epic blog

For Ramayana Part B, I have chosen to focus on Dasharatha's funeral/death as my focal point for my own story. This funeral was perceived as an extremely tragic event for the kingdom as a whole--not only Bharata. In this, I would like to do something similar in my own story, but with some twists and the addition of the setting. Chose from my Part A notes. Instead of having the two males being the characters, I would like to gender-bend both, making a queen and a princess. With this, the princess would presume the role of performing the funeral rites for her mother and so on. With her new role as queen, the kingdom looks to her for the answer to immortality because the people can simply not go through losing a ruler again. In result, the princess must go on an elaborate journey, as Bharata does, to find the nectar of immortality that has been spoken of for ages in the kingdom. This nectar is created in The Ocean of Milk, which the princess must go through forests, rivers, and ocean...

For the Ramayana Part A reading, I would like to focus on setting. Throughout the readings in Part A, there are many mentions of nature: deer, flowers, glistening waves, and more. There is such a visual element to the stories within this section that I think it will be great to focus my own story around the imagery the original stories offer.  The specific section that drew me into focusing on setting was The Ocean of Milk found in Rama: Avatar of Vishnu . Although I did not know prior to reading the story what The Ocean of Milk was, it just sounds beautiful and dreamy. Upon reading more about the Ocean of Milk, I found that once churned, the ocean produces immortality. From what I can tell, The Ocean of Milk is a high platform above the oceans in which Vishnu and Lakshmi reside. For my story, I would love to meld together The Ocean of Milk with the dreamy forest-type land found throughout Ramayana Part A. In my story, there will be a sense of springtime with a lot of greenery ...