Author: The talented, Amish Tripathi
Amish is one of my favourite authors, and I won't further indulge in why his books are my favourite, as I have written in my previous blogs in detail about his super talent of being an excellent storyteller. This blog is more about the story itself and it's characters.
Ram is understandably the ‘perfect’ leader and king and husband and son and what not! He is idolised by everyone, including the villain himself! He probably was, that kind of an individual who by all means deserved all the attention, ultra respect, and admiration that he was getting from every possible direction, however To a reader like me, it just seemed like he was surrounded by a lot of ‘kiss-ass’ people. Like how could he not have even one hater, or atleast someone who perhaps thought out loud that there is just too much hype around this man for whatever reason! The idea of the perfect individual, in this case, king Ram, is not only ostentatious but also quite frankly over the top unbelievable.
Despite Ram being the ‘hero’ of the book 4 of Ramchandra series, I found my own set of favourite characters as I drew closer to the grand finale. Characters who seemed real, sensible, away from any limelight, and to some extent believable. Here they are:
Sursha: fiercely confident, extremely expressive, an equalist, hopeless romantic who didn’t shy away at all from making the first move when it came to expressing her romantic feelings for Hanuman. She was a bad bitch and I loved that about her.
Arishtanemi: The silent lover of Sursha, despite knowing that her heart was for another man. And yet he avenged her death. That’s like an amalgamation of emotions and feelings and honestly, to an extent relatable.
Shatrughan: Intelligent, away from limelight, Sensible about his weakness, very logical.
Raavan: Conversationalist, intelligent, talks straight up, realist, reader, and philanderer and torturer too unfortunately, but that’s what made his character more believable. He had a fan following, but he also had a massive number of haters too, and that’s what made his character more believable!
Vibhishan: Opportunist, honest to himself at-least, cockish, loved flattery, was very good in his craft. He was like a middle class businessman of today’s world, trying to save his life from the atrocities of the forced leadership while helping the winning team, and safeguarding his long term interests while doing so. The perfect selfish man! Not a bad thing though.
Gajraj: Naive, docile, honest, sincere, practically a nobody. I like nobodies.
I would give this piece of story telling a 7/10 rating!