Wednesday, February 11, 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.

6 comments:

  1. I thought your idea for this story was great and I like that you focused on an omniscient point of view. I think your story could have been even better if dialogue was included in the story, making the people seem more relatable and to develop the characters a little bit more. It also would have broken up the paragraphs so they weren't so long, making it easier for your readers. But overall, good job!

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  2. Amber,

    Great story! I love how you decided to retell it by elaborating on why one woman would make another woman a slave and why Narayan would have given anyone immortality. Both are very valid questions. I also liked how you retold the story from the omniscient point of view. That's really creative and has kind of inspired me, because lately I have had trouble coming up with ideas on how to retell these stories. Good job!

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  3. Hey Amber, I really enjoyed reading your story and it is great that you kept it pretty much the same as the original story; however, maybe you could have twist it up a bit more? Instead of doing a narrative or third person story, maybe try to spice things up with either Kadru's point of view or Vinata's? Your story was really similar to the original and the point of storytelling was to change it up some but sticking to the original content. Although I did like how you did an omniscient point of view to really show the motives of each character especially Kadru! She is definitely not a very nice woman and manipulated Vinata to be her slave even when she already has it better than her... I think the moral of the story is being greedy and not satisfied with the things you have in life.

    I notice a grammar issue you have. On the second paragraph where you said
    "Her eggs took a really long time to hatch, however, and she became worried and decided to open one." After the word hatch you need to have a semicolon since it is a transition and you're starting a new sentence. Also you don't need the "and" after however, it just doesn't sound right. Overall, I really enjoyed reading your story just keep in mind that you might want to add some creative thinking and twist it up a bit. You're sticking to the original story which is really good but you have to add some of your own creative thoughts to it, so like I said maybe some first person point of view or change up the characters a bit but remain their personalities the same? Anyways, great story I thought it was still pretty good and I really like your layout on the blog! Very colorful!

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  4. Amber,
    I enjoyed reading your story. You were very creative with using omniscient point of view; however, I did not really see any differences between your story and the original. Maybe you could’ve twisted it up a little bit. But, like you said in the Author’s note, you elaborated on why one woman would have made the other woman her slave – which was a great idea. Overall, I think it was a good read. :)

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  5. Amber,
    I have to first mention that I really like your background; it does a great job of creating a calming place to sit down and read your blog. I also enjoyed your storytelling style and how it provided the motives of the characters. The story that you told was great, however, I would – as a reader – have preferred to gain insight into the motives behind each person by their dialogue with one another. But that’s just me.

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  6. Hello Amber. I thought this story was very interesting. I thought that feeding seeds to his wives so he could have kids was kind of strange but interesting too. Your story flowed very well and you broke it up well so it was easy to read. You did a great job on this story. Good luck with the rest of your semester.

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