Story of Ravana and His People

Really enlightening, story from other perspective...

He is far better than amish tripadi and chetan bhagat.

ASURA: TALE OF THE VANQUISHEDAuthor: Anand NeelakantanGenre: EpicDISCLAIMER: THIS BOOK REVIEW IS ONLY BASED ON MY FEELINGS DURING READING THE BOOK. IT DOES NOT INTENT TO HURT ANYONE’S FEELINGS, AND DOES NOT MEANT TO COMPARE WITH ANY OTHER REVIEWER’S FEELINGS.THE STORY OF RAVANA AND HIS PEOPLEBefore giving my review I would like to point out something regarding this book:The book is not like any other books where there is a hero, heroine, and a villain.This book is not like any other book where the author maintains a strict flow of events and story ends where the hero ends.If you expect something knowledgeable from this this book, you will be disappointed.In this book our own literature, folktales and every other known stories were mixed, broken, further mixed and then presented in a modern way, which I did not like at all.Now come to the main point:I heard about this book many a times, so I thought to try it and trust me, I’m utterly disappointed. I felt this book is highly over-hyped.The story line begins where at the end of the War of Lanka, RAVANA, the lord of asura Kingdom was lying half-dead and jackals, rodents were eating his flesh. Suddenly a character comes, Bhadra, whom we came to know was a nothing but a citizen of Lanka.The story line begins like this, Ravana during his last hours was thinking about his past, about his mistakes, about his crimes etc. We come to know about some big, generous Asura Kingdom, flourishing cities of the past spreading all over India, and then some so called Deva attacks under INDRA; destruction of the old social orders etc. In this story the author portraited SITA as Ravana’s daughter, like some folktales of India does. We come to know Ravana’s training under Mahabali, which I suppose was never mentioned in any other folktales.Anyway till this, or we can say till Sita’s kidnapping by Ravana, everything was fine. But then what started later on, I found utter nonsense. The raping of Mandodari (Seriously!!!), looting of Lanka, infighting of Meghnada and Kumbhakarna and so on. And after the death of Ravana, what follows was utter junk. The author portraited lord Rama as a villain. In the name of attacking the social order, caste system, he not only crossed his level, but gone beyond that.Initially the storyline seemed fine, we can conclude that it was the theory of destruction of Harappan Civilization by Aryas (if there were any), our old Brahmanical, rigid caste system, but what was that later on?????Anyway, many persons may find it a good read. But personally I did not like the way author represented a God as a Demon.My Finally my Rating is::2.0/5.0

I grew up with the stories of the Ramayana, often varied and not always from the version written by Valmiki. There were always hints in the texts about the greatness of Ravana as well as his humanity. These were often in utter contrast to other scenes of violence and injustice.In Asura, the author has done something truly startling for an Indian audience. He takes the Ramayana and turns it around. What if the vanquished got to tell their version of events? What if the story is one of religiosity vs freedom? Are there really any systems where injustice can cease to exist or is it just gradations of discrimination that are present everywhere?I suspect this book will offend many who see Valmiki's Ramayana as set in stone and not one of many versions read in south Asia. However, this is an intriguing premise and the exploration of who benefitted and benefits now from the strict enforcement of the caste system is definitely one worth considering.Does the author have an opinion? Oh yes. And he does not hide it at all. However, his logic and research is excellent and this book is definitely one that adds to literary discourse.One star off for being a little too verbose and including a lot of detail about structures, histories and tangents that did not always add to the story.

Found the writing very naive and stretched

This book had long been on my "to read" list but i always shied away from reading it thinking it would be too preachy and too pro ravana and too anti ram. However, one day, i decided to order a sample from amazon on my kindle. I read the first chapter and I was amazed and hooked. I could not believe something related to mythology can be written so personally and with such dark shades. Apart from the story line, which we all know pretty well, what kept me hooked was the first person narrative. The author has excelled in his writing style bringing forth a person's views and his contrasting actions. Ravana is in no way made the "hero" of the story. He is portrayed as he is, an ambition man with an urge to win, who was lucky most of the times. It is Bhadra, a fictional character, who is the eyes and voice of Asura, who steals the show. He is the string, the forgotten voice, that ties the whole story together. You see the contrast between these two characters and how they see the same situations differently and you release, there is no truth or fact in stories, its just perception. Bhadra flows thru the book and is an excellent device used by the author to tell the story of the nameless without introducing too many unnecessary characters. this way you feel for the character, generation and race all at the same time!Kudos, to the author, who managed to portray the story of ravana's life, without being partial. Ram, is shown as a prince of a small state and the author asks the questions that most of us do. Just because someone is deemed god, can all his actions be justified. The author manages to stay away from Ram's journey and this, nevertheless, makes the story fast paced and still interesting.However, The book gets a little long and winding and repetitive in the end and I feel like the editor could have done a better job. There are a few spelling mistakes like thrust instead of trust and a few repetitive phrases like "wily" and "impotent rage" etc but they dont take anything away from the reading experience. The author also makes good points regarding brahamism and caste system but they are so few and repeated throughout the book, that they loose their effect. It is my personal opinion that the relationship or storyline between Ravana and sita could have been developed more. Its kind of a blank in that area. The last quarter of the book is slow and winding, and could have done with better editing.The book deserves praise as it manages to be impartial towards Ram and Ravana, something that the pop-ed up versions of Ramayana cannot boast of.