some point?
11:28 No, no, I didn't, primarily because, as I said, I'm an American, and I don't follow
11:32 Indian politics at all, because in America, politics is so entertaining all the time,
11:39 and it's just, you can't look away.
11:42 So I never have looked away from American politics long enough to find out what's going
11:46 on in India.
11:47 So I would have to, you know, it just doesn't even enter my mind, you know, while I'm writing.
11:55 For me, it's very much a religious thing, and Hinduism doesn't have a role in American
11:59 politics the way, say, evangelical Christianity does.
12:03 So Christianity is, in some forms, politicized within the United States, but Hinduism isn't.
12:09 And so it's very much just my religion, you know, and it doesn't have that contentious
12:16 aspect to it.
12:18 It was really good talking to you.
12:20 Thank you so much.
12:21 [Music]