Jaane kya hoga Rama re

In the last nine years that I've lived in Singapore, I've heard all sorts of things, theories and explanations about India that I never even knew about. For example, a Singaporean I know recently remarked that "all south Indians are dark-skinned but north Indians are fair because they have some Caucasian blood." Sheesh. Some of the stories and theories are so random, unheard of and out-of-the-blue that I actually have to go and google them up to get my facts right before I get into the argument. And just when I think I've heard everything, someone tells me something else about India that I had no idea about.

Recently, I heard something quite odd, and I've been thinking about it since. Someone at my workplace said that Diwali is celebrated in South India a day earlier than in North India because Lord Rama travelled from Lanka through southern India to his kingdom Ayodhya in the north. I had never heard of that before. The next thing I know - there will be a new theory that Diwali is celebrated in Singapore (on yet another day!) because Lord Rama probably had a detour at Singapore - perhaps Sita wanted to pick up a few things from Orchard Road - and Lakshman wanted an ipod from Mustafa. Sheesh. But then, trying to keep an open mind, I decided to do some investigation into this.

It sounded quite strange to me because from all my Amar Chitra Katha memory, Diwali is celebrated for a number of reasons - two of which are that Lord Rama returned to Ayodhya after killing the demon Ravana, and his subjects lighted lamps to welcome him back; and that Lord Krishna killed Narakasura on this day. I would assume that either the whole of India would celebrate it on the same day (the day the bad guy died) to celebrate the triumph of good over evil, or they would have their own reasons to celebrate it on different days, such as the ones listed above.

So if this theory was true - if the people of the south did indeed welcome Lord Rama the way the people of Ayodhya did their exiled king and called it Diwali, wouldn't every other state that he passed on his way, also welcome him? And if so, how many Diwalis are we talking about then? Confused, I turned to the only one who I always turn to when I face eternal questions about life and other dilemmas - the Internet.

But then, Ramayana is a story, and just like any other story, has so many versions floating on the net that it is impossible to verify what the actual one is, unless a very frustrated Valmiki finds a way to intervene and clarify. So I tried to reason it out - and almost went insane in the process.

The first question I started thinking was - what was the mode of transport? I'd forgotten about the Puspak Viman bit when my brain was processing this. So I'll just take you through the thoughts that ran across my mind. If the theory was true and Rama did indeed go to Ayodhya through south India, he must have actually walked from the southern tip of India all the way up to Ayodhya (somewhere in present-day Uttar Pradesh). I paused to wonder why he walked though. Why didn't Hanuman offer to drop him off at Ayodhya, and do away with the stopovers? But then again, Hanuman's propeller had caught fire - actually, he had lit his propeller to destroy Lanka - and he was probably not in the best flying condition. Or maybe it was because he only had two shoulders - one for Ram and the other for Lakshman - and now there was Sita, who probably preferred walking to the unbelted flying experience on the rather unusual vehicle.

I don't remember seeing any picture of Lord Rama on horseback. So it did look like he walked home. The walking theory also makes sense if you look at the big gap between Dussehra (when Ravana was actually killed) and Diwali, unless the trio decided to take up a good holiday package for a Lanka tour before going home. Anyway, say that he walked. So according to this theory, he was in south India on Day 1 where Diwali v.1 was celebrated, and he had reached Ayodhya by Day 2 for Diwali v.2? Erm, that was some fast walking, considering India's area. Even if he, being the divine one that he was, walked that fast, what about Sita and Lakshman? And as far as I know, everyone arrived in Ayodhya together. I still remember pictures in chapters on Diwali, showing the people of Ayodhya lighting lamps with Rama, Sita and Lakshman walking towards them.

Even if we were to assume that Hanuman did drop them off at the border (perhaps he had no landing rights in Ayodhya) and they walked to their palace from there, surely it wouldn't have taken Hanuman 2 days to fly from the south to the north?

The only way I can explain this would be to assume that Rama & co. reached Rameshwaram first where he got the first welcome-back-party (Diwali v.1), rested the night and then Hanuman flew them all to Ayodhya the next day for welcome-back-party part II (Diwali v.2) the next day. However, this raises another question - what about the regions between Rameshwaram and Ayodhya? Why did the ones close to Rameshwaram decide to go with v.1, while the ones nearer to Ayodhya with v.2? Surely there was no north-south divide in those days? Wasn't the north-south divide invented in 1947 when the Indian people suddenly realised, "Oh shit! The British have left. Whom do we fight now? Damn! Oh oh I know I know! Let's fight each other!" (If you read the Rediff movies website the way I do, you will know what I am talking about - every frickin' article, even it's about the de-enhancement of Rakhi Sawant's enhanced assets, will end with comments where north Indians and south Indians are mud-slinging each other. And suddenly a non-Indian will drop by, laugh at everyone, and the comments will subside, only to arise in the next irrelevant article.)

Update: Thanks to information from TMaYaD and Cinderella, my memory was jogged. Apparently the trio went home in the Puspak viman, arranged by Ravana's brother Vibheeshan. Holy cow! Doesn't this mean that they never even set foot in south India after the Lanka battle? I would assume that the PV took off from Lanka and it was a direct flight to Ayodhya? Sheesh. So this still doesn't explain the 'theory'.

The more I thought - the crazier I went. Our generation still had some good sources of information when we were growing up. We had stories from the Ramayana and Mahabharata in our school books. We had Amar Chitra Katha (which I thought was the most brilliant concept ever!). We also had Ramanand Sagar and BR Chopra (I wonder how faithful they were to the text though.) Then came movies like Asoka which tore apart history and literature by getting Kareena Kapoor in a wet half-sari frolicking around the so-not-Asoka-Asoka SRK. Everything is already all mixing up in my head. I'm wondering what muddled version of the ancient epics will be known to the next few generations.

Jaane kya hoga Rama re...