Growing up there’s always someone that grabs your attention. You can’t recall the exact moment but you just know all of a sudden they were your focus in life and you had never been happier.
Ana grew up as a princess and she was always told one day her king would come. Little did she know there would be many princes wanting to marry her. She was cute, but she wasn’t the prettiest girl in the kingdom. I think what made her so desirable was her courageousness to try whatever she wanted. It was hard for a man to find a woman that would be his wife and friend. Up until recently it was frowned upon for a woman to participate in the same pastimes as a man. That didn’t stop Ana though. She was so anxious to try everything she had been told not to her entire life. She loved running through the woods, shooting animals with her bow and arrows, riding horses, trying on armor and pretend to fight with different weapons.
Her brothers found her behavior absurd and they couldn’t help but tell their friends about her when they went out. Due to the big mouths of her brothers, all the men in the kingdom and some men from surrounding kingdoms had heard of Ana. Ana’s father was so pleased there were multiple men that wanted to marry his daughter. Mostly because he thought he could benefit from all the gifts the men would give him. He asked for crazy things that he didn’t need like a statue of himself made out of chocolate, a rare thing to find in their area.
Man after man came by their castle giving Ana’s father gifts trying to impress him. Until one day Rama, a prince that he had heard was incredibly strong, came by. Ana’s father was gifted a bow long ago but he was never that athletic, plus he couldn’t pick it up. He was sure this young man could get rid of this stupid bow so he asked him to break it. Without a sweat the young man picked it up and broke it and a large thunderbolt came down from the sky. Ana’s father could not believe he broke it. That bow was from a god!
As Ana was being given to Rama, Parashurama appeared out of nowhere. Parashurama was an avatar of the god Vishnu and he was taller than all the castles in the kingdom! He exclaimed that Ana should be his wife and no one else's. When her father asked what he could give him he replied with wealth, so of course Ana's father accepted. A hard lesson he would learn, though, was that having all the money in the world could not give you happiness.
Ana was devastated her father gave her to Parashurama. She fell in love with Rama the moment she saw his face. Nonetheless, Parashurama was to be her husband. She decided to make the best of the situation and try to become friends with Parashurama. Thankfully once you got through his tough guy front he was actually a nice and sweet guy. They talked for hours getting to know one another. Parashurama took Ana on the coolest adventures. She didn’t think of it before but how cool is it that her husband can fly wherever he wants? He can also throw lighting bolts, and help her reach high places like the tops of waterfalls!
Ana got just what she wanted after all. She was married to her best friend.
Bibliography: This story comes from the PDE version of
Ramayana
Author's note: I got this idea as I was reading the
Ramayana. In the original story Rama wins Sita as his wife by breaking the bow. Parashurama comes in just to yell at them for breaking the bow.
While reading this I thought why doesn’t Parashurama take Sita as his own wife? After all he was obviously the biggest and strongest of the men at Sita’s swayamvara. He was depicted as bigger than a giant! He was incredibly large compared to everyone else surrounding him in the pictures. So I incorporated that in my story!
One of the reasons I thought of this “there’s always someone bigger/better topic” was because the Texas slogan “everything is bigger and better in Texas” was a topic of conversation at my house the day before I wrote my story. Bigger doesn’t always mean better but for Sita’s sake I wanted it to, so I made Parashurama a nice and friendly husband. Another reason is I thought of how whenever most people compete for something at a young age it’s like out of nowhere here comes someone older and “bigger and better.” That definitely happened to me when I was younger.
The picture was my main source for showing just how much bigger Parashurama was than Rama. While reading the Ramayana, this image stood out to me because I didn’t visualize just how big Parashurama was until I saw it. It is part of a bigger picture of everyone that was at the swayamvara. I wanted to just focus of these two since they were the main subject of my story.
I chose the story of Parashurama from the Ramayana to write my story over because I thought that it was a little odd for Rama to be so idolized at the swayamvara when there was another avatar of Vishnu there as well. Even after Rama showed Parashurama his strength I still thought what is stopping this guy from doing whatever he wants?
