My earliest memory of Ramayan was a Bengali book named "Chhobite Ramayan", which was the story in the form of a Graphic novel. That was my first and last encounter with the epic. Apart from the Ramayan which was broadcasted in television, I have never made any attempt to read the epic.
So when I got this book as a gift, I actually sneered in the beginning. But when I started reading it, I was fascinated by it. Simple and smooth narative. Makes it easy to understand all the characters and the stories. This is particularly helpful when you are telling a story with too many characters and which has link to other stories (Mahabharata, Purana, Upanishads etc) as well.
The fact that Ramanyana has so many retellings were unknown to me. It has been written in almost all Indian Laguages and also has Jain and Budhhist retellings. To top it all it also has South-East Asia versions (Thai and Indonesian). Each version has some uniqueness in their retellings depending on the local culture.
The dialogues are enriching and full of wisdom. It is through this book that I realised the idea of Brahman. It is more of a state of mind than the caste and a lot of devotion and "tapasya" is needed to attain that state of "Brahman". I liked the dialogue between Hanuman and Raavan and also Sita and Lakshman (when Lakshman came to leave Sita in the forest for good). Overall very informative but not at all boring and an enjoyable piece of work.
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