Week 3 Storytelling: Monkey Business - A Story of Hanuman

            I seem to have found myself in a bit of a… fiery situation. But let’s rewind a little – back to when I first met Rama, a bright, young king-to-be. It was just your average day in the jungle, until Sugriva heard a noise coming from afar. As much as I love him, King Sugriva has been wayyy too paranoid since his brother, Vali, exiled him from his own kingdom and stole his wife. Sugriva thought that the noise was, in fact, men sent by Vali, and as his friend, I went out disguised as him to confront the noise. Little did I know, I would meet two valiant brothers, Rama and Lakshmana, who willingly desired to help me and Sugriva gain his kingdom back in return of our help in finding Sita, Rama’s stolen wife. And both promises were kept.

            Fast forwarding after the recapture of Sugriva’s wife and kingdom, we waited for what seemed like forever for the rainy season to end until we could go search for Sita. After that long wait and a very impatient Rama, Sugriva and Jambavan, king of the bears (long story), sent four search parties (or search armies) of monkeys and bears into different directions. I, fortunately, was part of the army that found Tamraparni, an island of Lanka, AKA where Sita and Ravana would be. We even found Jatayu’s brother Sampati, a bird who can’t fly due to… sun problems, who told us we were headed in the right direction!

            Anyway, the new situation was: How do we get to the island to make sure Sita was actually there?? None of the monkeys could leap that far to get onto the island in the first place! Now, this is when I figured out I have amazing super powers. Remember Jambavan, that bear king I mentioned earlier? Well, he reminded me about my gifts, my history, and my invulnerability, which was a great mood and self-esteem booster. As I made my way to Lanka, I got into a little rakshasi trouble, but it wasn’t too much to handle.

I began searching the entire city of Lanka to look for Sita, but ended up finding myself in Ravana’s room where a 10-headed sleeping beauty lay. (Side note: I have no idea how he’s able to sleep with so many heads, but props to him.) I ended up finding Sita later on, but she was being guarded by rakshasas. Hiding in trees, I witnessed the beautiful Sita’s hilarious rejection of Ravana, staying loyal to Rama. She wouldn’t even let me carry her back to him because she wanted to be faithful and not touch another male. She gave me a token to bring back, but I can’t come back empty handed! Rama wanted me to bring her back to him, and that is what I will do. So as any other reasonable being would do, I set out to destroy the city of Lanka, which may or may not have lead to my capture.

Now, instead of having me killed for being allied with Rama as Ravana wanted, his people advised him not to.  Unfortunately, that did not mean I was going to be free to go at all. No. Ravana decides to SET. MY. TAIL. ON. FIRE. which brings us back up to the present time. Anyway, who does that?! Who just sets someone’s tail on fire?! Ravana does not know who he’s made an enemy out of. Now… This is monkey business. Time to save Sita and kill Ravana once and for all. But first, it's time to burn down the whole city.

Hanuman Burning Lanka

Author's Note:  The events of this story was inspired by Part C of the PDE Ramayana. I wanted to focus on Hanuman, the monkey god, in this story and write in his point of view. Hanuman played an important role in Ramayana, but his opinions weren't vocalized too much although his actions were clear. I thought it would be interesting to look into his thoughts during this adventure, specifically during his time in Lanka and when his tail was set on fire. I started off in the "present" time with his fiery tail, and had him flashback to tell his part of the story to lead to his desires after his tail was burned. I decided to end the story with his vengeful thoughts to keep the story on a cliffhanger and also to keep it interesting.

Bibliography: Public Domain Edition Ramayana