Book:
The Ramayana Secret
Author:
Anurag Chandra
Publisher:
Om Books International
Perspectives make a lot of difference on
how we contemplate any event or a story. Often, what we see is just one side of
the story, right?
The Ramayana Secret by Anurag Chandra is
afresh retelling of the epic. In his story, Anurag has taken the concept that
there exist 2 civilizations on the earth, one on the outer surface and another
inside the Earth, called the Agartha. The civilization in Agartha is very well
developed as compared to the one on the outer Earth by virtue of their longer
existence. Originating from the same ancestors, Agartha uses emissaries to
communicate with the outer Earth and provides them with knowledge so that
society can progress. As the advanced civilization, they are the guardians of
the knowledge of the Gods and many other advanced technologies that are
revealed only to the people who have achieved the highest order of spiritual
awakening to avoid them falling into the wrong hands. For years, the two civilizations
had a peaceful co-existence until Ravana comes along and the divine scripts
come into his custody by happenstance. Rama is then tasked with the mission to
retrieve the scripts and bring it to the rightful owners. What happens next,
forms the plot of the book. The Ramayana Secret is Rama’s story, not as we know
it, but as it happened.
The plot of the book is very good, and it
moves with a comfortable pace with emphasis on the points at the right places.
Anurag has created an extremely detailed story with the details picked from the
original epic but adding the right condiments into it to provide a feasible
alternative plot line. He has aligned the presence of all the major events of
the epic into this plotline with a plausible back story. Be it the story of
Ahalya or the story of Shabari, each of them has been dealt with in proper
accuracy. The description of the Inner Earth is fairly detailed and helps
create a picture of how it might look had it existed. The story of the rise of
Ravana, Rama’s swayamvara with Sita, the crossing of the ocean and the origins
of Hanuman are some of the highlights that stood out for me.
Talking about the characters, the prominent
characters have been given a proper backstory that fits in with the plot. There
are no chinks that can be identified, and sufficient clues are provided to
create a distinct persona of each of the characters. The thing that caught my
attention, though, was the epiphany of Ravana towards the end of the plot and I
would like to specially mention this as it shows how well the author has delved
into the human psyche.
In the quest to retrieve the divine
scripts, the author has convinced me to handover 4/5 scripts that I have.
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