Week 4 Storytelling: Hanuman Saves Sita

Hanuman would have made an excellent repo man.  He possessed superhuman strength, was a master of stealth, and he regularly parachuted from airplanes just for fun.  Unfortunately, his only job was working for Rama, an abusive husband and boss.    Rama was the King of Ayodhya, and it certainly went to his head.  When Rama was making the rounds with his various girlfriends, he left his wife Sita at home.  Sita was a faithful and loving wife.  She cared for their home, managed the day-to-day affairs of Ayodhya, and was passionately devoted to her husband despite his extracurricular activities.

Tap. Tap. Tap.  It was a knock on the door.  She was puzzled.  Who would be at their door at such a late hour?  Thinking that Rama must have forgotten his keys, Sita walked from the living room to the foyer.  She glanced over at the clock.  It was just past midnight, but she hadn't heard the chimes.  She flipped on the outside lights, turned the lock, and opened the door.  No one.  Only the sweet song of crickets.  She peered across the street to see if the neighborhood boys had been playing pranks again.  A black dog scampered down the pavement.  Sita sighed.  She closed the door and turned around to head to sleep.  A man with ten heads stood in front of her.  Every face smiled in unison.

"I am the one who knocks."

Black.

Rama stumbled home at 11 the next morning.  At 1 in the afternoon, he finally noticed that Sita was missing.  He summoned Hanuman.  "Find Sita for me, she seems to be missing."  Hanuman searched all of Ayodhya.  Sita was nowhere to be found.  He then checked the security cameras, and the verdict was unmistakable - Ravana had kidnapped Sita.  It was difficult to mistake a man with ten heads.  He sent a messenger to notify Rama and wasted no time going to the airport.  Within twenty minutes they were airborne and en route to Lanka.

Meanwhile, Ravana was busy trying to woo Sita.  She was held captive in the world's most beautiful garden, and Ravana brought her lavish gifts.  Sita could not remember the last time Rama had given her a gift or even written her a letter.  Yet she lay facedown on the ground, weeping for Rama.  Ravana tried in vain for the next hour to convince her to become his wife.  Frustrated, he gave her an ultimatum, "you have two months to join my bed, otherwise your head will be on a spike."

Hanuman's aircraft passed over the island of Lanka.  With the array of cameras mounted to the bottom of the plane, he was able to pinpoint Sita's location.  He dove out the door, plummeted towards the ground, and executed several front flips.  Two minutes later, he was standing next to Sita, and every guard within a mile was dead.

"Follow me."

Hanuman's Flight

Image by Lachlan Rogers

They ran to the center of the gardens where the plane had just landed on the grass.  Sita and Hanuman jumped into the plane and were back to Ayodhya before a soul in Lanka noticed anything wrong.  Sita was so relieved to be home and she sprinted into Rama's arms.  Rama smiled and said, "thank goodness Ravana slipped up this time.  I was looking forward to annihilating him."  He nonchalantly reached over and pressed a giant red button.  Two miles away, fire and rock spewed from the Earth as a missile lifted into the sky.  It detonated three hundred feet above the surface of Lanka with a blinding flash.  Two seconds later, all the blind men on Lanka were dead.

Rama's Missile Launch

Image from Wikipedia

The Earth shook and so did the gods.  "Rama, you have disgraced yourself by not meeting Ravana in battle and saving Sita yourself.  For this, you must die."  With a strike of lightning, Rama was dead.

Sita weeped for a fortnight.  They finally placed Rama's body on a pyre and the fire immediately consumed him.  Without a thought, Sita jumped into the fire with Rama.  She screamed in agony for an hour.  The wood was entirely consumed and yet Sita still burned.  Finally, she collapsed in a heap of ashes.  They say if you go to the field where she burned, you can still hear her screams reverberating off every surface.  Hanuman, now jobless and homeless spent the rest of his life in poverty.  Without a leader, Ayodhya fell into ruins.  Lanka is still absent of monkey life; the nuclear blast provides too many bananas of radiation.

Author's Note:  During a discussion in Sita Sings the Blues, one of the commentators mentions that it would have saved a lot of trouble if Hanuman had saved Sita when he was in Lanka.  I thought this was an interesting idea, and I wanted to explore what could have happened if Hanuman did save Sita.  The first half of the film focuses on Rama and Sita's relationship and leaves out many other details and stories.  The entire second half of the film is about Sita's exile after Rama sends her into the wilderness.  Sita Sings the Blues exaggerates Rama's abandonment of Sita.  I wanted to take this a step further and portray Rama as good-for-nothing.  Sita's abduction sets the direction for the rest of the story; I added the clock and dog as omens to foreshadow her eventual death.  My brother enjoys watching the show Airplane Repo.  I used their crazy methods of repossessing planes as an inspiration for Hanuman's rescue of Sita.  If you didn't follow the link, I used one of my favorite quotes from Breaking Bad.  I also referenced bananas as a benchmark for radioactive levels.  I thought it was fitting since the hero of the story is a monkey.

Bibliography:

Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley. Website: YouTube