Portfolio Introduction

This portfolio is going to focus on my attempts at retellings of the stories we've read in Epics of India.


This first piece is an absurdist rewrite of the original tale of Hanuman's leap. I tried to take the original tale and eliminate some of the more magical elements of the tale and then do an aburdist version that's still loosely based in reality. Enjoy!


This second piece is also pretty absurd, though not quite as much so as the first one. It is the story of the Pandavas hunting the white deer and then their unfortunate trial at the lake but I've rewritten it pretty significantly and replaced the person asking the riddles with something else. Stephen King fans will probably figure it out pretty quickly. Here it is! I hope you enjoy it!


This third piece was kind of experimental but like most of my stories ended up being more comical than I had intended even if it's a bit more serious than my others. I should probably just accept that most of my stories are going to be based in comedy to some extent. This piece deals with the servant's perspective as he tries to save the Pandavas from the soon-to-be burned Laq palace.

This third story is part of a series of stories I've been working on. I was inspired by the Epified Krishna video series and I decided to tell the story of Krishna if he was mainly kept alive through blind luck rather than his divinity. I hope you enjoy it and I'll be adding stories to this one in the future as well. link

This next story in my portfolio is a continuation of the series I started several weeks ago. I've been working on this series several weeks now and I plan on finishing it up pretty quickly since the class is about over. Here again, you see Krishna, despite all his misfortune survive against great odds through blind luck. link

Story: The Bumbling God Part 3

The Bumbling God Part 3

As Krishna continued his life in the village, many of the villagers suddenly began to have dreams which urged them to leave the city and as these dreams continued for many nights, the families and people of the village finally packed up and moved. They wandered into a nearby forest where they decided to make their home. In this place, Krishna and his friends would play among the trees making music with flutes and other homemade instruments. They would do this every day, making beautiful and lighthearted music to raise the spirits of the forest. What they did not know was that there was a lake nearby that was home to an evil snake demon and the demon’s very presence made the water poisonous not only to drink but simply to the touch. If you even got any of the water on you, it would kill you within a few short minutes.

            One day Krishna was playing his flute in the woods and he suddenly realized that he didn’t hear the sounds of his friends singing or playing their instruments and so he wandered around looking for them. He found the poison lake surrounded by his dead friends. He fell to his knees and cried for them but suddenly a great snake sprang forth from the lake and rose into the air with the clear intent to eat Krishna. Krishna could not run very fast due to his clubfoot and so he was unable to flee and instead stared directly at the beast. It reared up and then sprang at him with its mouth wide open, prepared to eat the boy. All Krishna could think to do was throw his flute at the creature and he closed his eyes, lobbed the flute, and waited for death. But death did not come for him. He heard a horrible grinding sound and an angry roar and he opened his eyes to the sight of the snake with the flute stuck in its jaws forcing its mouth completely open so that it could not close its mouth. It writhed in agony clearly in pain but confused at what was preventing it from closing its mouth. Krishna hobbled away trying to get to the nearby trees where he could hide. The monster spotted him out of the corner of its eye and it tried to give chase but its vision was hampered by its open mouth and so it struggled to follow the boy. It glimpsed him out of the corner of its eye and lunged again with all its might but instead of hitting the boy, the snake found a tree and drove the flute into its brain, killing itself.

            This great commotion brought other villagers towards the sounds and when they found the boy Krishna next to the dead snake, they could not believe what had happened for clearly a boy with so many physical impairments could not defeat such a demon. The villagers found Krishna’s flute in the creature’s skull though and they came to believe that the boy had killed the snake even though he insisted he had not. He was too humble they said of him. The people would come to think of him as an avatar of one of the gods for no mere mortal would have such luck.

Author's Note: I've decided to continue this series I started two weeks ago. For those new to this piece, basically the idea is that Krishna in this story is still a god but only survives and succeeds through basically random chance. He's deformed and a little bit slow and somehow still always survives through something random happening. In the original source material, Krishna uses his divine powers to simply overcome the beast but here we see he simply lucks out completely but because he is so lucky, people begin to think he is something special. I got the idea for this series of stories mainly because in so many Indian tales that I've read for this class, the characters are all essentially godlike. When they have faults, they're often still fatal but they're still so far above regualr individuals that it made all the stories seem a bit too fantastical. I guess I'm kind of poking fun at it with a bit a flipped take. Now I have a character that is in no way fantastic. In fact, he's a bit slow and still he's able to survive essentially anything thrown at him, not through his won great abilities but because he is very lucky. If you liked this one, check out the others in the series!

bibliography: Epified Krishna, link

(Krishna statue, wikimedia commons)

Storytelling: The Bumbling God

The Bumbling God

And so it had been prophesied that the great king Kamsa would be laid low by the eighth child of his sister. Fearful of this prophecy, the great king had his sister and her husband imprisoned and each time she would bear a child, he would come into the room, take it from her and her husband, and kill it by smashing it against the cell wall. This continued many times over many years with his sister mourning in agony each time her child was taken from her.

            Finally, the time came when her eighth child was to be born. It was late at night and Kamsa was sleeping in his bed while the child came into the world. When the child was born, his mother and father looked him over and were forlorn for he was deformed and frail. His skin was fragile and tore easily, one of his legs was longer than the other, and his eyes were filled with thick clouds. They mourned for their poor child and his frailness. His mother named him Krishna.

            In the morning, Kamsa was informed by his men that the eighth child (the one that he had been warned of) had been born and so he went into the cell to finally kill this child and thus give himself immortality, but what he found did not frighten him. Instead, he was humored by what he found. “This child will never harm me. This child could never harm anyone except by accident perhaps. It will be lucky to survive a month on its own, It is sickly to look at. It poses no threat to me or anyone” he said and left laughing, feeling that the prophecy must have been wrong. There was no way such a weak and deformed child was going to pose any threat to him.

            After several days passed, Kamsa decided to free his sister and her husband, letting them return to their homes. “You pose no threat to me anymore” he said, sending them away from his palace with nothing but the clothes they wore. They wandered for most of the day, crossing a great bridge to reach a small village on the other side. There, they stopped and rested for the night.

            That very night, though, Kamsa had a nightmare that a great horror had befallen him and ended his life. He woke up terrified and called his soldiers, sending them forth into the nearby villages to slaughter the children that lived there. The child had to die. He had made a mistake. And so his soldiers went forth, killing hundreds of babies, but they did not go far enough to reach the village where the baby Krishna was hidden. It was too late and he had slipped through the king's mighty grasp.

            Kamsa felt tentatively safe, assuming the child had been found and killed, but he was never certain and for many months, he slept nervously, afraid of what he didn’t know. He had always known to trust the prophecies and he cursed himself for not simply killing the child when he had had the chance to do so. Now, there was no way to be certain if the child was still alive. He ordered his soldiers to search for his sister and her husband, but no matter how hard they looked, they could not find the couple or the child. Kamsa was left in a state of constant worry, unsure of what to do in order to try to save his life. He summoned mercenaries and demons alike and offered them great wealth if they could find his sister and her husband and slay the child that was with them. They all accepted and spread out across the countryside to hunt down the child.

Authors note: So I tried something new with this. I decided to write a story that’s going to be a part of a series. I will continue this story for the next few weeks. The idea here is that Krishna will grow up through the stories and survive constant deadly trials purely out of luck. He will be a bit of a bumbling and sickly idiot who is somehow saved through pure luck. The story isn't really laced with humor which I had originally intended. In fact, it's kind of dark and it's an interesting take on the constant role of divinity in these tales. I decided to turn it all on its head and have an important character who is only saved through constant luck. Krishna in this tale isn't powerful or imposing to look at. In this story, he's frail and sickly and it's a wonder he hasn't died of natural causes on his own yet let alone died from the people and things intentionally out to get him. This kind of fits in with the other absurd pieces I've put in my portfolio and I've been adding another chapter to this story every week since I wrote this piece so stay tuned and check out the future pieces.

Bibliography: Epified Krishna, link

(Krishna's great escape, wikimedia commons)

Story: The Lacquer Palace

The Lacquer Palace

            The Pandavas had been invited to stay in The Lac Palace, but expecting an evil plot, Vidura, half-brother of Pandu, father of the Pandavas, warned Prince Yudhishthira of what was to come.
"I fear you are in great danger," he said. "Make sure to move with caution as you proceed."
Prince Yudhishthira thanked Vidura and went on his way, worried about what was to come.

            When the Pandavas and Queen Kunti reached the palace, they marveled at the beauty of it, but Prince Yudhishthira saw that all the great tapestries and beautiful ornate rugs and furniture with wondrous scrollwork were all soaked heavily in something thick and black which reeked of strong alcohol and oil and thus he grew fearful. He warned his brothers and mother, Queen Kunti of what was happening around them and they too feared for their lives but no one knew how to escape for the palace was being watched and guarded.

            Now Prince Vidura still worried about the Pandavas and he had sent a worker of his to infiltrate the stores of oil and alcohol which were to have been used to soak the furniture and walls of the palace and to replace them with a watery tar that could easily be mistaken for oil but would neutralize the flammable liquids already in place. But the worker had made a mistake and instead of replacing the oil and alcohol with tar, he replaced it with a strong brown liquor that was foul to smell. The barrels of liquor had been a gift from a country far away called Ireland but all those who tried it had deemed it unpleasant to taste and instead many people had begun to use it for fuel for it burned quite well. It was also used as glue as it became thick like molasses if left to sit in the sun and it was completely inedible to all human beings except for those who made it.

            When the worker returned to Vidura and saw that the barrels of tar with which he was to replace the oil and alcohol were still there, he panicked and realized what he had just done. Vidura, immediately scolded the worker and sent him to save the Pandavas in another way. The worker dressed up as a woman and tried to seduce the leader of the guards, Purochana and his men who were watching the palace and waiting for a chance to burn it down, but he could not sway them and thus he was forced to try to come up with other methods in order to save the Pandavas. He was unable to come up with a bribe large enough to sway them as well and thus he grew desperate. He finally started digging and digging and digging, trying desperately to dig a tunnel into the palace. But he did not know where he was going when he was underground and he dug for many days, praying that the palace would not burn before he got there, but through a stroke of luck, he managed to reach the palace and accidentally knock free a group of tiles in the center of the palace where Prince Yudhishthira was sitting.

            That very night, the Pandavas snuck out through the tunnel that the worker had built and they went safely into the forest. As they fled, the palace was lit ablaze by the guards that had been watching it and it burned to the ground taking with it a beggar woman and her children who had slept there for the night. The air reeked of molasses as the thick tar-like alcohol burned the building down. When the fires ceased and the bodies were found, it was assumed that these were the bodies of the Pandavas and they were able to slip safely into the forests where they would stay for some time.

Author's note: I think I've done an okay job of making this piece more comic. I just decided to leave the comedy light in this one. The main change obviously is that the worker becomes the main protagonist of the story and through his blundering failures, only barely manages to accidentally save the Pandavas and Queen Kunti. I wanted to take on this story from a less historical-style point and also add some humor to it. Though it isn't an extremely comical piece still, it still has some comic elements which I think are the highlight of it. When I went back to edit this, I didn't end up making a ton of changes and I'm still not happy with this one. Well I just don't think I'm ever going to be particularly happy with this one. I could never really decide where to take it so I left the strange disconnected form as it is. It's not great but I just want to be done with it to move on to other pieces now.

Bibliography: Public Domain Mahabharata, link

(Draupadi s presented to a pachisi game, link)

Story: Hanuman's Fantastic Leap

Hanuman's Fantastic Leap

And so it came to pass that the band of the monkeys that had set forth to find the missing wife of Rama had reached the great sea that separated the  continent from the evil city of Lanka. Without any way to cross, it was then discussed among the monkeys how they were to cross such an immense ocean. Several monkeys joked that they could easily leap the entire distance of the ocean in a single bound, but then Hanuman (who was always boisterous and a bit foolhardy) boasted that he would leap over the entire length of the sea in one bound. The others did not take him seriously and largely ignored his comment, greatly frustrating him as they continued discussing how they were to cross the sea in more realistic ways.

As the others discussed their plans, Hanuman, dejected and upset, slunk away and attempted to assemble a catapult from the carts and equipment the monkeys had brought with them and he rolled it to the edge of the beach away from the sight of other monkeys. But when he tried to fire it, it split in half for he did not know what he was doing and so he was forced to rework his design and build it again from the scraps. This time, he was able to launch a rock a few feet but again, after several tries, it broke. He toiled tediously building and rebuilding again and again hoping to finish his task before they caught on, but each time he could still see them splash into the ocean and so he would disassemble his machine and rebuild it bigger and stronger each time. Whenever he would fire the machine, he would nervously glance in the direction where the others were still discussing their plans, afraid that they would hear him and come look for themselves what the ruckus was, but each time, no one came to see what Hanuman was up to. It was just assumed he was somewhere breaking things in retaliation for being ignored.This went on throughout the night with Hanuman finally creating an apparatus capable of launching a heavy log far out of sight beyond the edge of the horizon. Contented with himself, he broke for a quick meal, eating several bananas he found on a nearby tree. After he had finished his meal and while the others slept, Hanuman prepared himself a large tarp sewn together from the large leaves of the elephant ear plant of the forest. He planned to use the net he created in order to slow down his descent into Lanka so that he could land safely when he finally reached the other side of the great sea. He was confident that he would make it.

The following morning, the other monkeys went to the beach to see what kinds of ships they could launch from the shores, but they immediately found the giant catapult that Hanuman had built waiting for them. Hanuman himself sat in the basket holding a long stick with which he was trying to use to activate the firing mechanism and thus launch himself across the sea. The others begged Hanuman to stop what he was doing before he hurt himself, but he would not listen to them. The other monkeys rushed forward to try to steal the stick from Hanuman so that he could not fling himself to what was surely his certain doom, but instead they accidentally activated the apparatus and Hanuman was flung far into the sky, rocketing quickly beyond the horizon. The other monkeys mourned for the loss of their good friend now that he was surely dead. “What a fool he was," they said, telling one another that they did everything they could to stop Hanuman from his clearly insane path. They quickly agreed to build boats to cross the water in hopes that they might be able to recover the body of their foolish friend.

While the monkeys wailed for the death of their friend, Hanuman himself calmly soared through the air high above the water at extreme speed. He could see the fish swimming below him in the clear, blue waters and his eye was caught by a dark black spot on the ocean’s surface that continued to grow bigger and bigger below him. He watched it, curious, as it was moving right along below him matching his speed perfectly and thus Hanuman assumed this must be his shadow until suddenly, the black dot, which had by then grown extremely large in size, burst apart at the surface of the sea and now from that same spot, a large shark sped through the air towards Hanuman with its gaping maw open and gnashing. Hanuman panicked in the air and he flung his arms wildly trying to move out of the way of the shark. He shook so wildly that he almost let loose the tarp that he had tied tightly to his back with ropes. The shark did not reach Hanuman though, falling several meters short, and it fell back into the sea below with a massive splash. It did not again try to reach Hanuman but the monkey kept watching nervously waiting for such an attempt. The rest of his flight went peacefully.

As Hanuman neared Lanka, he observed thousands of towers and buildings that made up the great city. He prepared himself both mentally and physically for what was to come. He was to invade the city and save Sita all before the other monkeys even knew he was there. Then they'd finally appreciate his work. Hanuman released his great tarp to slow himself down so that he could land safely but instead he slammed into the side of a tower and died.

Bibliography: Public Domain Ramayana, Hanuman's Leap

Author's Note: I wanted to try to remove some of the explicit magical elements found in one of the stories we've read so I decided to make a more humorous and more realistic (though still pretty ridiculous) retelling of Hanuman's leap. The main change is that I simply eliminated the role of magical qualities (other than the talking monkeys). There's no super powers. There's no climbing mountains in minutes. The only absurd part is the catapult itself which at least is a real thing even if the events that happen with it are a bit far-fetched. I tried to keep up some of the absurdity and the ending really plays into that since it completely violates the original ending and would basically ruin the entire rest of the Ramayana without some heavy narrative rework. This whole story is kind of a twist on the absurdity of what's often happening in the Ramayana. The reader knows what's happening is insane and so it's puzzling when suddenly things are realistic once again. It was a fun little experiment.
I've tried to revise this story to make many aspects of this story clearer and I really tried to make the comedic elements a little more blunt. I think the story is more pleasant to read if the comedic style and tone are maintained. Originally I had wanted the piece to be more matter-of-fact but I think the story is much more pleasing to read when it's left to be a little more comic. By changing some of the more serious parts to reflect that, it makes the overall piece both more stylistically uniform and a more enjoyable read for the audience. The absurdity makes it a much stronger piece overall, I think.

/(Hanuman and Surasa, wikimedia commons)