Book Review- ‘War of Lanka’

Finished reading the latest book by Amish Tripathi ‘War of Lanka’. Not really sure if I liked it, had to finish it because of the previous three books in the Ramchandra series. The book left me contemplating how much liberty is too much liberty while re-telling the epics. Unique selling proposition of Amish is bringing in philosophical debates from our epics and intermingling them very lucidly for the readers. I found it lacking in this book!

There are three points that immediately come to my mind after reading ‘War of Lanka’

1. The author wants to drill down some messages to his audience through the book, like the spirit of patriotism, women empowerment etc.
2. In his first book Amish integrated the Nirbhaya case into his story, in this book too he has assimilated various contemporary issues in his re-telling of Ramayana.
3. The stories and characters as we know and have heard in Ramcharitmanas have been tinkered a little too much. This has both aspects, like you get more perspective about the characters of Bharat, Shatrughan, Kumbhakaran, Indrajit etc but there is a significant change in other aspects.

Amish being the thoughtful person that he is, must have his detailed reasons of tinkering the story of Lord Ram but I found the balance in the old and the modern missing. It was exactly like how my father, who regularly reads Ramcharitmanas, had felt after reading the first book (Scion of Ikshvaku) of the series. There was praise in the effort but the emotional element with the text was missing.