Week 4 Reading Diary, continued: Ravana: Roar of the Demon King

Reading:
Ravana: Roar of the Demon King, A graphic novel detailing Ravana's life from his own perspective, Author: Abhimanyu Singh Sisodia, Artist, Sachin Nagar

I loved the art style of this book. It has one of my favorite depictions of Hanuman, shown below. There was also a great picture of Ravana roaring with his ten heads at the end, but I wasn't able to get a picture while I had the book. I'll have to try and get it later.

Character Depictions from Roar of the Demon King
Source

For the second half of the story, Ravana acted a lot more in character, from the perspective of the Ramayana. As they quoted, "Pride comes before the fall." And, he was extremely prideful. Every time he was defeated, he acted as if he had let it happen on purpose, and he never listened to warnings from anyone else.

The story of him capturing Indra and displaying him in the city, only to be captured himself and given the same punishment was a really good demonstration of Karma, I think.

In Ravana's version of his war with Rama, a lot of the characters seem to have much more respect for Rama. Kumbhakarna seems to be very much against fighting Rama, and he is only coaxed into doing so when Ravana says it's for his family, something that seems to be extremely important to Ravana and his siblings.

Also, Lakshmana's defeat of Ravana's son seems very dishonorable in this version. He takes a small army and invades a temple where the son is worshiping to kill him while unarmed. On top of that, the gods drop in to help as well. It seemed very out of character for Lakshmana, and if it was mentioned in the Ramayana, it was definitely glossed over.

I think it was interesting that Ravana has actually been worshiped as a deity, according to the notes. I didn't expect that at all. That and the (supposed) fact that he made an instrument, which would eventually lead to things like the violin, paints a very different picture of him.