“How many Ramayanas?” A.K. Ramanujan had enquired in his seminal essay, “Three Hundred Ramayanas”. Natasha Sarkar takes this query forward in WHOSE RAMAYANA IS IT ANYWAY? (Mapin, Rs 1,500), an illustrated exploration of the epic’s many textual offshoots and adaptations. Sarkar picks up several threads that reimagine and retell the Ramayana from across the subcontinent and further. While an informed reader may not find the stories to be particularly novel, what would be of interest are the convergences in artistic traditions and representations of the Ramayana. All the illustrations — they combine the colourful contrasts of folk art and capture the drama associated with battle scenes in popular comics — are done in Sarkar’s distinct style. Unified by style and media, the visual convergences along with the divergences among various forms like puppetry from Odisha and Indonesia and dance forms from Kerala and Purulia make for easy comparison. Equally intriguing are the appearances of a diverse cast of characters — this includes Ambedkar and R.K. Laxman’s Common Man — in the artist’s reimagination of the epic. Mentioning the media in which the works have been executed with their descriptions would have been a valuable addition.

An illustration scanned from Whose Ramayana is it Anyway? Natasha Sarkar