Sacred Sites of India: Style Brainstorming

Topic. My storybook will be about stories relating to different sacred sites of Hinduism within India. My goal is to find four different sites with relations to four different deities and hopefully from four geographically distinct locations within India. One story I feel like I should include is the story of Bhagiratha and Ganga as it tells of the Ganges river. Another is the story of the Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple. There are hundred if not thousands of temples and other sacred sites across India, so I don't think there would be any shortage of stories to choose from. The only difficult thing would be deciding on which version of a story to use. My criteria for each story is that each should focus on a different place and a different god or goddess.
Bibliography:
1."Bhagiratha and Ganga" from The Great Indian Epics by John Campbell Oman, written in 1894
2. "Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple" from Pilgrim shrines of India: mythology, archaeology, history and art (Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Sikh, Jewish, Christian & Sufi) by Amar Nath Khanna (2003).

Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple; Source: wikimedia

Possible Styles

1. Stories as Tour Guides
This one could be really fun. I would set the storybook up like an advert from a travel agency and each story could be like a different place in the brochure. This would allow me to really highlight the other environs surrounding each site, and could allow for a really fun modern take on all of the stories. One aspect of this that I don't like is that it would be very easy to cheapen the cultural significance held by these stories, but maybe that could be played up to be satirized.

2. Scrapbook of the Gods
This storybook would allow me to tell the stories from the perspective of a god or multiple gods. Because each story involves a deity in some way, I could use this style to give a deeper insight into how the gods and goddesses perceive these stories and how they felt as they were taking place. This could also be something like a bunch of deities meet up to talk about and remember their shared stories with potential conflicts in the details. 

3. Pilgrimage across India
This story would follow one traveler or maybe a small group as they make their way to different sacred sites across India. This would allow me to incorporate the stories of the sites and show the importance they still have for contemporary Indians and Hindus. It might be really interesting to make this story about an American-born Hindu person who is going to India for the first time time and finding his or her roots. 

4. The stories as a newspaper/news broadcast
A lot of sacred sites are actually cities or places within large cities, so it might be fun to tell each story as if it were happening in real time within a city. This would allow for a bit more dynamic retelling of each story and would still logically make sense to cut to different events going on in different parts of the country. This would prevent me from doing stories that happen in chronological relation to each other, but I don't think I was planning on using any like that anyway.

Week 3 Storytelling: Hanuman and the Mountain

It's a generally accepted rule that traffic in the city will always be at its worst precisely when you need to get somewhere in a hurry. This was certainly the case for Dr. Han Uman, the newest resident physician at Sacred Flower Hospital, one of the largest medical facilities in Uptown Manhattan. It was his first day on the job; fresh-faced and just out of med school, he couldn't wait to begin practicing. Of course, being the lowest on the metaphorical totem pole made him, in a practical sense, less of a doctor and more of an intern. His first task was unequivocally mundane: a shipment of medications meant for Sacred Flower had been incorrectly delivered to St. Himalaya's Hospital on the other side of the city, and no one else could be bothered to go pick it up. He hopped in his car, an old pick-up truck he had been given by his father, and started making his way downtown. After maybe four or five minutes, his phone started ringing; it was the hospital.

"Hello? This is Dr. Uman."

A woman's voice spoke, textured by age "Han, this is Vibi, I run the pharmacy. I've been told by the director that there are some time-sensitive materials in the delivery. We had missed it the first time we looked through the shipping statement, and we need you to hurry back as soon as you can." She took a breath, hesitant, "Without those medications, some of our patients' conditions could dramatically worsen. I don't mean to alarm you but this is a rather critical situation."

The urgency in her voice washed over Han like a cold wave. "Understood. I'll make it back on time"

The drive to St. Himalaya's was entirely uneventful. It was early morning and the city was still waking up. He walked into the lobby, talked to the secretary at the desk, and made a beeline to the pharmacy. The old man at the desk was less expedient than Han would have liked, but he didn't have time to complain. He rushed back to his truck just in time to find it being towed away. Unbeknownst to Han, the parking attendant had assumed the elderly vehicle had died in the parking lot and was forsaken by its owner. Han, being someone who had always struggled with the idea of keeping calm in the face of adversity, spotted an EMT heading towards one of the parked ambulances, and ran over to him. It had never occurred to Han to try explaining the situation; rather, he took the keys out of the man's hands, jumped in the ambulance and never stopped to look back.

At this time, most of the city's commuters were making their way to work (or more commonly, coffee and then work) and the roads were packed with cars. In theory, an ambulance should be able to make to maneuver through traffic with relative ease; in practice, this cannot be done when hundreds of cars are bumper-to-bumper in every lane. Han, after briefly considering driving on the sidewalk, jumped out of his stolen vehicle and began bobbing and weaving through the cars, carrying the medicine in a bag slung over his shoulder.

(To be continued)

 

Hanuman and the mountain; Source: wikimedia

   Author's note: This is a retelling of "Hanuman and the Mountain," as taken from Myths of Hindus and Buddhists by Sister Nivedita in 1914. This story immediately reminded me of the medical dramas on TV so I thought I would give it a new modern twist. I tried to incorporate some references to the original story with the names of the hospitals and characters, and I tried to preserve Hanuman's characteristic rashness. The essence of the story is the same: Hanuman has to overcome a number of obstacles to get some sort of medicine to heal the troops of Rama (or in this case, the patients at the hospital) and manages to do so with a mix of skill and well-placed frustration. I chose this image less so because it relates to my story and more because the huge monument shows the importance and popularity of this tale within India. I wanted to make this fantastic, almost absurd story and its supernatural elements more easily relatable to a contemporary audience. Also, I decided to leave the story on a cliff hanger because it seemed really fitting for the medical drama setting...also I was going to go over the word limit for this assigment, and thought it was a good place to break off the story.

Reading Diary B: Public Domain Ramayana

Today marks the conclusion to the Ramayana, and I have to say it definitely feels like a grand finale to the story. We see the final battle between Ravana and his forces and the allies of Rama, and this takes up roughly half of the reading. The battle was really exciting because it brought back so many of the other minor characters that we've met throughout the story, and it was much more drawn out and tumultuous than the other battles portrayed throughout the story. While the outcome may have been a rather obvious outcome, it was still exciting to read through the story and watch the action unfold.

Sita's trial by fire; Source: wikimedia

The second part of the readings focused on the aftermath of the battle, which was mostly about what to do with Sita, after she was dishonored by being forced to live with Ravana. Rama says he cannot allow her to continue to be his wife as it would bring him dishonor, so she asks for a trial by fire to prove her innocence. On the one hand, this is terribly misogynistic and hints at the valuing of women as only sexual objects, as Sita's entire worth and value seems to be determined by if she was faithful to Rama or not. However, going through the trial of fire and attempting to appease the gods to show her innocence was the most characterization she's shown in the whole story, so I'll take it. The epilogue stories concerning Rama's sons and the exile of Sita seem a bit extraneous, but the final chapter was a nice way to tie everything up and end the story.  

Reading Diary A: Public Domain Ramayana

This section of reading had a lot of action in, definitely more than in the previous readings. We're also introduced to Hanuman, a follower of Rama who is arguably the most important character of this section.

11th century statue of Hanuman; Source: wikimedia

The first part that really stuck out to me from this set of readings was the description of the battle between the monkey king Sugriva and his brother Vali. Not only was the battle very dramatic and much longer than other fights/conflicts we've seen thus far in the texts, it also seemed to place a lot of emphasis on the role of Tara, the wife of Vali. Tara was trying to calm the two, and ultimately failed, but the text talks about her calm demeanor and wisdom. It's just striking to me that she is portrayed as such when it seems like most descriptions of female characters are almost non-existent or focus only on the beauty and grace of the character. 

I also really enjoyed the adventures of Hanuman in Lanka, the kingdom of Ravana and the Rakshasa. Like all of the other named animal characters, he is very clearly portrayed as having human attributes and intelligence, but a lot of his actions seem to show the capriciousness one would associate with a monkey, such as running around and burning the whole city to the ground while his tail is on fire, and then realizing that he might have accidentally hurt or killed Sita. Another example of this would be when he jumped three thousand leagues into the sky because he thought the sun was a piece of fruit. I'd really like to hear more stories about Hanuman, because he seems like such an interesting character, and maybe a bit more nuanced than Rama (who is always the strongest/most righteous/most moral/etc)