Word: valmiki
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...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...
...Gluttons' creed: "A man lives by eating . . . Whatever gods there be, one of them must be in a man's belly." Rama joins them in sacrificing to their god three times a day, and finds a friend in one fellow traveler of the Gluttons, the poet Valmiki. To while away the years, and wise up Rama in the ways of the world, Valmiki tells him some bedtime stories for grownups...
...tyrant takes Sita for his spoil, and the once dutiful wife rather likes it. In a war of comic confusion, Rama conquers the 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...
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