Some interesting news - Presenting to the august readers of this blog - My 3 part short story - "Alamu's journey into the world of Ramayana", a parallel of the famous novel "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Caroll - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Adventures_in_Wonderland
Alamu(shortened from Alamelu) is a young girl, who is known to often wander into interesting and intriguing places with help of Nidra Devi, the sleep fairy. Read more to know to about her experience this time --
Alamu's Journey into theWorld of Ramayana - Part 1
by Vatsala Dorairajan
That gentle cool breeze wafting just around her face while the sunshine warmed her feet made it feel all the more comfortable and cozy for Alamu to keep her eyes closed in sleep for some more time. It was a few minutes later, that it struck her that she had gone to sleep on the cold damp grass under her favourite mango tree in her garden and it was winter when she slept. But this felt warm and pleasant and cool, all at the same time.
So what was this place? And where was it? Intrigued to know where the sleep fairy, Nidra Devi, had brought her today, she gently opened her eyes, sat up and looked around to see if she could identify anything or anyone around her. Before she could make any sense of the surroundings , “I wonder what Rishi Valmiki taught the brothers today”, squeaked a voice above her. “I just cannot wait to lay my hands on the nuts that are going to fall off their bags as they trundle along this path”, squeaked yet another voice. The conversation and the voices, both were very amusing to Alamu. A quick glance upwards the tree that she sat under, revealed that the owners of the squeaky voices were two squirrels, intently gazing at the row of huts just a little ahead along the mud path beside the tree that Alamu was sitting under.
“SPEAKING SQUIRRELS!! “, totally awestruck, Alamu silently listened into their conversation. “Always nuts over some nuts!! Now pay attention, they will be here any minute now”, exclaimed the first squirrel. Just as the other squirel opened its mouth to lash out a retort, all the three's attention was disrupted by two beautiful voices humming “Rama Seetha Rama Seetha Raama Ram”.
Are THESE the boys that the squirrels were so excited about? Who are these boys anyway? And Valmiki wrote Ramayana, right? How come these boys are learning from him? Questions upon questions were piling up on Alamu's mind, and her curiosity grew two times taller than herself. Containing herself, she watched intently as the two boys came closer to Alamu's tree. By this time, she had managed to hide herself behind it, so as to not get noticed by anyone else. Settling down nearby, the boys began to talk.
To be continued...
The other news good news about this piece is that it has been accepted for publication in the latest(January edition) of a newsletter of a Pathasala dedicated to South Indian Religious Tamil Literature.
The public link to the image version of the published article -
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9993716/2014%20January%20Tirunaranan%20Tal-7_Alamu_article_Part_1.jpg
The public link to the entire newsletter (English content is from 5th page) -
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9993716/2014%20January%20Tirunaranan%20Tal.pdf
The blog post of the Pathasala linking to this particular edition of their newsletter -
http://araiyar.org/blog/3127/
