From Here To India- My Epics of India Course Blog

      For my Lab assignment this week I watched two videos, The Danger of a Single Story and Imaginary Friends and Real -World Consequences.      I really love the video about the Danger of a Single Story. I thought it was really eye-opening because in many ways I do allow a single story to become the only story. She made some very applicable examples. She talked about the images that were fed to us about Africa, images that I'd seen so many times. The example about Mexico was very personal to me, because I had planned to take a study abroad trip to Puebla for Spanish courses and my father managed to talk me out of it because he believed in the single story that terrible things happen to Americans there. We need to remember that stereotypes are not the full story and we need to keep an open mind.      Imaginary Friends and Real-World Consequences was also a great and interesting Ted Talk. As a huge Harry Potter fan, I was shocked when ...

    One story that really stood out to me was the story of the Battle of Rama and Ravana. It was an intense story that held my attention.      The story opens with Matali coming down on a chariot, offering to be Rama's charioteer. Agastya comes and offers advice to Rama about how to defeat Ravana. In order to defeat Ravana, Rama should hymm the sun. He then purified himself in the waters.    By this time Ravana was awake again and angry, and came back to Rama to fight him. Rama turns to fight him. The story describes the fight as two flaming lions fighting each other, which immediately put into my mind the image of Simba and Scar fighting in the animated version of the Lion King. Simba and Scar Fight, From Flickr.      The page ends with Rama trying to kill Ravana, cutting off head after head, but the heads of Ravana keep growing back. (Eventually Ravana is slain).      Overall I thought this was a really cool...

     I chose to shorten my notes down this time and chose a part of the story that caught my eye. I really liked the story of Sampati and Jatayu, because it reminds me of the story of Icarus and how he flew too close to the sun.      The story starts out with the two vulture brothers, Sampati and Jatayu, growing up together in the nest. As they grew, the nest started becoming much to small for them, so small in fact that they could hear and feel each others hearts beat because they were so close together. Eventually they longed to fly in the winds. So they did.     Unfortunately, the midday sun looked to them and Jatayu fainted, so great was the heat. Poor Sampati, wanting to help his brother as he fell, spread his wings and as he did so the sun burned them. Sampati fell, unable to fly and in a lot of pain.      He went to the cave of Saint Nishakara and asked why he wasn't allowed to die, because he was unable to fly and stil...