By the late 1980s, as I stepped into my twenties, this beloved figure had been replaced by another and aggressively re-imagined personage, a muscular, militaristic Ram spearheading a campaign of cultural and political revanchism. And yet this Ram also embodied, in the words of the 16th century saint-poet Surdas, the peerless ideal of ‘ nirbal ke bal Ram’, ‘the power of the powerless’. Oblivious of his divinity, not immune to error, this Ram was rebuked and instructed in good conduct by the dying Vali, the monkey king whose treacherous killing remains a stain on his reputation. AS A CHILD in the 1970s, my image of Ram was that of a warrior conflicted about his role, torn between love and duty, his vulnerability evident in his struggle to serve an elusive dharma that shifted from one situation in his life to the next.
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