E
pics like the Ramayana gain in resonance with every recension. Retired bureaucrat Ram Varma has laboured long and hard to produce his Ramayana, conceived like a “Baramasa” tribute. It follows the course of a seasonal appreciation, from Chaitra and Vaishakha through the searing summer and the rains until Phalgun, where Rama sheds his human form in the Sarayu river. This is a feisty personal appreciation rendered in verse, though rhyme and meter tend to be uneven. Yet, Varma’s intense engagement with his subject yields moving insights, while humorous and tragical interludes lend immediacy.