Extra Reading: Nine Ideal Indian Women

Nine Ideal Indian Women: Sita, Promila, and Shakuntala

by Sunity Devee

I read someone's story a few days ago about Promila and I really liked it so I wanted to read the actual story. 

Promila was a princess who was married to Indrajit, the son of Ravana. She, like most other wives in the epics, was very loyal to her husband. She never put him down or said no to anything. Even when he had to go to war with Rama and Lakshmana. He said he would come back by nightfall but he didn't and she started getting worried. She got on her horse and went out into the enemy camp to find him. Upon finding him, she got so happy but also so scared for him. She tried to stay strong but she eventually caved and cried. Indrajit goes off to pray to Agni, the fire god, but instead sees Lakshmana. He prays to him thinking he is Agni and asking to give him strength to defeat Rama and Lakshmana. Lakshmana in anger hit Indrajit and then a fight ensued. Indrajit was hit fatally by one of Lakshmana's arrows and is dying. When Promila found out, she was ready to leave the world too because she couldn't live without her husband. She took permission from her in-laws, distributed her jewelry, and said her last goodbyes. She went to the funeral pyre her husband was on and sat herself on it, and let herself be consumed in the flames. 

Promila on her black horse going into the enemy camp. Source: Nine Ideal Indian Women

Growth Mindset: Cat Memes for Days

Source: Growth Mindset Cats.

I like this one because I've always believed in the "learn from your mistakes" concept. I have done that various times in my life. Plus, I love how cute and innocent the cat looks in this meme.

Source: Growth Mindset Cats.

I love this one because this really speaks me. When I found something difficult, I used to give up easily. I was especially like that during freshman year. I think over the course of the last 3 and half years, I've learned to not give up so easily and keep trying.

Wikipedia Trails: From Adam's Bridge to Black magic

Wikipedia Trails: From Adam's Bridge to Black Magic

NASA image showing Adam's Bridge connecting India (on top) to Sri Lanka (bottom). Source: Wikimedia Commons. 

I started this trail off with Adam's Bridge. It is mentioned in the Ramayana that this was a bridge built  by Rama, Lakshmana, and Hanuman to reach Lanka to save Sita. I was curious to see if there actually is something still there. From the pictures you can tell that there is still land that connects India and Sri Lanka, but it is not a whole landform. It has broken down but still forms a sort of connected looking path. One of the theories for this is that it occurred when Sri Lanka broke away from the Indian mainland, which to me makes the most sense. 

From there I went to the article about King Arthur. I had read books about this when I was in grade school so I was curious to know more about the legend of King Arthur. After reading the article, I learned the difference between the children's book and the real legend. 

The next article I went to was the one about The Sword in the Stone. It is a 1963 Disney movie. I was curious about it because I wanted see how Disney changed it up from the legend to make it more child-friendly.

The last article I went to was the one about Black magic. I was curious about this because I wanted to see the origins of black magic. It has always been associated with witches and devil worship, so I was curious to see how and when that started. 

Extra Reading: More Babbitt Jataka Tales

Jataka Tales

by Ellen C. Babbitt

For this extra reading, I read the Part B of the Jataka Tales. Just like last time, I had a good time reading these as well.

I really liked reading "The Ox Never Envied the Pig." Basically, the story is about these two oxen brothers who do all of the hard work on the farm and are only given straw and grass to eat while this lazy pig doesn't do anything and gets good food to eat. One of the oxen, Little Red, is grouching about having to do hard work but not getting good food in return. The older brother, Big Red, says to Little Red that he shouldn't be envious of the pig. The pig is being fattened up with the "food of death." They're going to eat the pig for the wedding feast, so be happy that you get to live a long life.

I really liked that one because I've always lived by the moral of the story. "Work hard and you'll be rewarded in some way." I'm not going to say that I don't envy people because I do, but I know my hard work will pay off one day.

Pig. Source: Max Pixel.

Week 13 Review

I love Greek Mythology so I enjoyed watching this comparison video of both Indian and Greek Mythology. I like the comparisons that were made in this video. I knew a few things about both the Indian god/goddess and about the Greek god/goddess, so the comparisons made sense to me. I feel like if I had taken both this Epics of India and the Myth and Folklore class at the same time, then I would've been able to get a more clearer understanding of the comparison.

Whatever... I'm late anyway. Source: Class annoucements. 

I really liked this graphic because this is so me. I have moments where I'm early to things, but most of the time I'm late. I usually walk into my morning class at least 5-10 minutes later. One time I ended up being 20 minutes late that I had to sit on the ground because I couldn't find a seat. It's a good thing that the classroom had carpet and not tile.

Famous Last Words: Surviving these next few weeks

So here it is. The Sunday of Thanksgiving break, the end of this much, much needed break. My goal for this break was to finish up this class but that didn't happen sadly. However, I'm going to try to set that as my goal for this next week. I definitely want to finish before dead week. That just means I'm going to need to invest a whole lot of time into this class now.

However, this was my best week of class because I'm actually going to end up doing all of the assignments, meaning all of the regular and the extra credit. I'm lowkey proud of myself. I'm going to set the goal to do the same thing this next week too. Hopefully, I won't have to do all of the extra credits to reach my desired grade. I don't think I will have to but we'll see. The only thing I didn't really like was my story I wrote this week. It wasn't my best because I really couldn't come up with anything. I kind of just threw some thoughts around and it into a story.

This week I got to do some fun readings. For the regular readings, I finished up the Epified: Mahabharata videos I had started. For the extra credit readings, I read some Jataka Tales and they were fun to read. I have found other videos from the same channel that I will use as extra credit readings. I started watching the Sita Sings the Blues movie for this week's reading and I'm already enjoying it so much. I'm so excited to finish it! It's honestly the best thing I've watched in this class. I don't know how I'll write a story for it because it is already so awesome itself, but I think I'll be able to come up with something.

I'm honestly so stressed about all of my classes, but I'm glad I have this class as a bit of break from all of the hard classes. I actually look forward to doing the readings for this class, especially for this week.

Meme I made. Woody's face describes me perfectly. Source: ImgFlip.

Learning Challenge: Read an Article about Empathy

Learning By H.E.A.R.T.

I decided to read an article about empathy for a learning challenge. I picked the article "3 Little Tricks to Deal With People Who Offend You" by Leo Babauta. This was a really fun article to read. I decided to read this article because I feel like I do take some things to heart, especially things that I really shouldn't and I get offended. It's not really the everyday things that the author wrote about in the article. It's the mean words that people say that I take to heart. I read this article in hopes that I might find a way to not do that.

• One thing that was confirmed for me in this article was what they wrote in the second point. The comparison they used was really good. They described you and other drivers on the road to you in a raft and twigs floating down the river. They twigs aren't really trying to get in your way. They're just there, just like how other drivers aren't purposely trying to bother you on the road. I realized that I'm not so easily offended by that. I kind of just mind my own business and don't get bothered unless people are being obnoxious and annoying.

• One thing that the author mentioned they do is give people a mental hug when they think someone is using rudeness as a coping mechanism. I think that's something new I'll try. I myself am usually so stressed all the time that I feel like I've unconsciously been rude before. Since finals are coming up, I know how stressed out the population of OU is going to be so I'm going to mentally hug someone when I see them being rude.

Mental hug. Source: Flickr.

• One thing that I'm curious to explore is the Get Big theory. Get Big means to get the bigger perspective about a situation. I think I do that anyway, but not as often as I should. I do tend to act like a brat sometimes. I need to learn to see the bigger perspective of a small problem.

Extra Reading: Babbitt Jataka Tales

Jataka Tales 

by Ellen C. Babbitt. 1912.

For extra credit reading, I read through Part A of the Babbitt Jataka Tales. 

The one I really liked was the How the Turtle Saved His Own Life. In this one, there are little princes that had a lake in the courtyard that their dad, the king, had made for them. The king had asked some men to put fishes in it. The princes were looking at the fishes when they saw the Turtle. They had never seen one before so they were scared and though it as a demon. They ran to their father and told them there was a demon in their lake. The king ordered his men to catch the demon and bring it to him. When the turtle was brought in, the king ordered his men to kill. The men started giving out ideas on how to kill the turtle. Then one old man who was afraid of the water said to throw it into the lake where it flows by the rocks in to the river. When the turtle heard the old man, he said to the King something like "what did I do that you would even think about doing such a dreadful thing to me? The other plans were bad, but to throw me into the lake?" So when the king heard the turtle, he ordered his men to throw the turtle into the lake immediately. The turtle laughed to himself once he was in the water because he knew the king and his men didn't know how safe he actually was in the water.

Turtle swimming. Source: Wikimedia.

I really liked this one because it had good old-fashioned psychology and trickery. The Turtle was the smartest one out of all of them.

Tech Tip: Meme Generator

Tech Tip: Meme Generator

I used the ImgFlip meme generator to make a meme for another blog post and now I feel like I'm going to keep making memes because I love memes. 

The meme I created for the Growth Mindset blog post. Source: ImgFlip.