Adaptations

The Ramayana has been retold from various perspectives, of which the feminist perspective is perhaps the strongest. The character of Sita has yielded most versions, perhaps because of Rama’s abandonment of her at the end of the epic. The ambiguity of this action has prompted many writers to look at the epic from the wronged Sita’s viewpoint. The deviant (sub)versions of the Ramayana, much more than the Mahabharata, have never been kindly received by believers.  This is perhaps because of its strong moralistic and philosophical message, and the conceptualization of Rama as the maryadapurushottam. Aubrey Menen’s Rama Retold (1956) is an irreverent adaptation. The novel is, according to Menen, a “secular retelling” of the Ramayana where Sita is more intelligent than Rama. She gives herself as hostage to Ravan to save the ashram of Valmiki where her husband is also living. Sita is attracted to Ravan and there is the hint of a relationship between the two of them. Ravan is killed in a street fight, and Sita’s agnipareeksha is conducted using Egyptian fire that does not burn. This adaptation aroused the hostility of Hindu right-wingers and the book was banned.

The 2008 adaptation of Ramayana by Nina Paley called Sita Sings the Blues, is an animated film which has beautifully interwoven the Ramayana story with the life of a modern American woman. The parallels between her and the abandoned Sita are brought out through this interweaving. The heroine of the film is a young American wife whose husband gets posted to Trivandrum. Feeling lonely, she joins him in Trivandrum and discovers that her husband is not interested in her anymore. She flies back to America and reads the Ramayana when she realizes the parallel between her and the epic heroine
. ("http://www.sitasingstheblues.com/).

The Malayalam playwright C. N. Sreekantan Nair wrote Lankalakshmi where Ravana is portrayed as a hero of tragic proportions. He is a king who aspires to unlimited power, but who realizes the enormity of the crime he has committed, and decides to meet his fate calmly in the battlefield. Ravana in this play calls for intense dramatic moments and is quite unlike the villain of the epic. This play is part of a trilogy of which the other two are Saketam and Kanchanaseetha. All the plays look at Rama and Ravana as human beings caught up in the throes of a moral dilemma.
                                                                                                                                                          

In cinema, perhaps the most dramatic departure from the usual treatment of the characters was seen in G. Aravindan’s Malayalam film Kanchanaseetha. The film was the adaptation of the play by the same name of C. N. Sreekantan Nair. Aravindan interrogated the Aryan good looks attributed to the epic heroes in the usual pictorial depictions and made two tribal actors play the role of Rama and Lakshmana. Sita is visualized as nature in the film, and is the wind swaying the trees or the swiftly flowing stream.