garran | Where'd she go?

In my classes, I seem to be one of the most likely to wait with my hand up, rather than interjecting into a discussion outright. At first, I found this strangely counterintuitive, but then I realized that, more than a Windsor House class, my Langara classes (especially Philosophy) resemble a Windsor House meeting - some thirty people sitting together in a brightly lit room, attempting to figure something out through dialogue. No wonder my instinct is to politely attempt the speakers' list!

Right now in Asian Mythology we're looking at the Ramayana. Here's my favourite passage from the fairly detailed synopsis we read last week:

Rama cannot but believe that Sita has been killed by Raksasas, and in mad passion, he declares his intention of destroying the whole world. He will fill the air with his arrows, stay the course of the wind, annihilate the rays of the sun and envelop the earth in darkness, hurl down the summits of the hills, dry up the lakes, destroy the ocean, uproot the trees, nay more, even annihilate the gods themselves if they do not give him back his Sita. Only with much trouble does Laksmana succeed in soothing the raving one and in persuading him to renew the search.

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teehee, i also wait with my hand up while others will just shout out whatever they please. i think this might also have something to do with us being "outsiders" when it comes to regular school, and so we are trying extra hard to be polite and proper in this strange new society.

Man, the Mahabharata is the only real Indian epic. The Ramayana is just a big long story that happens to have monkey engineers. Hope that is not a spoiler.

-Sumana

Hallo there!

Our teacher says that the Mahabharata is much too long for us to look at as a whole - we'd need an entire course to do it justice (though we have looked at a couple of isolated individual stories, such as the battle between Indra and Vrtra). He chose the Ramayana because it's rather more managable.

I like the monkeys. I especially like the part where a monkey jumps so high and far that he remains in the air for four days, "[during] which he encounters various adventures and performs miracles".

-Garran

Is *that* how you spell "Raksasas". I think I've only ever heard it pronounced.

There is actually an accent over the first 's', which I didn't bother to preserve. I've also seen it spelled 'rakshasa', though that was in AD&D monster manuals and therefore pretty suspect.

-Garran

Well, I'd be inclined to say that any English spelling is suspect considering it's not an English name/word.

-NotGarran

http://www.askasia.org/students/virtual_gallery/exhibitions/

Where'd she go?

no subject

The Ramayana sucks!

Re: The Ramayana sucks!

Huh.

Re: Huh.

Re: Huh.

Ramayana