Book review - ASURA : tale of the vanquished; the story of Ravana andhis people by Anand Neelakantan

"HISTORY WAS WRITTEN BY WINNERS NOT WARRIORS."

The above phrase is a universal truth. But this book is indeed an untold story of  a warrior and his people who lost the war. The people about whom we are being taught that those were evils and against humans. This is autobiography of anti-hero of Ramayan and his people. This is Ravanayan.

I bought this book because I read about Asuras in The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi in which he wrote that the Asuras were not evil, they were just different. I wanted to know more about them. Author Anand Neelakantan wrote about them brilliantly.

The story starts with Ravana as a child - a poor child with his mother, two brothers and a sister. They were poor and had to beg to the king (who was his step-brother) for food and money. But his poorness couldn't stop him to saw big dreams of conquering the world. It talks about his journey to India and lesson learned under Mahabali. The logic behind his ten heads is explained brilliantly.

This book talks about the best time of India under Asuras, how the Devas attacked them and killed their people, children and raped their women.

The common man suffered in even the best times. Bhadra - the common man of this story suffered too even though he did everything he could and do for his king. The story of Bhadra is a touching one. He lost his family, his love & everything and remained a looser in the end as his king Ravana. The author also wrote how the caste system of Devas made the common man suffer even though he follow the codes written in Vedas.

The book talks about the winning streak of Ravana throughout India and his changing behavior towards everyone including his family & himself. The author portraited him as a family man as he cares about his family, his brothers, his wife & his children . It is known from Ramayan too about his faith in Shiva and how talented musician he was. We consider he kidnapped Sita because of his lust but this book has different reason for his this act.

The war was fought between Ravana & Rama was last one to be seen by many warriors. The author wrote that the it was Devas who broke the war codes - they attacked at nights, raped women,  killed children.

Many Ravana friends betrayed him and fought against him. In the end when Ravana was dying, he look back to his life and mistakes made by him.

The best line of the book is : "..... I had been born to fulfil someone else's destiny. To allow someone else to become God."

Now coming to some thing I don't like about this book. The book is huge, having 500 pages. I don't mind such huge book but few chapters could be written in a single paragraph.  The Author wrote about the Asuras, good work, but he made the same mistake. He made the opposite side evil (Devas in this case).

Bhadra's story is good and touching one as I wrote earlier. But it gets boring and frustrating some times.

But Overall, I will give it 7 out of 10. It is good read. I will advice that those who are interested in myths should read this.