Epics of India - MLLL 4993-996

Author's Notes This story was primarily inspired by a part in the Ramayana titled 'The Bridge' 1 . However, this story does contain a lot of the background information from the rest of the Ramayana. I had already typed up a majority of the background before realizing that is was not really on topic, but it did not make sense to delete it. I envisioned that most of the Gods from the Ramayana would take the forms of animals. Rama himself is the commanding ant, and those who follow him are the rest of his friends and allies. It is not correct for ants to have mates in the case of Rama and Sita's ant versions; this has been ignored to simplify the story. Additionally, there is no love interest between Ron and the queen, which is different from the dynamic between Rama and Sita. The Madhya Pradesh is the largest forest in India 2 . Here is a picture of it! Source The Journey of the Ants Background It was a normal day in the Madhya Pradesh forest. The wind ble...

Story 1 - The Bridge 1 The bridge was interesting because it is the first part in the Ramayana where I noticed that the Gods did not answer to the requests of Rama. This lack of response from the God of the Ocean leads to Rama threatening to burn away all of the water so he and his army could cross. Responding to these threats the King of the Sea tells Rama to find another way by building a bridge across the sea. Most interestingly, this bridge can still be seen today. Here is an aerial image of it by CC-by-sa PlaneMad/Wikimedia. Story 2 - Kumbhakarna 2 This story was funny because the length that the rakshasas had to go to in order to awake the giant Kumbhakarna early. It is a bit crazy that being trampled by elephants or having trumpets played in ones ears had little effect on the sleeping giant. However, the gentle caress of beautiful women woke him up instantly. This depiction of Kumbhakarna reminds me greatly of Snorlax from Pokemon, perhaps a trainer could stumble...

Story 1 - Sampati and Jatayu 1 The story of Sampati and Jatayu has the underlying theme of getting carried away. Quite literally, in this case, the two eagles that 'flew too high in the sky'. It feel as though the meeting of Sampati is the result of Karma's influence. As Rama witnessed the death of Jatayu, he is then destined to find his brother in order to locate Ravana, Jatayu's killer 2 3 . It is through helping Jatayu, is Sampati inclined to inform them about the whereabouts of Sita's location. Story 2 - Hanuman's Leap 4 I found this story to be entertaining do to the outlandishness of the jumping competition between the monkeys. It started simple with them simply one-upping each other, but then it is told that Hanuman was able to jump "three thousand leagues towards [the sun]" In owning up to these stories of prowess, Hanuman is given the task up bounding across the sea to the city of Lanka. Of course, he was able to do so. Story 3 - Ha...

How do I tell you about this? Article 1 - Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback This article mentions one main flaw with how feedback currently works, and that is that "it focuses on the past, on what has already occurred—not on the infinite variety of opportunities that can happen in the future". This is really problematic and affects how the feedback is perceived. Rather than it leading to better performance in the future, it is viewed as a reminder of what was done wrong in the past. The process of giving individual FeedForward advice is detailed thoroughly in the article. Reading the responses of the individual that participated in the experiments is very interesting. They managed to turn the primarily negative process of receiving feedback into one in which the participants are happy and looking forward to their future work. Article 2 - How to Craft Constructive Feedback The main focus of this article was to match the kind of feedback that you give to what the...

Ganesha and Kartikeya Story 1 - Ganesha's Birth The birth of Ganesha was something that I mentioned in my last post about the class project. The story that I used there was lifted from the Wikipedia page on Ganesha. However there is a different telling of the story here 1 . In this version his parents Shiva and Parvati are referred to as Siwa and Uma respectively. Additionally the events that lead to Ganesha losing his head are vastly different. In this retelling, the loss of his head was due to the hubris of Uwa refusing to heed the warnings of Sani, rather than a raging Shiva. Alternatively, the Wikipedia article's story is also referenced in this video 2 . Regardless this is story that could be altered and retold to have many different meanings as it seems it has already been done. On the other hand, perhaps a story could be told to unify the two differences. Story 2 - Ganesha's Brother For the story revolving around Ganesha's brother, the race described i...