A little word about Mythology

Whoa! In the first place, I did not expect so many people to be revisiting my blog a lot. While I am honoured and very touched, I really have to admit that this has added a responsibility on my shoulders. I actually started the blog as a simple pastime of writing about books me or my children loved reading. But when my dear friend went ahead and ordered a particular set of books for her little one, it got me thinking very deep indeed. And ONLY because it happened to be Mythology stories.

I remember my first history lesson in Year 1, when I was six. It was the story of Rama. And the last question in that lesson was " Who killed Ravana? with a simple answer "Rama killed Ravana". It did not affect me one bit learning it. I took it for granted, I bet my mother never thought about me learning about killings, because it is one of the many things forming the basis of Hinduism ( taught in a Christian school). Not the killing, but the honesty and righteousness and the victory of good over evil.

I remember seeing Vikram aur Vetal, Ramayana and Mahabharatha in TV, all having their share of vanquishing scenes and fights, loads of them. It never affected me or at least, most of our generation. It was simply taken for granted, never analysed or dissected. You walk into a temple, you see gory demons guarding the entrance, you see Gods and Goddesses with their armour and in most cases, standing over the vanquished, heads in hand and skulls adorning the neck. Good destroying Bad. Good wins, goodness is established by God, so God is the embodiment of Good. If anything, back then, I only had a feeling of having a safety net around because God can do away with evil and so protect me from anything and everything.

Even the movies had their fair share of gore, every single one of them. You can't watch a Rajini movie without it. You can't watch a Kamal movie without it, and I do remember watching them since time immemorial, again. I used to hate the fights, but then that was it. Almost all of those movies were U certified. Nobody really questioned.

But I remember, when I was telling the story of Krishna to my elder son, he promptly asked me why Kamsa harmed children. I told him it was because he was evil, and that's why Krishna destroyed him. Then he asked me how could Krishna destroy someone and be called God, when God was supposed to love everyone. And again continued with a " Anyway, if God is God, why should he ever create evil and let evil play around with good, and then destroy evil. If God has created both, then it sounds like he does not have a heart, it looks like he has made video games with all people in the world".

I stopped everything I was doing to explain to him that mum did not have an answer to that. Mum's knowledge was limited, and that it is something he would have to find out for himself, by constant questioning, by reading the religious books later in life. And I told him that in a way it was like this - Mum loves the children. Mum wants the best for her children. Sometimes the children, though they only come from mum and dad, who are good, try misbehaving. They break the trust, they do silly things, they hurt the feelings of mum and dad. Mum and Dad may then ground them, may cut off their privileges, but that doesn't mean they hat the children. They only love them more every day, but want a good life for the children, so they have to teach some lessons the hard way sometimes.

I tried telling him that these demons, fight with evil are all similes and metaphors. God's fight with them is like your inner struggle when you want to sneak an extra chocolate, but finally get over the feeling and choose not to do it. Demons depict fear, anger, hatred, jealousy. All things you always fight against in your mind. You have to destroy them to stay good, without harming fellow beings. That is what all these Mythical stories are trying to teach us. He did take to the simile-metaphor thing well then, he had just learnt them in school and it helped him see the point.

But he still wasn't satisfied. I wasn't either. We still discuss this a lot. And the older he is growing, the more he is learning about the human atrocities, the more he is questioning the existence of the Supreme Power. Auschwitz disgusted him, Hiroshima, Anne Frank's story and Jallianwala Bagh massacre moved him to tears and he came to me saying " Perhaps it is just as well God kills all these bad people. Is it wrong to think so?". I was speechless. I had no answer, yet again. But I knew he has been exposed to the real world. The hatred and cruelty and atrocities that we live with today.

Why I am saying this is that my post on Little Monk's series spurred a lot of discussions about gore in stories. I have read two of these stories and yes, there are mentions of killings, I don't think you could ever tell a mythology story without them at all, but I never considered them as shocking or disturbing. Maybe because my elder son was 8+ when he read these books ( I do remember mentioning 8+ for this series) and I know he is mature enough to not isolate them as scary or gory incidents and go with the flow of the story.

There might be no fairy tale softness in our mythology stories, but then there is no temple without all the gory similies and metaphors either! The motto of our school was "Fear the Lord and  get Wisdom". I was right against that even then, why FEAR something that is an embodiment of LOVE! But alas, we have all grown up pickled in these thoughts, we all carry it wherever we go. Religion, history and today's news all have killings and quite frankly, it is bound to exist as long as life exists.

All I would say is that if your child is ready enough to watch Anniyan or Enthiran or Karnan or even The Ten Commandments and Benhur ( which we watched as children, arranged by the school!), then your child is ready to read Little Monk's series. If not, maybe you would like to hold on a bit longer! Parents know their children best. While all of my reviews keep in mind the reading age of children, every child is unique and I would leave it to the parent to decide.

However, I do stick to my post, they are nice books with above average level of English efficiency and vocabulary, and my son has enjoyed reading them a lot. From now on, I will certainly consider adding a parental guidance note with the author / ages section.

All the other books that I have so far written about are completely harmless and tame for even babies :o)

And while I am writing all of this, I just couldn't help thinking about the families in the middle-east whose children are right now living through all of the things that we are even scared to mention to our little ones in stories. My heart goes out to them, and only think " Why this bloodshed? Why children? Why at all?". But that is the truth. Not Goldilocks or Snow White. Not even a Spiderman or He-man or Rama. Only Demons.

I sincerely apologize if I have misled anyone with my reviews. I do hope you would continue to enjoy the books as much as we have enjoyed, and yes, I do realize we could have difference of opinions... I respect that a lot, and invite as many discussions and experiences that could make me amend my views with a better understanding.

Thank you all for all of your support without which I would have long resorted to my self-criticism and laziness and stopped blogging!