Yatra: Many more Ramayanas, not the irreverent variety

Prambanan and the Ramayana link

I am staying with Indonesia, mainly because the material is easily available to blog. Recently found the photographs in a memory stick and a copy, paste version of this article I wrote for the Hindustan Times in 2008. Trip to Indonesia holds a special place in my travels, I started on an impulse, regretting at times the money I was spending and at times feeling guilty about not taking the family along. My friend, Anu was as usual my partner in crime, arranging all that I needed to complete the tour and engaing in long distance covnersation from China, when I felt little unsafe at Jogja.

The Trimurti temple has three shrines dedicated to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and a smaller shrines opposite them for their respective Vahans. Prambanan is supposed to be derived from "para Brahman" and there are also local legends about how the temple got built in a day. This temple is dated somewhere betweeen 9th-10th century and I was wondering if this got built before our grand chola, Rajaraja's Thanjai periya kovil. This temple is supposed to be a symbol of the Hindu re-emergence after Buddhist reigns that built a grand Borobudur shrine.

The temple had fallen derelict, as the region has been continuously been shaken up by earthquakes. After the 2008 earthquake, the temple was under repair again and so I had only a restricted entry. By the time I reached Prambanan, the sky was overcast (it almost invariably rains by evening in Indonesia) and sun about to set. There were no guides around a fewer tourists. A gentleman from Columbia came up to me and asked what I felt about the temple. He said,"I have visited India. Have you seen Meenakshi temple in Madurai?". I told him the structure and the date of the temple reminded me only of Thanjavur.

Reproducing here the piece I wrote for HT.

The signboard Ramayana cheered me up, as Yogyakarta initially was unnerving for a lone woman traveler. To escape from touts offering variety of services from taxis to a tour of Sultan Palace or the silver market, I entered Ramyana, a departmental store. The cheerful shop attendants and the non stop Ramayana, Ramanaya announcement as if it was a mantra prepared me for the trip ahead. Pronounced Jogjakarta or popularly known as Jogja, this city in central Java links travelers to Borobudur and Parambanan, the Buddhist and Hindu temple complexes dating back to 9^th century.

This is Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in terms of population but carries undeniable Hindu and Buddhist past. Once out of Ramayana store, I had to quickly find a taxi that would take me to Parambanan's Trimurthi temple and also wait there while I try to catch up with the live Ramayana performance at the open air theatre with the temple as the backdrop. The guide book said it would be criminal to come to Jogja and miss the Ramayana performance which is performed in the open air theatre during the dry season beginning May and moves indoors into the beautiful Trimurthi theatre behind the temple. I didn't have to go far to look at a Ramayana calendar, because the performance is not daily. It is displayed at all the taxi, tour operator offices and the Muslim operators are only too happy to help us find out if there is a performance that day or not.

So far, I have been to most of the South Asian countries that have the Ramayana link - Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and now Indonesia. All these countries are today either Buddhist, or Islamic countries, but have kept the memory of Ramayana alive, without being skeptical about its religious connection, faith in Rama as an avatar, creation or being an import from a distant country. Cambodian capital Phnom Pen has one of the most exhaustive Ramayana murals, painted on the walls of the palace facing river Mekong. I found a tourist guide taking an American tourist around with just a sketchy knowledge of Ramayana. But the simple identification of Rama the hero, Ravana, the villain, Sita the abducted heroine, Hanuman the monkey that helped the human Rama to reclaim his wife was enough to make his day. But Ramayana is unerasable from Cambodian soil as the story is etched in beautiful detail on the walls of the largest temple complex in the world, Angkor Vat.

Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia continue to perform Ramayana. The performance of Ramayana at Parambanan temple is spectacular. I had not seen such a beautiful, racy, close to the source, powerful performance, great set and above all an enormous effort to keep the show going throughout the year, even in India. Why hasn't India built a cultural bridge, the Rama Sethu to the south east Asian countries where Ramayana spread a millennium ago. Sri Lanka, the battle torn neighbour wasted no time in spreading tourism awareness about the Ramayana sites when the controversy over the Sethusamudram project started. Have we every promoted a tourism circuit to bring our Asian neighbours to visit places connected with Ramayana - Ayodhya, Nandigram, Chitrakoot, Nanded or Rameswaram? Or have we ever invted the dancers at the Parambanan temple to come and perform for us in India. The post independence India aligned with various fora, from Commonwealth to Non-aligned movement to ASEAN, but the secular India failed to establish the most important alliance that would brought the people together and not just the leaders to broker power. We have had trade links with these countries and culture spread along. Colonialism changed the trade equations. But post-independence what prevented India from forging a cross-cultural and trade alliance. Secular leaders probably forgot to see beyond the economy and politics. Time the whole of India is aware that every year in Orissa Bali Yatra is performed by floating paper boats, recollecting the days of voyages from Orissa to Bali, even today. Take the Ramayana route to build an Indian-ocean community which several scholars have been advocating, without being biased aboutRamayana's Hindu identity.