Word: menen
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...ABODE OF LOVE (214 pp.)-Aubrey Menen-Scribner...
...Ramayana, by Aubrey Menen. One of the best satirists between New York and Calcutta pokes good fun at a great Hindu epic and at the human race (TIME, Sept...
...Menen's version, King Dasa-ratha is an old lecher who ministers to his harem more assiduously than to his people, and totters on his throne from lack of sleep. Venal flunkeys catch the king's ear, and tell him that his son Rama plans to kill him. Under a pious pretext, the old man banishes Rama from his kingdom for 14 years. Into exile with Rama go his dutiful wife Sita and his loyal brother...
...young Hindus have been taught to revere its central characters. Dasa-ratha, the king, stands for fatherly devotion; Rama, his son and the hero of the tale, for strength of mind, arm and heart; Sita, his wife, for undying faithfulness. Under the guise of restoring the classic, Satirist Aubrey Menen (The Prevalence of Witches, Dead Man in the Silver Market) slyly milks a sacred cow for laughs. His freewheeling and irreverent Ramayana is a mock epic that owes less to its original author, the Hindu poet Valmiki, than it does to Voltaire's Candide and Boccaccio's Decameron...
...tyrant, wins Sita back, and, when his own evil father dies, resumes his rightful throne. The moral of it all? Rama asks as much of Poet Valmiki: "Is there anything that you believe is real?" Replies the poet (and the answer is obviously that of Hindu-Irish Author Menen): "Certainly, Rama. There are three things which are real: God, human folly, and laughter. Since the first two pass our comprehension, we must do what we can with the third...