Online Education Review

(Thumbs Up, Rio!)

Personally, I love online classes! I am really bad at getting up and going to classes, so having on my computer and able to work on it whenever and wherever I want to is a major plus. On the other hand, it sometimes can be confusing and hard to keep up with all that is required of you. That's why I love this class (and the myth-folklore class!) - because everything that you have to do is laid out in a week by week way. You are never wondering what is required of you and you always know where you stand points-wise. I love that this class has that week by week thing and I also love that there are certain assignments due on certain days. I love the reading diary posts because there is no specific word requirement so I don't have to worry about that, I can just write whatever I'm thinking about the reading at the time, so they ensure that you're doing the reading while also allowing you some leeway. If I were to design an online course I would honestly do exactly what you've done here because I can't imagine anything better than what you've already done. I especially love that we can pick our own readings sometimes and get to know what interests us!

Gen. Ed. Review

 

(Not Facebook Not Like Thumbs Down)

Overall I have not had the greatest experience with gen. eds. but that could just be because I prefer all of my majors classes and thought that most of the gen. eds. were a stupid requirement. I liked this class and a couple of the other classes, but why, I ask you, do psychology majors need chemistry/physics, algebra, or environmental science?? They don't! There's no reason for me to have taken any of these things unless I was planning to go to med school and had declared the pre-med option (for chemistry) or something like that. There's no point in a psych major having physics and we learn all the math we need for psych in statistics so algebra or calculus is completely unreasonable. When will I ever use it? Never. Do you want to know why? I have a calculator and the internet my friend! If I were going to design a gen. ed. program it would have the humanities and histories and political classes and english classes that are included now, as everyone should probably know, but would not include anything to do with math, physics, or science, as those things should be based on the degree that you're in. 

College Writing Review

(Writing)

I'm a psychology major and we don't have a lot of writing courses, per se, but we do have A LOT of writing in our different psychology courses. The problem with this was that for my psych classes we had to write in APA style and in all other classes (like all of the gen eds I had to take that required writing, i.e. English classes, History Classes, and some science classes) I had to use MLA style, which I'm really bad at in general and always have to look up how to do things now that I'm in the hang of APA style. I've taken classes that were writing intensive like my Honors English 1 and 2 classes and my Honors History class, all of which required a ton of writing. And now I'm in a science class that requires a lot of writing of lab reports. Plus all of my psych classes required things like research papers or term papers. I don't really think a lot of these classes have helped me grow as a writer because they all wanted different things and nitpicked about different things, so I'm not really sure what's the right way and what's not. But this class has helped me because it's focused solely on my writing skills and not so much on APA vs MLA or on the topic at hand. This is really the most helpful writing class I've had so far and if I had to design a class, it would be just exactly like this one, both in my major and out of it, though within my major it would have pointers about APA style and outside of my major it would have pointers about both styles.

Week 14 Reading Diary B: Santal Folktales continued

Image Information: Red Fox Lying in Snow from Wikipedia page.

Today I've decided to focus on a story that I found particularly cute from the Santal Folktales: A Fox and His Wife. I thought this story was cute because it showed how a quick-witted woman who never bragged about her intelligence was able to out-smart the tiger while her husband, who always bragged about his own wit, cowered and shook with fright.

So in the beginning the story tells about how the Mr. Fox is always bragging to his wife about all of the wit he has (his wit would load twelve buffaloes) and Mrs. Fox never bragging about hers (hers would only fill a small vegetable basket). Then one evening they're on their way home and are stopped suddenly by a tiger who wants to eat them. Mrs. Fox tells him to wait a moment because she and her husband need someone to settle their quarrel about how to divide up their five children and the tiger agrees to help thinking that he will get both foxes and all five of their children if he plays along (plus he's flattered that she's given him an honorable title: uncle). He follows them home to their burrow and Mr. Fox goes in to gather the children, but when he doesn't come back out Mrs. Fox tells the tiger he must not be able to handle them all and she will go help him. She doesn't turn her back on him, however, because she somehow knows that he is planning to swipe her away and eat her if she does, so she backs in backwards. When the tiger asks what she's doing, she says that she couldn't possible turn her back on such an amazing person as he is and he's flattered again and lets her go. After she's safely inside, and - mind you - the hole is really small for the going in and out of the fox den, she calls out to him that he's free to leave now as she and her husband have figured out their dilemma on their own. The tiger realizes he has been fooled and is furious and tries to go in after them but is way too big for the door. So in the end, Mrs. Fox's wit was able to save them all from the tiger's hungry belly.

Week 14 Reading Diary A: Santal Folktales

Image Information - African Leopard in Serengeti, Tanzania from Wikipedia page

The story I liked best this time was actually the first story I read from the Santal Folktales page, called Ledha and the Leopard. I liked this story because it had several twists that were entirely unexpected but that weren't too far-fetched (most of the time) to be believable. I do wonder, however, what the moral of the story is because I thought folktales were meant to impart some lesson or other, but perhaps I'm mistaken and not all tales that are told are for learning, maybe some are just for entertainment.

So in this story it starts off with some pretty foolish young boys who like to call out to a leopard that lives in the forest above them, not expecting that he would ever show up. One day, however, he does come running for them because he has a lizard on his bum and can't get rid of it (he had been playing hide and seek with the lizard and accidentally sat on it, then got bitten by it and it wouldn't let him go). Ledha couldn't run fast enough to get away so the leopard caught up with him and promised not to eat him if he'd just take the lizard off and never tell anyone that a lizard had been able to bite him and scare him so badly. If he did tell, though, he would be hunted down and eaten. So the leopard apparently went on his way (though in reality he followed Ledha to make sure he didn't tell anyone). Ledha refused to tell his friends what had happened, but that night did eventually give in to his sister's wheedling and told her. The leopard heard him tell and that night snuck in and stole him and his whole bed away and carried it deep into the forest. Ledha woke up during the journey and realized what was happening so he caught ahold of a tree branch and escaped. The leopard, after finding him gone, retraced his path through the forest until he found Ledha in the tree. He promised not to eat him when he came down, so Ledha did, but the leopard was going to break his promise. Ledha asked if he could have just one pinch of tobacco first and the leopard agreed. When he heard the tobacco (which was apparently very dry and noisy) rustling around in the bag he asked what was really in there and Ledha told him it was the lizard from earlier. This scared the leopard away and Ledha escaped, though he didn't know how to get out of the forest so he made a home for himself near some wild buffaloes. He cleaned up after the buffaloes every morning when they moved away to graze and they were eventually curious as to how their home was getting clean so they left one of their kindred behind one day to see. She found out it was Ledha and told her friends it was a kind man who had come to take care of them. They made a bargain with Ledha, if he would take care of them and help them wash, they would give him the milk of whichever of the cows was his favorite and tastiest. One day, as he was washing in the river (and this was the most hard to believe part in the story because what on earth would have prompted him to wrap his hair up and why would she have cared about the hair of someone and then married that lame long-haired nobody who lived in the forest??) some of his hair fell out and he wrapped it in some leaves and let it float down the river. A princess found it and declared that she would not go on living without finding the man that the hair belonged to so her father sent a crow to find him and the crow lured him out by stealing his flute and making him chase it all the way back to the palace. She married him and they lived there for a while but the buffaloes were suffering without him so he moved her and him back to the forest and built a palace there and a highway so that he could travel back and forth between his forest home where he cared for the buffaloes and her home in the city.

Week 13 Extra Reading Diary: Folktales of Bengal part 2

Story source:Folk-Tales of Bengal by the Rev. Lal Behari Day, with illustrations by Warwick Goble (1912).

I'm going to write about two stories that were very similar in this unit (Folktales of Bengal part 2): The Ghost-Brahman and A Ghostly Wife. In these two tales, a ghost poses as one of the characters and lives as if it were them until it gets caught.

In the first story, a Brahman is too pore to afford a wife so he begs for the money until he can afford one. Once he marries her, he moves her in with her mother but doesn't stay with them because he really can't afford to support all three of them, so he leaves. Later a ghost takes his place and nobody can tell the difference. The Brahman comes back but people call him an impostor and banish him from his own house. He goes to the king, asking for help. The king agrees to try the case but he can't tell the ghost from the real man either. The Brahman is distraught until he finds another king who comes up with a plan. He comes in and says the real Brahman is the one who can fit inside the very small container. The ghost is tricked and gets into the container, showing that he is, indeed, a ghost. The ghost-Brahman is then thrown out and the real Brahman is reinstated in his family.

In the second story, a young wife marries a Brahman and moves in with him and his mother (I'm sensing a theme here...). One day she offends a ghost who almost strangles her and then traps her in a hole in a tree and takes her shape (another theme?), rejoining her family. The mother notices that something is amiss with the wife (aha, a difference!) and watches her very closely. She sees her stretch her arm out too far one day and tells the Brahman, and then they both watch her closely. The wife does some more ghostly things, like lighting the stove with her foot, and someone is called in to perform an exorcism and he gets the ghost to admit what she's done to the wife and then exorcises her. They rescue the wife just in time and return her to her family.

Week 13 Reading Diary B: Khasi Folktales part 2

(tiger from wikipedia)

Now I'm going to write about the next half of the Khasi Folktales and focus on How the Tiger Got His Strength. I chose this story as my favorite because I love learning about tigers as they are my favorite animal and I thought maybe I could retell it for my story this week. Ok so, in the beginning all of the animals were created equal, but this led to some problems as they were always fighting about everything. So the gods got together and decided that to fix this problem they would give specific animals different specific gifts so as to separate them and maybe make them live more harmoniously. So all the animals were gathered and the gifts were handed out. Men got the gifts of beauty and wisdom and tigers got the gifts of craftiness and the ability to walk silently. When the man got home that night though, the mother sent him back to the gods to ask for strength so that they'd be at the top of the food chain. The man did but was told to come back in the morning. The tiger overheard this and because he was so crafty he was able to come up with a plan to get the strength for himself. The next morning, before man was even awake, the tiger sent a messenger to receive the gift for himself. The gods, thinking they were bestowing strength upon man, gave him 12 times the normal strength. Later the man woke up and headed for the gods, but the tiger intercepted him and challenged him, telling him about getting the man's gift. The man dodged the tiger's attack and ran to tell the gods what had happened. They were dismayed but didn't know how to fix it, so they gave man skill with a bow and arrow instead so that he could hunt the tiger.

Week 13 Reading Diary A: Khasi Folktales part 1

(snail)

Today I'm going to write about my favorite of the first half of the Khasi Folktales, The Stag and the Snail. I liked this particular reading because it reminded me of the story of the hair and the turtle in our own folktales. In this folktale, the stag is bragging to the snail that he is much faster and the snail points out that that may be true but at least she isn't all sweaty. Well the snail ends up challenging the stag to a long race to prove herself to the other animals and they set it for the next day. Her family decides to help her win the race when she goes home that night and tells them all about it, so they all split up and go to different parts of the trail and hide. The next day the snail takes off her shell and they start the race, her moving at a slow and steady speed and him moving very quickly. After a time, he stops and looks back but can't see her because of the grass and her being so tiny, but he's sure she hasn't caught up to him, so he calls back to her but heard a voice from right under him cry out "I am here, I am here!" He was so shocked that she had caught up that he takes off running even faster this time, and the next time he stops it happens again. This continued on and by the end of the race the stag was all out of energy from running so fast that he had to stop and rest, and the snail won! The stag was so upset by this that he coughed up his gallbladder and to this day he doesn't have a gallbladder in reminder of the shame of losing to a snail.

Week 12 Extra Reading Diary: Folktales of Bengal

Story source:Folk-Tales of Bengal by the Rev. Lal Behari Day, with illustrations by Warwick Goble (1912).

For the extra reading this week I read half of the Folktales of Bengal and focused this reading diary post on one story I found particularly interesting - The Boy Whom Seven Mothers Suckled. This story started out with a king who had seven lovely wives who were childless. He found a way to give them children by feeding them a certain kind of fruit and they all became pregnant. He then met a new wife who was actually a demon. The new wife said that if he really loved her he would have his other wives blinded and killed, so he ordered it done. The executioner blinded them but then took pity on them and hid them away. They started to give birth one by one, but decided to eat the children in order to survive, except for the youngest wife who kept her portion aside. They ate all of the babies except the youngest wife's baby. She tried to save it by giving the other wives her portions of the other babies but they knew she was lying about it because the meat wasn't fresh. She convinced them to save her baby however and they all suckled him until he grew big and strong. Meanwhile, back at the palace, the demon wife was secretly eating all of the staff at the palace and then moved on to eating citizens, so the king had nobody to take care of him. The child came to the palace and volunteered to be his caretaker. The boy became like the child of the two rulers, but he was protecting the king from being eaten by the queen. She decided to send him on an errand for her to her mother to get a special melon to cure her "sickness". When he got there, the woman gave him the melon and let him stay the night. He noticed a peculiar bird in her house and asked her about it. She told him that the bird contained her daughter's soul and if it died, she died. When he left, he took both the melon and the bird and hid it in the palace. The people complained to the king that their fellow citizens were being eaten by a bird and the boy volunteered that he knew where the bird was and could take care of the problem. When he brought out the bird, the queen recognized it and fainted. The boy told everyone that if they tore off the bird's limbs they would find out who had really been eating the people, so he tore off its leg and the queen's leg was also torn off! Then he strangled the bird and both it and the queen died. The boy then told the king that his wives were still alive and that he was their son. The king was very happy to hear this and summoned the wives, whose vision were restored miraculously when they returned. The boy was the heir to the throne then and they all lived happily ever after.

Week 12 Reading Diary B: Indian Fairy Tales

 Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1912).

Today I'm going to write about the strangest story I read this week in the Indian Fairy Tales, which I liked because it reminded me of Rumplestisken in our own fairy tales. This story was called The Prince and the Fakir.

This story starts out with a king who has no children and is very sad about it, so he goes to lay down in an intersection (was he trying to die?). A Fakir comes along and asks what he is doing so the king explains that he is very depressed because he has no children. The Fakir asks what the king would give to have children and the king says anything. The Fakir says he will let the king have two sons, but that he must later give one of his sons back to the Fakir. The king agrees, but when it comes time to give his son back he is heartbroken by the idea because he loves both of his sons. So instead he tries to trick the Fakir by giving him a slave's son, but the Fakir knows the difference because he hears ants talking about how the king's sons are eating in the cellar and then he is very angry. He demands that the sons show themselves. Then the sons go with the Fakir and I think one of them dies in a vat of oil because it says he's turned into roasted meat. The other one escapes and sets all of the Fakir's prisoners free and takes the Fakir's clothes. While pretending to be the Fakir in another kingdom, he ends up marrying the princess there and eventually reveals his true identity to her father, who is happy that she married a prince and not a Fakir.

Week 12 Reading Diary A: Indian Fairy Tales

 Indian Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten (1912)

Today I'm going to write about one of the Indian Fairy Tales that I might use for my storytelling assignment because I liked it so well. The specific fairy tale I'll write about is The Magic Fiddle, which I liked because it was a nice story and had a surprising twist in that the lady in the fiddle fell in love with the fiddle player and married him. I didn't expect her to be able to come out of the fiddle like this, but I get ahead of myself - here is how the story goes:

Seven brothers, their wives, and their sister all lived together. The wives resented the sister because she did all of the cooking (which I don't understand, I would be extremely pleased if someone else did all of the cooking, but maybe it made the brothers like the sister better than the wives, which really they should anyways because she's their sister and they're supposed to love and protect her). The wives tormented the young girl and made it so that whenever she went to get water she couldn't because it would miss her pitcher or just dry up, so the sister was very distressed. She decided to turn herself into a bamboo to escape them, but one day a yogi decided to cut down the bamboo and make a fiddle out of it. She begged him not to, but he thought someone was playing a trick on him and did it anyways. The fiddle that resulted from this made beautiful music and the brothers heard the music and wanted to buy the fiddle, but the yogi refused. Eventually though, the yogi got drunk and sold the fiddle to the village chief. The chief's son took very good care of the fiddle, so in repayment, the girl would come out of the fiddle while he was away and prepare his meals for him. The chief was really confused by this so he decided to hide one day and see who was making his meals. Alas it was the sister, he caught her, and they fell in love and were married. The sister was very happy and later saw her brothers, who had become poor. She said that that was the repayment they got for knowing about the abuse she suffered for all that time and never doing anything about it.

Week 11 Reading Diary A: The Buddha Learns Tough Lessons

Myth-Folklore Unit: The Life of Buddha

The Encounters, Laotian temple painting

Today I'm going to write about my favorite episodes in this week's readings, which were about the young Buddha. My favorite part that I might write about in the storytelling was the chapter The First Encounter (and also its sequel, Two More Encounters). When Siddhartha was growing up (Siddhartha was the young Buddha), he decided he wanted to go on a visit outside the kingdom but the king was frightened that he might see something that would cause him to not want to be king anymore and to fulfill the prophecy, so he had all of the streets cleared of beggars and sick and old people so that his son wouldn't see them. Everything that the prince has is bedecked in gold, he is really very spoiled if you think about it so it's a wonder that he didn't turn out a spoiled brat of a prince but instead was a selfless Buddha. The gods were jealous of the happiness of the city so they decided to upset Siddhartha's mind by setting an old man in the road in front of his chariot. The gods also muddled the charioteer's mind so that he answered truthfully Siddhartha's questions about the old man and he then learned about old age and that it would eventually happen to everyone in the world, including him. In the next chapter he decided to go out once more into the city but the gods put a diseased man in his path so he learned all about sickness and how it could happen to anyone, including him. He was greatly affected by the fact that men stay strong and courageous during life even though they are faced with such adversities as old age and possible sickness, so he ended his trip. The king was grieved at what had happened to his son despite his careful planning and punished the charioteer for it, though not too badly. At first he tried to keep Siddhartha more entertained than ever within the palace walls but when that failed he decided to let him go out one more time and once again had the streets cleared of everyone "unsavory." He even changed charioteers. The gods interfered again, however, and made a corpse being carried by four men and grieved by several people so Siddhartha learned all about death. 

Reading Review Week

So far this semester I have liked Narayan's Ramayana the best. I liked it most because it had Thataka's story in it, which is what gave me part of the idea for my storybook. I wasn't as in to Buck's version because it was really hard for me to get past that I'd already read everything that was happening in Narayan's version (except for a few different and expanded stories). I liked that it expanded on things like the beginning and Rama exhiling Sita, but I think that maybe the parts that really overlap should be excluded from the reading. I really liked that we got to read from the myth/folklore untextbook (though I don't have any reading diaries over this because I was having a rough time and didn't do any of my homework for a while, though I did do the readings eventually). I think it would be good to have more of these stories in place of the reading you would take out if you eliminated some of Buck's version or only read Buck's version instead of starting off with Narayan's version (then have a story in the untextbook that told Thataka's story since Buck doesn't tell it).

For the notetaking part, I've found that it works best for me to just pick my favorite part of the reading and do an in depth breakdown of it in my notes so that I can then use that story in my storytelling; so I do use my reading diary in connection with my storytelling assignment. The reading diaries do help me to recall what's been going on in that time period, except when I haven't done them because life was falling apart.

So far, I haven't done much extra reading for my storybook except a few wikipedia pages. I do read a lot for pleasure - it's one of my favorite things to do actually - but this reading is not really what I like to do usually, though it's not boring or anything. This class doesn't really overlap with any of my other classes because classes like literature and history I took ages ago since I'm about to graduate. All that I have left are psychology courses and one biology course.

The only suggestion I have about improving the reading in this class is what I mentioned in the first paragraph: that I'd like the idea of having only one or the other of the Ramayana stories (preferably keep Buck's because it's more detailed) and then having short excerpts from the other book that detail stories that aren't included in the one you keep (like Thataka's story if you kept Buck). In place of this loss, it would be nice to have a lot more required reading in the other things about India that come from the untextbook. I would recommend to new students that they always do the reading at least two days before the post is due (or at least start it) because fifty pages is a lot to cover in one evening of work.

Here is an image from an earlier post. I picked this image because I really enjoyed the story behind it and I liked writing about it in my reading diary and I thought this image really embodied that story well.

Image Source: Wikipedia. Vishnu on Garuda.

Week 6 Reading Diary A: More from the Ramayana

p. 219-270


In this week's reading A, I read a lot more about Hanuman's leap to Lanka than I learned in the previous reading. For this week, I will most likely write about Hanuman this week but I'm not sure which part of his story I will focus on - when he rests on the mountain who had stollen the other mountain's wings and was hiding from Indra, or when Sinhika tries to stop him from reaching Lanka and he flies into her body and crushes her heart before flying back out of her body through her ear, or when he finally gets to Lanka and and has to fight Lanka personally to get through the gates and Lanka realized he was the fulfillment of a curse. Perhaps I will write about all of them from his perspective with his journey as a whole, or perhaps I will pick one of the three and write about it from someone else's perspective - like focus on the mountain's back story and just briefly connect it to Hanuman at all. We learn a lot more about Hanuman's stay in Lanka in Buck's version of the Ramayana than we learned in Narayan's version. In it we get many more details about his visit with Sita as well as his destruction of Lanka. We also learn more about Hanuman's trip back to Sugriva and Rama.

Image source: Hanuman and Sita in the ashoka grove

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Week 5 Famous Last Words

This week, or really yesterday, has been worse than any I could possibly imagine. My grandmother, who has been estranged from our family for over a decade, is in the hospital dying of bone and lung cancer. She can't have chemotherapy, because that's what put her into the hospital to begin with and what has made her health (already a precarious thing) decline so rapidly. They were going to move her home for hospice comfort care, but have actually decided not to move her because she couldn't survive the trip, so it's only a short matter of time before we have to say goodbye for good. Also, she's not very lucid, is sedated and restrained most of the time so that she doesn't pull her tubes out, and is generally uncomfortable and in pain when she is awake (which has only happened once while I was there on Sunday). Then, yesterday my mother called to tell me that night before last she had to take our cat to the vet and have him put down because he had gotten a blood clot in his lungs and was partially paralyzed and having trouble breathing. Then, last night, my other grandmother (who I spend every summer with and is in my picture for my introduction thing) had to take our best horse, our only stud, and the best and friendliest and sweetest stud you will ever meet, to the vet because he had ripped off his horse shoe and that had taken most of his hoof with it so he was bleeding profusely. The vet ended up not being able to do anything and had to put him down. So, it's been a hell of a week and it's only Wednesday. On a good note, I found out this week that I get to go to Africa this summer to study abroad! I've set up a link to the page that describes my trip as well as lets people donate to help fund it on the right side of my blog page. I hope you all have had a better week than me and I hope that my next week goes better!

Image Information: Personal photo of Pepper taken February 2015. 

Week 5 Storytelling: Narayan and Garuda

     This is the story of how Garuda became the mount of Narayana, though it has quite a story that leads up to it. Once upon a time the gods granted a man named Kashyapa a huge favor. Kashyapa really wanted kids so he worshiped the gods and they gave him two seeds to feed to his two wives. His wives were pretty nice people up until this time, though one was a little more vain and prone to queenly behavior. This wife's name was Kadru, and the name of the nicer wife was Vinata. So Kashyapa fed the seeds to his wives and they became pregnant, just as the gods predicted they would. Vinata's seed split into two eggs and she eventually had two sons. Her eggs took a really long time to hatch, however, and she became worried so she decided to open one. Her son Aruna was in the egg and he told her that he hadn't been quite ready to hatch yet and that she should wait to open the other egg for another five hundred years.

     Kadru's seed, on the other hand, split into one thousand and she gave birth to a whole slew of eggs who later were born and became known as the naga race. Kadru then thought that she was even better than Vinata because of the number of children she gave birth to and that her children hatched so much quicker than Vinata's did, so she tricked Vinata into losing a bet and becoming her slave. When her son Garuda was born five hundred years later, he found out about why his mother was a slave to Kadru and asked what ransom would be needed to free her. Kadru and the nagas decided to ask for the elixir of life from Indra's palace.

     After a fierce battle involving Garuda swallowing up and spitting out thousands of rivers to quench the fires of the guards to Indra's palace, Garuda stole the elixir of immortality and continued on his journey back to Kadru and the nagas. Even though he had the elixir of immortality, he didn't drink from it during his journey to give it to his mother's enslavers. Before he gets to back to them, however, he meets Narayana, who grants him immortality because he is so impressed with the lengths he has gone to in order to save his mother from captivity. As repayment for immortality, Garuda offered to be Narayan's mount. Garuda then got Kadru to free his mother forever by presenting her with the elixir, but when she was out of the room, Indra stole it back before she was able to drink it.

Image Source: Wikipedia. Vishnu on Garuda.
Author's note: The only changes I made to this story were to elaborate on why one woman would have made the other woman her slave and why Narayan would have given anyone immortality, everything else is basically the same as it was in the original story, just told from an omniscient point of view so that you can see the motives of the people. 
Bibliography: Buck, William (1976). Ramayana: King Rama's Way.

Week 5 Reading Diary B - Sita gets stolen again

Once again, Ravana manages to convince Maricha to help him capture Sita, so he turns into a golden deer and lures Rama away. Before he dies after being shot, he calls out for help in Rama's voice, luring Lakshmana away and leaving Sita alone to be captured. Once at the palace, we learn more about why Ravana can't rape women anymore - he raped the wrong woman once upon a time and a curse was laid upon him that would make his heads explode if he did it again. Rama and Lakshmana return to find Jatayu dying and set off after Sita and Ravana. We learn more about why Rama decides to be friends with Sugriva in this version of the story - Savari tells them to before joining her husband Matanga in death. We also learn more about the monkey's origins and about Hanuman trying to reach for the sun/mango and why Hanuman can take different forms. We also learn about Vali (the monkey king) and the buffalo and why Vali and Sugriva are at odds.

Image source: Hanuman and the sun (thinking it is a mango)

Week 5 Reading Diary A: Continuing the Ramayana

This week we're reading pages 110-161. This reading begins with Bharata returning to find his father dead, then following Rama into the forest and takes his sandals back to wait for Rama's exile to end. My favorite story from this reading that I will probably use for my storytelling is the story about Kashyapa's two wives and their children. Kashyapa really wants kids so he worships the gods and they give him two seeds to feed to his wives. Vinata's seed split in two and she gave birth to two sons. Kadru's seed splits into 1000 and she gives birth to the naga race. Kadru thinks she's better than Vinata because of the number of children she has so she tricks Vinata into losing a bet and becoming her slave. When her son Garuda is born and grown and finds out about why his mother is a slave to Kadru, he asks what ransom is needed to free her. Kadru and the nagas want the elixir of life from Indra's palace so Garuda steals it from him and brings it to them. Before he gets to them he meets Narayana, who grants him immortality. As repayment for immortality, he offers to be Narayan's mount. Garuda tricks Vinata into freeing his mother forever in the end. After this, Virhada tries to abduct Sita and Surpanakha propositions Rama, tries to kill Sita, and is mutilated and flees. Rama defeats the army of 14000 that she sends after him, and Surpanakha starts Ravana's obsession with Sita by telling him all about her and Rama and begging for his help.

Image Source: Wikipedia. Vishnu on Garuda.

Week 4 Reading Diary A: A New Beginning with the Ramayana

So this retelling of Rama's story starts out by telling how the original author, Valmiki, got involved in the story. In this beginning, Sita is being exiled, though she doesn't yet know it. This part of the story wasn't part of Narayan's Ramayana though, so it's new to me. Valmiki is unhappy in the world because cruel things happen, including a bird in love getting killed even though it had little to no meat on it. Brahma comes to visit him and tells him this sadness has made him a poet and he needs to use that to write Rama's story which will defeat time. Valmiki composed the Ramayana and taught it to Rama and Sita's twin sons (who were living in his hermitage after Sita's exhile). When they were old enough they sang it at Rama's yearly get together in the forest and Rama came and listened.

This time, we get to see the very beginning of the story instead of just Rama's birth. We start off with Dasaratha offering sacrifice to get sons, just like last time, but this time it then shifts to Indra and Brahma discussing the problem of Ravana after the battle in heaven. They come up with a solution: Rama. 

This is my favorite part because we get to see much more detail about the backstory and the gods in this version. 

Image Source: Dasaratha announces the birth of his four sons. 

Famous Last Words Week 3

This week has been crazy and awful and not so bad and okay, etc. You see, I ran out of the medication that I'm supposed to always take at the end of last week and the pharmacy couldn't fill it over the weekend because they needed to get a refill order and the doctor's office was closed. So I was without them for three days, which made my life completely crazy because coming off meds and then going back on them makes your emotional stability a wreck. I missed a few assignments in this class and a quiz in another class and an assignment in a third class, which all sucked, but at least for this class I can make it up.

This week sucked in general, but one of the cool things that happened after I was back on my meds was that I got to meet my new patient for my psychology capstone class. For that class, we are assigned a patient at Griffin Memorial Hospital for the whole semester to be a companion to and learn more about mental illness, but my first patient got discharged so I needed a new one. My new patient is awesome, though I can't tell you much about them due to confidentiality. They are super friendly and nice and talk a lot and I think we are going to get along really well for the duration of the semester.

Another good thing I did was to get several canvases from Ross with inspirational quotes on them and hang them up in my room (which I've lived in for a year and half and have never decorated) and I also rearranged my furniture so that hopefully will improve my outlook on life. The biggest point of joy in my life, though, is my dog Lily, who is entirely too adorable most of the time (though earlier this week she did poop on my floor - which is strange since she's been house trained for over a year) and just shows so much joy and excitement at just being alive that it's nice to see and strive to be like that. Anyways, I hope everyone else had a better week than I did and I hope that I have a better week next week!

Image Information: Personal Photo of my dog Lily from 12/5/14

Week 3 Project: Getting Organized

Lessons Learned in the Ramayana: Styles Brainstorm

Topic: I am going to write my storybook over four lessons that were learned in the Ramayana. The first lesson will be that true love is worth all the risks (which ties into my previous storybook because she was deciding whether or not to risk going against everything she believed in to no longer be lonely). This lesson will be taught with Rama and Sita's love story, unless I find a better one between now and then. The next lesson will be not to follow what someone else says is the right thing to do blindly, rather think for yourself whether or not it is right. This lesson will be told with Thataka's story, because I wrote a storytelling blog post from her point of view and got really into it with how Rama just does what his mentor says and kills her without even thinking about it. The third lesson will be that everybody makes mistakes, even Rama. This lesson will be told with another of Rama's thoughtless killings - the monkey king. I (and others if I understand Narayan correctly) don't believe that Rama acted justly here and hope to point that out to others, but also to lessen the harshness of it by putting it in the light of "everyone makes mistakes" and that it's okay to make mistakes because even the greats do it. The last lesson (if I make it this far) will be that wrongdoing never ends well for the wrongdoer. This lesson will be told through the story of Ravana stealing Sita and later dying because he wouldn't admit that he had done wrong and give her back.

Bibliography: Narayan, R. K. (1972) The Ramayana.

Possible Styles:

Bedtime Stories: This is most likely the format I will go with for my storybook. I want my previous character to be teaching her children how to live a good life through these stories. In this scenario, the storyteller will either be her just retelling stories that happened in the Ramayana, or her telling them as if she lived them like she did in the last storybook.

Ready for Bed? 

Image Source for me; Image Original Source

Animals as Storytellers: This is also something I might be interested in doing. If I have my character telling the stories to her child as if she had lived them, then I am probably going to make her an animal observer in the stories. Or, she might be an animal in one and a more vital character in another since the people in the Ramayana are so long lived, but I kind of doubt it, I think if she's an animal in the first one she will stay that same animal through all of them. 

Diary Style: Rather than have my main character telling the stories to her child while she is a child, I might have her child be all grown up and going through her mother's things after she has passed away. Her mother's things would include a set of diaries that told all about her fabulous encounters before she died. If you'll remember, my character didn't expect to live another lifetime after this one, she expected to settle down with her true love and live out her days with him and end her days just as Io did, with her family on this planet. 

Family Therapy: Maybe my character's daughter is a headstrong teenager who doesn't understand anything her mother tries to tell her, so they all go to therapy and these stories either come from the therapist (who is obviously very enamored of the lessons in Indian tales), or my character tells them to the therapist and her daughter at the same time to try to explain where she's coming from. 

Week 3 Reading Diary B: Ending the Ramayana

Today I read the end of Narayan's Ramayana. It started with Hanuman beginning the search for Sita in Lanka. He grew to a huge size to cross the ocean, which reminds me of the dog on Adventure Time who can change his proportions. Once in Lanka he searched everywhere and finally found her being tormented and about to commit suicide in a garden, but still holding strong against Ravana's advances. He conveyed Rama's message and ring to her and took a piece of jewelry from her to give to Rama. On his way out, he allowed himself to be captured so that he could warn Ravana to give up Sita and apologize or he would be destroyed by Rama. Ravana orders him to be destroyed but his brother says not to kill an emissary (this brother later deserts Ravana and joins Rama, then is crowned the new king of Lanka). Instead they set his tail on fire but he escapes and lights the whole kingdom on fire on his way back to Rama.

Next we have Rama's army figuring out a way to cross the ocean and the battle between the armies in which Ravana is constantly losing his best men and family members. I won't write much about this because battle scenes don't interest me much. 

Once Rama has killed Ravana, Hanuman fetches Sita and returns her to Rama, but he spurns her, thinking she has been unfaithful to him with Ravana. She is devastated and has a fire built, I think to kill herself. The fire spits her back out, however, because she is too pure, so Rama accepts her again as his wife. Dasaratha appears to his son Rama and grants him one wish, which is to un-disown his brother and stepmother. Then they return to Baratha and get crowned the king and queen and that's almost the end, though Narayan mentions that there is a sort of sequel that may or may not be legitimate in which Rama and Sita are separated again, have twin sons, and are rejoined in the afterlife. 

Image Information: Bharata and Rama; note also the sandals on the throne; by Raja Ravi Varma. 

Week 3 Reading Diary A: Rama's foolishness

Image source: Vali and Sugriva fight while Rama, Lakshmana and Hanuman watch from in hiding.

Today I'm going to write about my favorite (or rather the one I find most intriguing) story from this reading (pages 89-130, specifically pages 92-105). This story is the story of how Rama was very foolish to get involved in a familial dispute and actually killed someone who had never done him any wrong by shooting him from behind a bush! I just want to know who made him judge, jury, and executioner and what right did he have to take the life of a non-evil, non-demon king of another race?? At the beginning of the chapter, Narayan supports my belief that this was a foolish thing for Rama to get involved in by saying that even the greatest of men sometimes make mistakes. I can understand why Rama would have wanted to get involved in this because he felt that someone else had been done a wrong, but there were so many other ways to go about it. For instance, instead of just deciding that Vali was wrong and killing him so that his brother could take his place, he should have considered that there are two sides to every story and that Vali had every right to think that his brother had tried to de-throne him and bury him alive. He was wrong, in my opinion, to not listen to his brother's side of the story, but being rash and reacting badly to being buried alive does not necessarily warrant a death sentence does it? Instead of just killing him, Rama could have first tried to go to Vali and explain Sugreeva's position in the matter. Sure Vali won't listen to Sugreeva without trying to kill him, but the way he describes Rama to his wife shows that he has at least some respect for him and maybe would have listened if Rama had tried to explain. Failing that, he then could have either moved on and let them work out the family squabble on their own or gone back and aided Sugreeva in a more honorable way than just distracting Vali and killing him. But alas, that is not what happened. I can also understand why Rama would want to jump to Sugreeva's aid in order to get aid in return for defeating Ravana, but he could just as easily have asked for the stronger brother's assistance (sure Vali had tried to kill Sugreeva as revenge for feeling that Sugreeva had tried to do away with him, and sure he was an adulterer, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't have helped Rama because by the way he was talking about him to his wife, he doesn't hate him and thinks that he is an honorable man). I'm not sure yet how I will retell this story, but maybe I'll show Vali's side of things like I showed Thataka's side of things; maybe for this semester I will play the devil's advocate over here and just show everyone how wrong Rama was sometimes even though he was a reincarnation of the god Vishnu. 

Week 2 Topics: Continuing my previous storybook

So I'm pretty sure that I want this storybook to be a continuation of my previous storybook about a time travelling alien: Constellation Stories: Facts or Myths? In this storybook I have a time travelling alien who likes to experience the world by living in the sidelines of good constellation stories (or in this case, Indian epics). She meets a man and tells him all about some of her past lives and they fall in love and live happily ever after. In this storybook, I'd like to have her telling him more stories, you know, they're just walking along one day and he says "Tell me a story," to which she replies, "What kind of story would you like to hear this time?" Maybe they're on a vacation to India or something, or maybe that's where they live as the location of the story was never revealed in the last storybook, so he wants to hear about Indian epics. I'm not sure what kind of Indian epics I want her to tell him though, or how I'm going to work her into the sidelines of these stories, but whichever way I decide to go, he'll say something like "Oh I don't know, tell me stories like ours, about great loves in history," or maybe it will start out with a love story and morph into something different if I don't want to do it all about love stories.

image information: screenshot of my other storybook's title page taken 1/25/15

So the topics I am considering for this storybook are Love Stories, Animal Characters (in the last storybook, my character was a mermaid type so it wouldn't be unusual for her to assume the shape of a non-human), Karma, and Geography Stories (especially if I go with they're travelling around India when he asks for a story).

For love stories, the only one I know so far of course is that of Rama and Sita, which would definitely have to be included even though I'm not a fan of the ending. So further research would include finding more love stories to write about. On the course website about love story storybooks, there are several names mentioned including two other couples that I recognized from my reading thus far: Keikeyi and Dasaratha and Mandodari and Ravana. I haven't read these stories yet, so I don't know if they will catch my interest and go with the flow. I might also not want to do just love stories, I might start with the story of Rama and Sita and let it morph into another story about how Rama wasn't always right (killing the monkey king who had done nothing to him), or maybe even some of the other incarnations of Vishnu. At this point I'm not really sure but it certainly fascinates me.

For Animal Characters, she could be a monkey in the monkey kingdom and be watching as things unfold there, from Sugreeva's story all the way up to what happens with Rama and even thereafter if I can find stories from after the assassination. Or she could be a squirrel who just follows Rama around out of curiosity and tells about everything that happened to him, including my other story from Thataka's point of view. Maybe that's where the squirrel first encountered him, she'd been observing Thataka's misfortunes for some time and then decided to follow Rama around after he killed her?  There are many other animals she could be, she may be an animal even if all of the stories are about Rama, for example, or she may be an animal that is deeply embedded in the story, though that one would be a little tough to explain as she tries very hard not to get involved in the world's goings on.

For Karma, I'm not sure how I would insert her into the stories yet, perhaps she'd be an animal in one and a more vital character in another, as she was in the stories of her last storybook. All I know is that I would tell stories that, like her last storybook, illustrated how getting involved was bad for other aliens or maybe how not getting involved was bad (since now she believes that she should be living life to its fullest consequences be damned). I'm not sure which direction I'd go with this but it would require some research about the different stories and how they tied into the idea of actions and re-actions. 

For geography stories, I'd start the storybook right where I left the old one off, with them just leaving the cave in which they'd taken refuge from the storm. For this, I'd need to do some research on hilly or mountainous parts of India (if there are any, I have no idea) and rainy parts of India, then follow them on a journey around India, since he is showing her how to live he has to show her where he lives and has lived, etc. All the while, she is seeing the land through eyes that have seen it all before in the very very distant past and telling him all about what's different and what happened there to cause that particular feature (such as the story of the river Ganga's origin that we read about in the Ramayana). 

So far, I have no idea which of these appeals to me the most, so if you've read my other storybook (and if you haven't you definitely should!) and have a favorite from above please comment and tell me why that one appeals to you. Thanks!

EDIT: I've just thought of another great possibility by reading through other storybooks: she could be telling these stories to her and her true human love's kids as bedtime stories! But I don't want it to seem like I'm just stealing someone else's idea, so let me know if that's not okay!

Storytelling Week 2: Thataka's Tale

My name is Thataka and I am a royal princess, daughter of the great yaksha Suketha. I am also wife to Sunda, a powerful chieftain, and mother of the mighty Mareecha and Subahu, as well as mother of the beautiful Kaikesi, who is the mother of Ravana. As you can tell, I am quite an amazing demigoddess. I’m so powerful, in fact, that I’m quite sure you’ve heard of me and mine before this, but I’m here to tell you that if you heard your story from anyone who took Rama’s side in this whole affair, then you heard wrong. It’s okay though, I will set you straight just like Maleficent set everyone straight about why she cursed that charming princess, who woke said princess up, and how much love there truly was between them.

First of all, I was married at a very young age to the man of my dreams, who I loved very dearly - my husband Sunda, sometimes known as Sumali. I was his second wife and he had ten sons and four daughters by his first wife, Ketumati. As you can see, I had a lot to live up to. To please my husband, I started having children. Eventually, I gave birth to Mareecha, Subahu, and Kaikesi. When she was old enough, my husband and I arranged a meeting between Kaikesi and the Rishi Vishrava, who ended up leaving his wife to marry our daughter. They had Ravana shortly thereafter and you all know how powerful he became. I loved my grandson very much and was very pleased with how much he accomplished, if only he hadn’t thrown it away on that Sita girl he might have been happy forever, but I can see how he might have wanted to do something to provoke Rama and give him a reason to avenge my death.

Mareecha and Subahu were very strong and handsome, as well as very powerful and I do suppose I might have spoiled them from time to time because I loved them so much. They were lovely children, if a bit rowdy at times, and grew up quickly, as boys so often do. My husband and I noticed that they stayed rambunctious for a time when they were young men, rather than growing out of that, but we simply chalked it up to “boys will be boys” and moved on with our lives. My husband occasionally liked to spend time with the boys and they sometimes would get themselves into trouble with a particularly devious prank or two here and there, but they never did anything too terrible. One day, however, they pranked the wrong neighborhood and came to the attention of a very self-righteous and sanctimonious savant, Agasthya. Agasthya decided to teach them all a lesson and I don’t know if he planned it or if it was an accident, but my poor Sunda ended up dead. I, of course, was furious and distraught and I and my boys went after Agasthya for justice for his terrible crime. He was more powerful than we were, however, and he turned I and my precious lovelies into demons rather than the demigods we had been before!

I was devastated, to say the least. I had done absolutely nothing wrong and had been punished by it by losing everything I had ever held dear (my boys fled after being turned into demons and I never saw them again). I decided “to hell with it all” and began to be the demon Agasthya had accused me of being, after all, if I was to be punished for a crime I might as well commit the crime I had been punished for. This is where the famous Rama enters my story. I had been roaming around my desert home, doing just as I pleased whenever I pleased to do it, when up comes Rama and his entourage who encourage him to kill me simply because I was a demon. Nobody asked why I was a demon or if I had done anything wrong, they just assumed that because I was in this situation, I was completely evil and let me just say, who made him judge, jury, and executioner?! Who gave him the right to come into my home and slay me with no warning and no chance to redeem myself? Does it seem right or fair, the way I died? Some may say that I attacked first but I would say that that accursed Viswamithra is to blame as he is the one who discussed my impending doom with Rama right in front of me! So you see, you needed to know the whole story, not just the “hero’s” version of it.

Image Information: Image source: Rama battles Taraka

Author’s Note: I decided to tell this story from someone else’s point of view, because if you’ve ever seen the movie Maleficent then you know that sometimes the hero’s account of what happened may be a bit different from the “villain’s” point of view. Typically speaking, demigoddesses probably don’t often “turn to the dark side,” so I wanted to show the reader that perhaps Thataka was just a misunderstood woman who put too much stock into familial loyalty. Sure she was a powerful and maybe stuck up princess, but that shouldn’t necessarily mean that she was evil, just that circumstances made her appear that way. I didn’t make any major changes to the story, except mentioning that she was the grandmother of Ravana and pointed out that although in the story Thataka struck the first blow and Rama was only defending himself, she more than likely overheard his conversation with Viswamithra and knew that he was there to kill her, so she reacted to that by defending herself against him.

Bibliography:

Narayan, R. K. (1972) The Ramayana.

Wikipedia about Thataka

Wikipedia about Sumali (Sunda)

Week 2 Reading Diary A: Starting the Ramayana

pp. vii-53

I liked reading the introductions, though they weren’t technically part of the reading assignement since they were before page 1. I liked that it gave me an overview of what was going to happen, which I’ll put in here so I can look back at it and remember what’s coming next: Dasaratha gets his wives pregnant after a sacrificial ritual; he chooses Rama as his successor but his second wife is jealous and gets him to banish Rama and make her own son king instead; Rama and Sita, his wife, and his half-brother (from the third wife) Lakshmana travel away from their homeland and encounter many adventures; a demoness Soorpanaka tries to get Rama to marry her but he won’t so she tries to attack his wife out of jealousy but the half-brother stops her and wounds her; she goes to her brother the demon Ravana and complains, so he lures Rama and the brother away and kidnaps Sita; Rama pursues them and meets Hanuman the monkey, his greatest ally; eventually he kills Ravana and co., but suspects Sita has been fooling around with Ravana while in his captivity so forces her to undergo tests, which she passes, but he still isn’t entirely convinced; after he is crowned king he believes rumors that he hears about her chastity and banishes her, at which point she dies after childbirth and he is distraught and follows her into the afterlife. There, that was a pretty succinct version of the whole book which I believe will help me keep things straight while I’m reading.

I also like the first part of the story which is of Dasaratha getting asked by Viswamithra to give him his young son Rama as a guard for some religious activity he wants to perform. This reminded me of general themes in mythology and folklore when men had to give up their firstborns for great and terrible tasks to be named later, or else bad things would happen to their kingdom. It wasn’t said that bad things would happen here but I kind of got that impression when everyone would freak out that Viswamithra was leaving without getting what he wanted.

Viswamithra and the boys travel across a great desert, and when Rama asks why it is so barren Viswamithra tells him the story of Thataka who was a beautiful demigod who married a chieftan named Sunda. They had two sons who were arrogant and awful and liked to destroy everything around them. Their father took great pleasure in this, probably thinking something along the lines of “boys will be boys” and joined them in their destruction. The savant Agasthya lived in the forrest they were destroying and cursed them, killing Sunda and making the boys and their mother demons instead of demigods whenever they came for revenge for Sunda’s death. Thataka became a drain on the land, destroying everything living around her and creating a desert, so when Viwamithra and the boys came upon her, Viswamithra instructed Rama to kill her and end her terrible reign.

I will probably write about this story because I like that it is the first time that the young boy Rama gets to show his strength and morals by fighting the demon who is destroying the land. I will probably either do something from Rama’s point of view or maybe from Thataka’s point of view, because she wasn’t always evil and it might be nice to remember that things can go wrong in your life because of the choices you make in difficult times. Below is an image of Rama battling Thataka (who I guess is the same as Taraka?).

Image source: Rama battles Taraka

Week 1 Overview

I have never read anything about India including the epics, so I'm really interested in knowing more about the epics, but also quite intimidated by all of the long names that will be nearly impossible in my mind to keep straight. I think the stories will be interesting, but I'm worried the material will be much harder to read because of all of these long and confusing names and I'm a worry-wart so of course I think I will somehow get behind and confused and any number of terrible things; but not to worry, I will do my best to stay caught up and knowledgeable about what is going on! I'm also really interested in the Buddhism stories in the UnTextbook because I love learning about other religions and have never had a chance to study this one. None of the images are familiar to me, but I chose this one because it sort of reminded me of something familiar: the Christian portrayal of Hell; and I am all about gathering around the familiar in such unfamiliar waters.

Image source: Sita in the arms of Agni, the fire god;

illustration by Evelyn Paul

in W.D. Monro's Stories of India's Gods & Heroes.

Week 1 Storybook Favorites

One of the books I looked at was Law and Order: SSU, which is actually my best friend’s storybook from last semester. I loved the subject material, as Law and Order is one of my all-time favorite shows, and I loved that the design is so reminiscent of the show’s opening credits. I also think her stories are amazing! I love that this helps tie the stories to a current real-life type thing like Law and Order and I wish I could find a way to make my storybook make someone think of something in their ordinary life too, but I don’t know yet that that will be possible for my particular idea.

The next storybook I looked at was The Karma Times, which I loved on site when I first saw it on the pinterest board because the blue picture on the front caught my eye. It’s a great picture and I love the newsy background. The stories are fascinating and I love the set up of Karma being the one to tell the stories and how he “got back at” all of those who had done wrong.

The third one I looked at caught my eye because of its name: Yama’s Tattoo Parlor, and if I weren’t already mostly decided on how to do my storybook, it would be the winner for how I would proceed because I was thinking like tattoo parlor or coffee shop stories that are told while one is busy doing the tattoo on someone or drinking coffee. But, that’s probably not what I will end up doing, though it’s a fascinating idea: my tattoo artist telling me a story about the ancient indian epics and who got what tattoos and why, etc. in order to distract me from the pain (that’s not what Yama’s Tattoo Parlor is about, but it did give me the inspiration).

Overall I love these three storybooks and would like to somehow incorporate elements from them into my own book. Below is a copy of the picture that so caught my attention from the second storybook I looked at.

Image Information: Taken from The Karma Times Blog