Ravan(s) that Ram should kill

Tauji was unanimously voted as the treasurer to the Ram-leela committee this year which gave us a new topic for the table top discussion this season. Why do we need to stage the saga of Ramayan year after year and with an increased budget? Not that people don’t know already what the story is like, neither can we add twists and turns to it. Is it a meager reminder to us as to what our society and life stand for, and the values that should govern our lives?

Tauji made a simple answer, that even though a lot of city dwellers may find the staging obsolete, a lot of people from the rural areas still like to see the story staged on a magnanimous scale. Additionally, every year a new genre and generation is added to us, our ‘duty’ being to instill the set of values in our youngsters, that includes me, he laughed.

And do we succeed, in establishing the so called Ram-rajya, I countered.

And every elder thus told me that one of the values that Ramayana instills is of patience and the duties towards the society, which is precisely what they are doing. But one thing that I made them agree upon with me was the changing forms of Ravan and thus the need of flexibility to defy them.

During the discussion, I was told one more astonishing fact by Tauji that more money was spent on Ravan then Ram during the course of act. It is quite understandable owing to the fact that Ravan was a king at the time of his death while Ram was wandering in jungles having abandoned his kingdom on his father’s wish. However, the thing to note is that Ravan despite being villainous in character was applauded more by the audience then Ram himself. This anomaly is explained in Ramcharitmanas by Tulsidasji in which he has accorded Ravan with more opulent dialogues than Ram so as to portray Ram as serene, sagacious yet powerful king, while Ravan is more arrogant and self-righteous.

This self-righteousness or pride is one of the inherent features of Ravan as well as the desperados all over. Not that it comes naturally to them; it has to be nourished with external sustenance especially with the pride of those at levels higher than them. In his case, Ravan prayed to Lord Brahma and forfeited his head 10 times to Lord Shiva, accentuating their smugness – gaining favors. With his death a life may have ended but the idea of ‘Ravanism’ certainly did not. His 10 heads have evolved over time into forces much more appalling than his own, sometimes like Hydra – two heads growing at the place where one is cut.

Just like Ravan, the pride of iniquity is kept animated by asserting the righteousness of those a cut above. This systematic infestation allows freedom of wrong-doing at every echelon. The immoral is no longer confined to black; it has matured and trespassed its limits into gray. Fraudulence, sleaze, gluttony are steadily resolving themselves as the underlying prerequisites for survival.

These are the Ravans that Ram should kill not on a stage melodrama but on realms beyond it. The values that have been preserved in our culture for eons should not fall prey to this predator, for in their absence no staging of Ramayana alone could save us.