Famous Last Words for Week 5

Well week 5 of the semester is finally wrapping up and I am exhausted.  I feel like all I ever do anymore is homework!  I finished up a tough assignment in my Publications class and this next week I have quizzes and a ten-page paper to worry about.  I will also be attending the OU Men's Basketball team's rivalry game against Texas this next week.  Hopefully, they'll have a great victory that will inspire me to study hard for all the midterm assignments.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and I spent the day with my roommate.  We cooked dinner together and had a lot of fun.  It was like having our very own "Galentines Day" (Parks & Rec reference).  I also watched Birdman this weekend with a friend of mine.  It was so refreshing to watch something so creative and original.   Nowadays, I feel that every movie Hollywood produces is a sequel, remake or book adaptation.  Birdman was none of those things and poked fun at a lot of those movies.  It was definitely a fast-paced movie but the soundtrack throughout it used only drums, which was really awesome!

Also on Wednesday of this past week I went to my sorority house to decorate cards for the Children's Hospital.  They said the cards would be delivered to both the children who had to stay in the hospital along with the nurses who work with them!  A lot of girls showed up to make cards.  I felt like this was a great way to celebrate Valentines Day, to show love and appreciation to people who might be overlooked.

(Image of decorated Valentine's Day cards from the OU Alpha Phi Twitter.) 

I feel like I should mention that there's only 9 more days until my 21st birthday!  The countdown to adulthood has officially begun :)

Storytelling for Week 5: Ravana's Love Letter

Ravana's Love Letter

Dearest Sita,  

As I write this letter I am gazing at you from a window in my extravagant palace.  The fire is roaring and the servants are being most obedient.  The only thing missing is…you.  I gaze at you in the garden day in and day out, your courage and determination is unparalleled by any other human or asura woman in the entire universe.  (And I would know since I have lived quite a long time and have known  a variety of human and asura women.)  

I just want you to know that your point has been made loud and clear.  Whenever you get done moaning about how I should not have stolen you from the forest feel free to come inside the Palace of Lanka.  I understand how we did not get off the right foot but I am willing to make it up to you, if you give me a chance.  You know I would never intentionally hurt you, and you also know that I literally cannot physically harm you unless you give me your consent.  So please, my dear Sita, do not let our love story end before it even begins! 

I know the garden must be cold at night.  A woman like you was not made to live among shrubs and worms.  You should be here ruling over multiple universes beside me.  I want every king and queen from here to Timbuktu to look at us with envy.  When we are married, men will quake with fear of my incomprehensible strength but they will also marvel at how beautiful you look beside me on the throne.  

I hope to have ten sons with you, one to match each of my heads.  Our sons will bear my strength and women will line up to be their wives.  We will carve up the world and split it into ten pieces to give each of them a quadrant to command while both of us rule over its entirety.  I have done so much with my life but I wait here incomplete without you beside me.  

I know you still wonder about Rama, but you are destined to be next to me while the human world burns.  It baffles me how you have not thanked me for rescuing you from that life of peasantry.  The kind of life Rama made you endure.  You lived in a comfortable human palace before, but Sita you have no idea what I can offer you.  However, if a forest life is what you really want I will have Maya build you an entire palace in a garden.  

I hope after this letter I will see you at the gates of the palace soon.  

Your Most Humble Adorer, 

Ravana

(Ravana approaches Sita during her captivity from Wikipedia.) 

~ ~ ~

Author's Note:  I wanted to write about Ravana's point of view after he kidnaps Sita because he must be absolutely astounded that she does not want to be with him.  So I figured with Valentine's Day just around the corner why not write about it through a love letter.  Ravana is very arrogant and I wanted to show how he really cannot grasp how this woman refuses to be with him.  I wanted the reader to take away that Ravana is so focused on himself throughout the entire love letter that he will never understand WHY Sita will not belong to him.  Just like at the end of the epic when he cannot grasp that he could be defeated by a human.  

Bibliography - 

Buck, William (1976). Ramayana: King Rama's Way. 

Week 5 Reading Diary B: Sita's Second Abduction

This is a Reading Diary that details my thoughts from pages 162-218 of the Ramayana retold by William Buck.  

• Poor Maricha.  He wanted no part of this.  
• She lets her jewelry fall to the monkeys?? Does Hanuman not visit her?! 
• Again much more Ravana backstory. 
• Monkeys and Mangos.  What can ya do. 
• Buffalo demon?!?!?! WHAT
• I can't imagine which is worse.  Plunging an arrow into my own heart or walking into a pyre.  Women from Indian Epics are tough.  
• Oh ok.  Sita just throws down her jewelry to random monkeys and Rama still gives his ring to Hanuman for him to later see in Lanka.  

(Killing of Jatayu by Balasaheb Pant Pratinidhi from Wikipedia.)

Week 5 Reading Diary A: Shurpanakha We Meet Again

This is a Reading Diary that details my thoughts from pages 110-116 of the Ramayana retold by William Buck.  

• I guess if you were going to have your kingdom wrongfully taken away from you, Bharata is the best person to receive it.  
• Aren't these people alive for like 60,000+ years?  14 years of exile seems pretty short..
• Dantes was imprisoned for 14 years in The Count of Monte Cristo.  Ironic.  
• Ooooh.  A warning about the dangerous demon Ravana.  Foreshadowing…
• Is Sita just there to get abducted?  
• A main difference between these two tales are the demons.  There are a lot more demon stories in this version.  
• I can't stand Shurpanakha.  
• I didn't like Shurpanakha in the earlier version, and this part of the epic is basically the same.  So I still don't like her. 

(Rama Spurns The Demon Lover from Wikipedia.)