If you have a Google Chrome browser and are willing to read Indonesian, ramaya.na gives you Valmiki's retelling of the epic through what seems like a programmer who chose a new career as a dalang, a shadow-puppet master. Through chat windows and 3D backgrounds, Rama, a king with divine virtues, fights the ten-headed demon Ravana to rescue his wife, Sita, from captivity.
Whether this is an entertaining story for kids or a chance to perform a darshan ("seeing") with the divine depends on the reader, but this is an opportunity to revisit a cross-cultural and cross-religious epic that refuses to settle in any single medium. After TV series and comic books, what else could be more fitting than an animated, multi-directional web narrative? Despite of its trimmings, its reductions, and the stiff, linear GoogleChat dialogues, Google's Indonesian Ramayana is an accessible collection of stories to visit and revisit, with each chapter providing a colorful diversion on its own, especially for those who have known the story before.
Here is a serendipitous beginning for my journey in listening to the epics in their many incarnations, and as A.K. Ramanujan once said, "No one ever reads the Ramayana or the Mahabharata for the first time." I will write to you all again soon, most likely from the heart of the Deccan highlands in Pune, or perhaps just a couple of hundred meters away from 15-minute internet station here at the Singapore Airport.
Whether this is an entertaining story for kids or a chance to perform a darshan ("seeing") with the divine depends on the reader, but this is an opportunity to revisit a cross-cultural and cross-religious epic that refuses to settle in any single medium. After TV series and comic books, what else could be more fitting than an animated, multi-directional web narrative? Despite of its trimmings, its reductions, and the stiff, linear GoogleChat dialogues, Google's Indonesian Ramayana is an accessible collection of stories to visit and revisit, with each chapter providing a colorful diversion on its own, especially for those who have known the story before.
Here is a serendipitous beginning for my journey in listening to the epics in their many incarnations, and as A.K. Ramanujan once said, "No one ever reads the Ramayana or the Mahabharata for the first time." I will write to you all again soon, most likely from the heart of the Deccan highlands in Pune, or perhaps just a couple of hundred meters away from 15-minute internet station here at the Singapore Airport.
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