Reading Notes: Ramayana C

I really like The Rainy Season in the Ramayana. It makes me think of television, and how in an intense series there will always be the relaxed episode. Like in Breaking Bad, for example, there's the episode about the fly inside of the lab. Rama waiting out the rain, full of lament, is much like that episode. It's just waiting.

I'd like to take the Lament and add action to it, and to translate the verse into something more palatable and easier to understand.



Rama's lament:

They say that as the seasons move,
Our sorrow gently fades away;
But I am far from her I love
And sorrow deepens every day.

(They say that as time passes, pain decreases. But I grow sadder and sadder every passing day.)

That she is gone, is not my woe;
That she was reft, is not my pain;
The thought that agonizes so
Is this: her youth is spent in vain.
(Her life is being wasted; this is not about me)

Blow, breezes, blow to her dear face;
Blow back to me her kisses sweet:
Through you we taste a glad embrace,
And in the moon our glances meet.

(I remember, I remember when we met. The moment, the time, the place.
The moon lit our embrace)

When she was torn away from me,
"My lord! My love!" was all her cry,
Which tortures me incessantly;
My heart is poisoned, and I die.
(And then she was taken from me, so hastily. I hear her cries in my head, in my sleep.)

I burn upon an awful pyre;
My body wastes by day and night;
Her loss is fuel to feed the fire
That burns so pitilessly white.

(It hurts, I'm dying inside. But I know that I have to continue, I have to keep going, finding her is my only option.)

If I could leave each loving friend,
Could sink beneath the sea, and sleep,
Perhaps the fire of love would end,
If I could slumber in the deep.

(If I died, if I died, maybe I could move on.)

One thought consoles my worst distress;
Through this I live: I cannot die
While she lies down in loveliness
Upon the self-same earth as I.

(but I cannot die, I have to rescue her.)

The sun-parched rice, no longer wet,
Lives on, while earth her moisture gives;
The root of love supports me yet,
For they have told me that she lives.

(I know that she still lives)

Though giants hem her round, yet soon
She shall be freed, and shall arise
As radiantly as the moon
From clouds that darken autumn skies.

(and I will rescue her, and she will rise again.)

When shall I pierce the giant's breast
With shafts that suck his life away,
That give my tortured darling rest
And all her absent griefs allay?

When shall I feel the close embrace
Of my good goddess, as in dreams?
When kiss her smile, while on her face
The water born of gladness gleams?

(But when, oh when, will I have her back? Back in my arms? In my embrace?)

When shall I pluck from out my heart —
A heart by woes of absence torn —
The pain of life from love apart,
Forget it, like a garment worn?

(When will we leave this life behind and create ours together?)

Rama in his cave
Ramayana

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PDE RAMAYANA The Rainy Season