The Builders
The builders work from dawn til dusk, covered in grease, dirt and sweat.
Constructing a bridge across the sea, so the prince may not get wet.
The Magic Ambulance
In times of trouble, the ambulance made its rounds.
In the mountains afar its magic wares were found.
Along its route it made a stop to guarantee its stock.
But the peculiar thing with this old truck was it carried the whole big rock.
Author's Note:
I wanted to experiment with writing poems as microfictions, and chose to re-tell two stories from part D of the Ramayana. The first, The Builders, is based on the story about the monkeys building a stone land bridge between the mainland and Lanka. I told this as a two sentence story, because I wanted to condense it further while showing the hard, thankless work done by the monkeys in that part of the story. In my second story, The Magic Ambulance, I wanted to adapt Hanuman's loyalty by comparing him to an ambulance as he saved the dead at the battle of Lanka. Since I wrote this as the under 50 word option, I wanted to write this in verse so the story would be easier to read and more fun. For both stories I wanted to remain faithful to the plots presented in the Ramayana, but I wanted to change the characters to show how industrious they were in the epic. Hanuman and the monkeys were a major backbone to Rama's success. I wanted to write stories about the work they contributed to making Rama successful and push my limits to make the stories as short as possible, and I believe I accomplished what I set out to do.
The builders work from dawn til dusk, covered in grease, dirt and sweat.
Constructing a bridge across the sea, so the prince may not get wet.
The Magic Ambulance
In times of trouble, the ambulance made its rounds.
In the mountains afar its magic wares were found.
Along its route it made a stop to guarantee its stock.
But the peculiar thing with this old truck was it carried the whole big rock.
This Hanuman statue depicts our hero carrying the mountain to save his friends from death. Definitely to scale - Source: PDE Ramayana
Author's Note:
I wanted to experiment with writing poems as microfictions, and chose to re-tell two stories from part D of the Ramayana. The first, The Builders, is based on the story about the monkeys building a stone land bridge between the mainland and Lanka. I told this as a two sentence story, because I wanted to condense it further while showing the hard, thankless work done by the monkeys in that part of the story. In my second story, The Magic Ambulance, I wanted to adapt Hanuman's loyalty by comparing him to an ambulance as he saved the dead at the battle of Lanka. Since I wrote this as the under 50 word option, I wanted to write this in verse so the story would be easier to read and more fun. For both stories I wanted to remain faithful to the plots presented in the Ramayana, but I wanted to change the characters to show how industrious they were in the epic. Hanuman and the monkeys were a major backbone to Rama's success. I wanted to write stories about the work they contributed to making Rama successful and push my limits to make the stories as short as possible, and I believe I accomplished what I set out to do.
Comments
Post a Comment