For a year now, between six to a dozen of us have been meeting twice monthly under the leadership of Sri Bijoy Misra at Dwarkamai Vidyapeeth to read the immortal composition Ramayana of Valmiki. While we began as a Sanskrit pārāyaṇa exercise, lately we take time out to pause, reflect and interpret the writing to learn the nuances of our culture as observed and depicted by Valmiki.  We marvel at the elegance of the wordplay, the rhythm and diction.  Some poet has commented that there is nothing in the world equals to the narrative poetry of Ramayana and we immerse ourselves in the narration.  It has been the most novel experience of our adult life for most of us.  We have had twenty sessions in the year.  Misraji is making efforts to translate the material in each session and archive in a blog http://misrabijoy.wordpress.com.

We are organizing an anniversary event to mark the one-year completion of our effort on Sunday, May 4, from 4 PM to 6:30 PM.  We begin with the group recitation of Rāmarakṣāstotram and follow up with the singing of Rama bhajans.  Misraji will offer a talk entitled 'Rama and the poet Valmiki' after which we would do a group recitation of the 108 names of Rama as coined by Valmiki.  At 6:30 PM we would have the regular Arati in the Temple and then we would have prasadam.  I have the pleasure of inviting all devotees to join us in this special event.  The program announcement is at
http://vidyapeeth.dwarkamai.org/events/events-calendar-view?task=view_event&event_id=250.

Ramayana reading sessions are announced in Dwarkamai Vidyapeeth calendar and we invite all Ramapremis to join us.  Books in Devanagari script are available in the Temple.  We are procuring books in Telugu script.  We are thankful to the volunteers at Dwarkamai Vidypaeeth and its mentor Sri Anil Naik for the cooperation and support.  Shirdi Sai is our inspiration and we feel blessed by his presence in our readings.
 
I also wish to take the opportunity to share my personal impressions through the year’s journey.  We learned a lot from reading the original and many misconceptions are slowly being removed. Whenever doubts arise in Ramayana, it is always better to refer to the original by Valmiki. As a poet, the greatness of Valmiki is visible in every episode. His character analysis of persons and dialogues between individuals indicate deep understanding of human emotions. He was a Rá¹£i, who by his intense tapas and sādhanā got the blessings from Brahma and Sarasvati and from the divine sage Narada.  With such blessing, he is able to comprehend the things going on in the mind of each and every individual character in Ramayana. There are a few differences between the original and subsequent renderings of the story colored by new authors or preferences. Valmiki presents Rama as a perfect example of how a human being must behave. Reading Ramayana helps us to mould our lives better and to make necessary adjustments and course corrections in the way we live our life.

A few features came to attention:

(1)    The first one is regarding the distribution of pāyasa by King Dasaratha among his three queens. He gave half (1/2) of that to Kausalya, the eldest queen; one quarter (1/4) to Sumitra his second queen; and 1/8 to Kaikeyi, his beloved third queen; and the final (1/8) again back to Sumitra.

(2)    Kausalya gave birth to Rama, Kaikeyi gave birth to Bharata and Sumitra gave birth to the twins of Lakshmana and Satrughna. All the princes were born at a time when five planets (Ravi, Guru, Kuja, Sukra and Sani) were in exalted positions. According to astrology, paṇcocce lokanāyakaḥ.  All of them became exemplary individuals. Only the Lagna, the birth star and tithi were different. Rama’s Lagna was Karkataka, Punarvasu 4th padam and Navami tithi. Bharata’s were meena lagna (approximately sixteen hours later in pushyami nakshatra. The twins were born some eight hours later, where the lagna is again karkataka, tithi is dasami and aslesha nakshatram. All the astronomical and astrological details are given by Valmiki. It is very interesting to note that Raghu Maharaja, an ancestor in the same Ikshvaku dynasty also had five planets in exalted position at the time of birth.

(3)    The story of Kusanabha and his daughters is interesting. After seeing the daughters of Kusanabha, Vayudeva wanted to marry them and the reply given to him by them is ideal for all daughters. That is how a culture starts to take shape. Valmiki shapes it.

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