Ravana: We need to wake up Kumbhakarna so he can help us in this battle. Soldiers, go wake him up right now. I don’t care how you do it. Just do it right now.
*The two soldiers leave and go to the room where Kumbhakarna is sleeping. It's not even a room but more of a huge hall because of his massive figure. He is against the wall on a bed. There are two women fanning him so that he does not get too hot. The soldiers start to devise a plan that could work.*
Ek-annk: I don’t know how we can wake him up. Ravana always orders us around and we have to do it without him telling us how to do it.
Marcha: How can we wake him up? He only wakes up once every six months because of Brahma.
Ek-annk: What do you mean? Why does he only wake up once every six months?
Marcha: Well, this happened a long time ago. From what I heard, Kumbhakarna was very powerful and strong. He would take advantage of that and terrorize the people. He ate them, tortured them, and just made their lives horrible. Seeing this Brahma decided that he would sleep for six months and then only wake up for one day.
Ek-annk: Hmmm! That makes sense now. Well, back to the problem at hand. We can try yelling right by him. Get everyone from the palace. The more people the better.
Marcha: Okay, let’s try it. I’ll gather everyone up.
Ek-annk: This isn’t working. We need to get something louder.
Marcha: We could try playing loud music right by both of his ears.
Ek-annk: It's worth a shot. Let’s bring drums and trumpets.
Marcha: It’s not working. We need to do something more extreme.
Ek-annk: He is huge and strong; we need to get elephants to go all over his body so that could wake him up.
Marcha: That will definitely work. He has to feel all that weight on his body and wake up. I will arrange for five or seven elephants that will wake him up.
Ek-annk: This is good. I will wait for you here and try to wake him up with noise while you go.
*Meanwhile Ravana is getting impatient and wondering why Kumbhakarna has not woken up yet. He is in the battle room, pacing the floor. He keeps trying to think of new tactics against Rama.*
Ravana: Soldiers! Why is my brother not awake yet? He needs to go to war.
Ek-annk: We are working on it, your Majesty. We have devised a plan that will surely not fail. He has to wake up after this and kill that Rama.
Ravana: Well, do it faster! He will still need to eat in order to regain his strength and then go fight. We do not have all day for this, and you guys have already spent two hours on this.
Ek-annk: Of course, your Majesty, we will get this done quickly.
*In the other room six great big elephants are trampling Kumbhakarna’s body in order to wake him up but it is not working.*
Ek-annk: Is it done yet? Has he finally woken up from his slumber?
Marcha: No, this is not working. Maybe we should give it some time before we try something else. Who knows, the elephants constantly roaming his body might wake up him.
*Fifteen minutes later*
Ek-annk: This is not going to work. We need to try something else. Think about it. What would wake you up if you were in deep sleep?
Marcha: We could try getting some women to try to get wake him up.
Ek-annk: That is a great idea. That will surely work.
*After some women caress him, Kumbhakarna finally wakes up from his sleep.*
Kumbhakarna: Why did you guys wake me up before I was supposed to? What is the meaning of this insolence?
*They explain everything that is going on while he is devouring food and drinking up a whole lake's worth of wine*
Ravana: Brother, you have finally woken up. Now you need to go fight and kill that Rama.
Author’s Note: I used the story of Kumbhakarna and how they wake him up but elaborated on it. I did not change the story in a big way. I just changed the language in more of a modern way and spend more time with the people trying to wake him up. Instead of just telling you guys what happened and moving on, I explained what I think happened in the story. In the actual story they say they wake him up, but they did not elaborate on the details at all which is why I decided to show the process. I wanted to show how they could have actually done it but in more of a script way but not in a story setting. I chose this image because it shows all these people trying to wake one man up, and in the different ways they try. I chose this story because I myself was curious about how they could have actually wake him up, so I thought other people would have been too. I kind of imagined how it would have happened and wrote it out with a play-by-play. In the original story of Kumbhakarna, when the time came to ask for a boon from Brahma, his tongue was tied by Saraswati, so instead of asking for the seat of Indra he asked for Nidra, which is the goddess of sleep. Ravana was mad because this was a curse and asked Brahma to take his boon back. Instead of that he changed it so that Kumbhakarna would sleep for six months and then be awake for one day.
Kumbhakarna: Wikipedia
The rakshasas wake Kumbhakarna
Hi Shruti, I already made up the story groups for this week, but you can count this story for Week 4. So go ahead and do the Week 4 Story Declaration, and I'll remember to put it in a group for Week 4. :-)
ReplyDeleteHi Shruti! I lathed on to the story of Kumbhkarna from this week's reading as one that I really liked as well, and also thought there could definitely be some good elaborations made to his tale. So, good job! Right off the bat, I liked how it was set up sort of like a play, with different actors speaking lines. What if you had elaboratored on the elephants trampling his body? You lingered on that idea for a minute, and how did Kumbhkarna feel? Nothing? Was it like a pleasant massage for him? Did it cause him to stir, and move his great limbs, crushing something (or someone) nearby? Which also leads me to wonder, what exactly did those women do? They are so much smaller than elepephants, so how in the world did their caressing wake him up? Did they also sing soft songs, and it was their womanly voices that worked as well? Very, very curious twist to the tale. Great job on modernizing and streamlining the story!
ReplyDeleteAll the suspense was great, and I like how it didn't end with what was expected. I thought in the end of the story that Kumbhkarna would be more furious with the soldiers since they woke him up before he was supposed to wake up. I wonder why it took a woman to wake him up, and why that in the first place he only woke up every six months. I imagine him to be a huge giant based on his description, and dependance of his appearance to win the war. when he goes to the war, what if he does not win... All his strength and the struggle to just prepare him would have gone to waste. I wonder how that would make his brother feel, and if he would blame Kumbhkarna for the lost.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very well written piece. I enjoyed how it was written as if it were a play. I found that this writing style is very easy to read and follow along with. I remember reading this article and I found that your version to be a great representation of the original. This was a very entertaining peice.
ReplyDeleteThis was a very interesting piece to read. I really enjoy reading the stories that are written with dialogue, and not just a story summary. I found it much more interesting to read and easier to connect with. I found it funny with the struggles of the soldiers in trying to wake him up. I also liked that it took a woman to be able to wake him up. I feel that since he is a huge giant that it would be difficult for a woman to wake him up, but I liked that part of the story.
ReplyDeleteThe waking of Kumbhakarana is actually one of my favorite stories of the Ramayana. I like your take on the story, putting it in the form of a play. You somewhat stuck to the original plot, and I enjoyed reading about it. I really liked the ending plot twist of using women to wake him up. The original story in the Ramayana has something different, but you used something that rakshasas would have actually used back then. Very well done! I thoroughly enjoyed reading your story.
ReplyDeleteLove the transcript idea! While reading the Ramayana I wondered myself how they woke up Kumbhakarana because it was a very vague passage.
ReplyDeleteYour dialogue is great but maybe adding a few more details of what is happening will help the reader visualize the scene better. For instance when Soldier 2 says "Okay lets try it. I'll gather everyone up". You could put a direction that says, "Soldier 2 goes to the city and gathers everyone up and gives orders for them to yell and scream in the ear of Kumbhakarana".
You might also elaborate on where the woman came from. The extra information could add some depth and fun to the dialogue! Maybe even add some more information of what kind of food he was eating just to add some interest and a little more dialogue of what they are asking him to do. It would be fun to see Kumbhakarana's reaction to what they wish for him to do for his brother.
I really like the format you used here. It's really interesting to see someone use a transcript like this instead of just a more simple narrative structure. Overall, you do a very good job with the dialogue and I think that's certainly the strongest point here. It's a pretty big change from the source material which focuses very heavily on narration over dialogue.
ReplyDeleteYou could probably add a bit more descriptive detail. It's hard to really get that descriptive when you're using a format like this so you have to find other ways to slip it in with subtlety. I'm sure you can think of something.
It would be nice to see if we could get some more reasoning behind that final plot twist with the woman. Why are they special over the other methods tried? It'd be useful the reader to at least have a stronger inclination of why this is.
You mentioned in your author's note that for this story you simply updated the language to a more modern version, and a retelling doesn't need to be too different from the original. The nice thing about a play script version is that it reads really fast which readers like. Your dialogue clearly does this in some parts, but in others it lacks some exciting details and themes. For example, you could add morel language to suggest that the troops and Ravana are similar to a royal court (which you hinted at in some parts, like when you used "your majesty"). You could add more details like this in the dialogue just to make it a little more fast-paced and exciting. Overall, great job using a script, because it can be difficult.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great story! I loved this scene and I really like that you elaborated more on it. I thought that your script style was an interesting choice. I haven’t seen many people use it yet and I thought it fit really well with this story. You did a good job with it!
ReplyDeleteI think that you could elaborate a little more on the very beginning. You could set the scene by giving more background information on Kumbhakarna and why it is so hard to wake him. I thought that what you had was really good, but I think that this is one place that you could add more info!
Also the line:
*After some women caress him, Kumbhakarna has finally wokes up from his sleep.*
I think you can expand on this! You could start with *women enter the room* and go from there. It just seemed like this part happened kind of fast. I think you could do more to draw it out and maybe even add some humor here if you wanted to.
I really liked your story. I thought it was so clever! Great work!
Hello Shruti! I really enjoyed the way that you made the reading style more personal and understandable for the audience to read! This was one of my favorite story's for our listed reading so I really liked the way that you wrote it out. Choosing to you wrote it as a play write really help the way that the story flowed and made it more understandable overall. Personally I think that since you had a very understandable story that you could have elaborated more in the details of the men trying to wake up Kumbhakarna. Although you said in your authors notes that you wanted to keep the same source story but just make it more modern and I think for the most part you did exactly that but just didn’t elaborate enough as the whole story progressed. However, I think with a few minor adjustments to the description of the men trying to wake up Kumbhakarna the story would have more to it! You did a great job and look forward to more of your writing!
ReplyDeleteHi Shruti! I really enjoyed this story and I like that it adds more details to a story that is originally fairly plain. I think your author’s note does an excellent job of explaining your motives for writing this story, which is really refreshing. I feel like the author’s note is really undervalued, but it’s just as important as the story itself, in my opinion. Specifically, I like that you gave a little more background on how Kumbhakarna ended up in his position at the beginning of the story and tied it back to Ravana, explaining that he felt like Saraswati’s trick was unfair and therefore requested for the curse to be lifted. I think that utilizing a dialogue-based format for some stories is really useful, but I wonder what this story would look like with further description of the events taking place. What if you added more details to the story, maybe the describing the scenery or the expressions of the characters as the dialogue is unfolding?
ReplyDeleteHi, Shruti. Just the other week, I got to read your story about Gandhari, written in a diary format. I think it's really neat that you like to play around with different story forms, writing a diary or a play instead of always regular narrative prose. Of course, sometimes you lose a little, too. Around the middle of the story, when Ek-annk and Marcha are trying out different ways of waking up Kumbhakarna, I would have really loved some scene description/stage directions in between their different attempts! It's such a funny image to imagine, and I would like to see how you imagine it.
ReplyDeleteI also like how you modernize the language a little. The dialogue between the two soldiers sounds really normal and believable. I noticed that when Kumbhakarna wakes up, his first question sounds really natural: "Why did you guys wake me up?" I think you can do the with the next sentence, too: "What is the meaning of this insolence" sounds much more archaic, and I like your natural style.
Hi, Shruti! This was such a fun read. I would just like to start of this comment by praising your dialogue style. I really enjoyed how you used the script form, like you mentioned in your author's note. You did a great job of adding detail to the original story while also keeping true to its roots. I love how they finally decided on the idea of women. It is so amusing to me that this guy had ELEPHANTS stomping all over his body and he doesn't wake up. Bring in a few women and that man is up in an instant. I am not sure if you intended to use this as humor, but I absolutely loved this fact. I also would like to praise you on your ability to modernize the dialogue. This can be somewhat tricky to do and I thought you did a fantastic job on it. This was a great read and I look forward to continuing to read your work!
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