Ravana- Roar of the Demon King

Ravana

As a choice of  subject, Campfire comics' offering "Ravana: Roar of the Demon King"  (RRDK) by Abhimanyu Singh Sisodia takes a refreshing, much needed re-telling of a story of a character handed down to us for generations as the epitome of evil. (www.campfire.co.in)

"Listen then...and learn. From the mistakes of a demon who was almost a God"... the last line of the first page, makes the narrative almost autobiographical.

RRDK is everything a good story telling should be. Expansive in scope, notable in its brevity, un-beleaboured and vivid in its imagery. Ravana has always been seen as the bad guy in the Ramayana, but few stories have made it into public domain which have attempted to peel away the macabre and reveal the flawed personality named Dashananda, and his metamorphosis into "Ravana". Sachin Nagar's artistic ability to render mysticism, awe and anguish deserves a reverential look at the publication, and it is easy to even spot some of his "models" in our modern world for the mythical beings he has rendered. 

The image of Ravana standing on one legged and offering his prayers reminds me of Caspar David Friedrich's Wanderer above a sea of Fog (1818) where the wanderer's position atop the precipice seems to suggest at once, a mastery over a landscape and the insignificance of the individual within it.

 

The ten heads, the doting brother, reckless devotee, gifted musician, loving husband, proud king, vanquished ...every known and some unknown facets of this mythical warrior find mention within 100 vividly rendered pages. The mystifying presence of Ravana in Jainism and why a village in Rajasthan celebrates his name find mention in the Glossary at the end, apart from other "versions" of Ravana.

After a long time a comic has managed to not just keep me rivetted to it, but also made me re-read a dozen times over.

An equally comprehensive reading can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravana

Next stop: Ravanayan

Credits: 

Ravana illustrations (c) Campfire.co.in

Capar David Friedrich: Wikimedia Commons