Week 14 Reading Diary B: Ryder's Twenty-Two Goblins

Today, I finally finished the Twenty-Two Goblins. The last set of riddles were as entertaining as the other I suppose; I'm still trying to figure out the King's logic for each of his answers. The thing that really stood out to me about this reading was the ending. It was a pretty big plot twist to find out that the monk had been planning on killing the king this whole time (if the Goblin is to be believed) and even more surprising to just the king lop off his head without giving it a second thought. His reward for outsmarting the monk was power over all fairies and magical creatures, which seems like it would be pretty cool, but he decides to give that up just so the riddles can be spread all over the world. I guess my problem with this story was that I was expecting something with maybe more human motivations, like the epics. But this story seems to be a lot more moralizing in comparison, which is not necessarily a bad thing, it just made the characters seems a bit flat I guess.

"Sadhu," an Indian Monk; source: pixbay

Week 14 Reading Diary A: Ryder's Twenty-Two Goblins

This week I decided to continue on with the Twenty-Two Goblins from Ryder. I really enjoyed the first week's set of readings, and I'm interested in seeing how things turn out for the King. I thought that the second story from this set of readings, the one about the King and His general, was really interesting, especially because of the moral at the end. I keep thinking that the King's reasoning doesn't make too much sense, such as how he declared the King more virtuous simply because he was a king so it was harder for him to be a good person. It seems like a lot of the stories deal with Kings or love in some aspect, so these themes might be interesting to work into a story.

A "King" card; source: wikimedia

Reading Diary B Week 13: Ryder's Twenty-Two Goblins

I'm still continuing to read through Ryder's Twenty-Two goblins. I think my favorite story from this section was about the family that sacrificed themselves for the King, and then the King in the main story says that the King made the biggest sacrifice. I'm starting to get the impression that these stories are satirical because they're so over the top. I'm also wondering now why the story is called the twenty-two goblins when in actuality it's the same goblin each time. I'm hoping there will be a better explanation at the end, but for now I just have a lot of questions.

Arthur Ryder, translator: source: wikimedia

Reading Dairy Week 13: Ryder's Twenty-Two Goblins

Western Representation of a goblin; source: wikimedia

This week I decided to read Ryder's translation of the Twenty-Two Goblins. I really like the format of this tale because it helps incorporate the story-within-a-story technique really well with all of the different fables told by the goblin. Each individual story is also really interesting. I really enjoyed the story of the dead girl and the three lovers, and it was interesting to see the logic the king used in explaining his answer about the riddle. I'm wondering if these are supposed to be taken as correct, or if we'll find out at the end that all of them have been impossible to decide and the King will be punished for not realizing that. I also really liked the story of the thrush and the parrot, but again, his reasoning at the end about all women being bad is a bit striking. I'm really looking forward to see if I can get more into the king's mindset as the story continues.

Portfolio Guide

This is the index page for my Storytelling Portfolio! Check back every so often to see what I've added to it.

The Breaking of the Bow- Rama and Lakshmana arrive in Mithila in time for a grand competition.

Creation of the Mahabharata- Vyasa recites a tale to Ganesh.

Bed of Arrows -  The tale of Bhishma and the Bed of Arrows

Draupadi's Diary - An entry from the new bride's journal

The Death of Sati - The tale of Shiva and his wife Sati

Week 12 Storytelling: The Death of Sati

Once upon a time, there lived a very powerful and proud king named Daksha, who was blessed with many beautiful daughters. The youngest of these was Sati, and she was the most virtuous and pure of all her sisters. Unbeknownst to her father, Sati had devoted every part of her being to the Great God Shiva, who returned Sati's great affection. Their love was revealed at Sati's Swayamvara, where she chose Shiva to be her husband. Daksha was furious at his daughter for out of all the wealthy princes and lords, she chose Shiva who had very little material wealth. Daksha cursed his daughter and forced the two to leave his kingdom and never come back. This was, of course, a very ineffectual punishment, as Sati and her husband were very happy in their home far from the rest of the kingdom, and also Shiva was the Great God, so the idea that Daksha's punishment would matter at all is utterly ridiculous, but I digress.

After some time, the couple was visited by the great sage Narada, who somehow managed to be an insufferable gossip despite his infinite wisdom. Narada told the great Shiva about an upcoming feast that Daksha was planning to hold to honor every member of his family, and then Narada proceeded to be a huge jerk by trying to rub it in Shiva's face that he wasn't invited. Shiva, having fallen asleep during the conversation, paid him no attention. But Sati was consumed by her "woman's curiosity," and yes, that is apparently a real thing according to the story. Shiva told his dear wife that she had to stay home, but this greatly upset her. She was so frustrated she turned into the ten-armed goddess Durga, also known as the goddess of death. Ignoring the wishes of her husband, who happened to be not only a god but the GREAT god, Sati went back to her father's kingdom to attend the feast. To this day, no one really knows why she thought this was a good idea at all. One could only assume that she was very hungry, or just really into feasts.

Once Sati arrived at her father's kingdom, wearing the simplest of dresses and no jewelry, she was greeted with the ridiculing laughter of her many sisters because apparently all of her sisters were like mean high school girls. Daksha then rose and addressed his daughter, his voice dripping with rage. He was furious she had dared to show her face in his hall, for she was just the lowly wife of a beggar. Sati could not stand her father's condemnations of her husband (who was still the GREAT god) and refused to listen further. Apparently, Sati was such a dutiful wife that even hearing her husband be slandered could be considered infidelity. She then spontaneously combusted as an act of suicide, adding a whole new meaning to the phrase "going out with a bang." Shiva was meditating during all of this, because I guess he couldn't be bothered to go protect his wife's honor.  But to his credit, he did decide to summon a demon army to kill Daksha in revenge, so I guess it's all good.

Sati is rejected by her father; source: wikimedia

Author's Note: This story is based off of Sister Nivedita's story Sati, The perfect Wife, available here.
My story is a fairly straight representation of the original; I didn't change any major plot points or anything like that. The story to me just seemed like one wild overreaction after the next, so I wanted to try to play that up in this version. Most of my other stories have had more straight-forward humor, so I tried to make this one more dry or sarcastic. It was also my first time using a more biased narrator to comment on the story. I really like the idea of having a narrator as a character who engages with the story so that was something I wanted to try this week. At first, I thought I would write a children's-story style piece (hence the once upon a time) but I think it maybe turned into a more satirical story. The character of Narada in particular was such an amusing portrayal of the wandering sage archetype we've seen so much of, so I had to include him and how he plays into the plot. I also decided to try writing a story without any dialogue to see how well I'd be able to still convey the story. I've gotten a number of comments on how good my dialogue is, but that makes me think I should practice the prose more.

Week 12 Reading Diary B: Nivedita's Shiva

Today, I read the second set of readings from Sister Nivedita's stories about Shiva. These stories were a lot more direct and easier to follow than Nivedita's other writings, and I think I got a lot better ideas about how to describe the characters, physically and emotionally. Especially in the first story, Nivedita goes into a lot of detail in specifying who Shiva is, how he can be characterized, etc. I'm also glad that she included another story about Uma and her role in everything. It was kind of hard to follow all of the different avatars and reincarnations of different characters in the other stories, but here it's laid out much more simplistically. I think doing something that focused on mistaken identity or reincarnation for my story this week would make a lot of sense.

Shiva statue; source: wikimedia