The Flashback

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Srimate SrivanSatakopa Sri Vedanta Desika Yatindra Mahadesikaya nama:

 

The Flashback

 

 

Whether it be the " Silver Screen " or the Idiot Box, narration of a story

requires a special talent, if it is to grip the attention of viewers. Even the

best of stories would fail to enthuse, if told in a lackadaisical manner.

 

We often find the paradox of an extremely good storyline suffering due to

insipid narration. If the director wants to keep the viewers' attention riveted

to the screen, he has to ensure that at no point the picture or serial suffers a

drag. To this end, several techniques are employed by successful Directors. One

of these is the Flashback.

 

 

 

In simple terms, Flashback can be defined as the out-of-turn narration of an

important event in the story. Normally, episodes in the tale are narrated

sequentially, in their logical order of occurrence. Thus, in telling the tale of

a person, we find his birth chronicled first, then his youth, his growing-up

into an adult and finally into an old man. The events at each stage of his life

are narrated in the chronological order of their occurrence. You don't find his

marriage recounted at the fag end of his life, nor his graduation told after his

middle-age happenings. This is the normal mode of story telling.

 

 

 

In the case of a Flashback, however, an event belonging to an earlier part of

the story is narrated subsequently, with telling effect.

 

 

 

When the hero, now in the evening of his life, meets a lady (who looks vaguely

familiar) at a party by sheer chance, his fading memory is jogged into action.

His thoughts fly back to the golden years of his youth, when he had met the lady

in question and had lost his heart to her. However, due to the intervention of

the lady's parents who consider the impecunious hero an unsuitable match for

their daughter, the girl is spirited away to a distant hill-station, never again

to be seen by the hero. The hero pines away for her, but in time, forgets the

ladylove and marries another girl, raising a happy family of sons and daughters.

All these memories of the past, some pleasurable and some painful, suddenly

flood into the hero's mind, giving him pangs of intense and inexpressible

emotion.

 

 

 

In this tale, the normal mode of narrative would be to chronicle the hero's

tender love and affection for this strange lady, while portraying his youth and

before his marriage with the second woman in his life. However, we find that

viewers are kept ignorant of this significant event in the hero's life, till

almost the very end. Then, to give an interesting twist to the tale, this

episode is brought in almost as an afterthought, totally out-of-turn, at a

period in the hero's history to which it doesn't belong. This, then, is the

Flashback.

 

 

 

All Readers who patronise films would agree that this technique is employed with

telling effect by most Directors. The surfacing of a significant event at a

later stage in the tale provides an element of surprise and serves to sustain

viewer interest. Thus, the Flashback is indeed an indispensable tool, which

every Director keeps hidden in his bag of tricks, in his efforts to keep the

narrative interesting and the viewer guessing till the very last scene.

 

 

 

Who do you think was the first to employ this Flashback, whether in print or on

the screen? Several famous names spring to your mind-Cecil B. Demille and so on.

You would however be wrong, however ancient a director you were to mention.

 

 

 

" Since when did you turn into a film critic? And shouldn't you stick to what you

know (or think you know), rather than venture into alien areas? " enquires my

impatient daughter, who insists on reading an article while being composed,

without waiting for the end product to emerge. Ruing the impertinence of today's

youth, I finally decide to get to the point.

 

 

 

If Srimad Ramayanam is known as the " Adi Kaavyam " , it is not without reason.

Predictably, it is the very first work of Epic proportions known to mankind. It

is perhaps the first attempt to reduce in writing, a tale spanning more than

11000 years (Sri Rama is reported to have reigned for eleven thousand

years- " Dasa varsha sahasraani, dasa varsha sataani cha-Ramo raajyam

upaasitvaa " ), thus becoming the first historical work. It is the first narrative

to bring into play and chronicle the doings of a bewildering number of

characters, good and bad. It is the first work to portray the " nava rasaas " or

the nine types of emotion and the first too to bring to man the exalted Vedic

wisdom in an extremely palatable form. It is the first guidebook for Mankind,

laying down the do's and the don'ts, not in the form of cryptic exhortations as

in the Vedas, but by portrayal in the eminently acceptable format of a story,

albeit a true one. It is the first eyewitness account, having been written down

by Sri Valmiki, as he saw it with the aid of Brahma's blessing. It is the first

book too to accord an exalted pedestal to women-so much so that the entire

Ramayanam is considered to be but a tale of Sita Piraatti- " Kaavyam Ramayanam

kritsnam Seetaaya's charitam mahat " .

 

 

 

With so many first's to his credit, is it surprising that Sri Valmiki was the

first creative artiste to employ the Flashback technique too? And not once, but

several times throughout the course of the Epic. And each time with a telling

effect that leaves the reader surprised and stupefied. All these Flashbacks

serve to sustain reader interest in a story, which has a fairly simple outline

and could be told in a few sentences. If this tale has been spun out, in all its

intricate and engrossing detail, into a mammoth work of 24000 couplets, readers

would understand the distinguished Author's resort to the Flashback, to ensure

that the reader's interest is retained undiminished till the very end. A few

such instances are recounted below.

 

 

 

We know only too well the two boons Kaikeyee was granted by Dasaratha, in return

for her assistance at the Emperor's battle with Sambaraasura. What would be the

logical context to recount this episode? Naturally, this event belongs to the

initial chapters, notably the 6th, which chronicles Dasaratha's accomplishments

in detail.

 

However, the first we hear of this is from the mouth of Manthara, who reminds

Kaikeyee of the event of the distant past and advises her to seek the two boons

for the coronation of Bharata and the banishment of Sri Rama. Readers would

appreciate that it is this timely reminder of the hunchback that changes the

entire course of the Epic, but for which Rama would have been duly anointed

Prince on the appointed day and the purpose of the avataaram (viz., Ravana

vadham) would have remained unaccomplished. Thus the very first Flashback in the

epic serves to impart an interesting turn to the tale.

 

 

 

Another tale relating to Dasaratha, which is not recounted in the chronological

context, is his accidental killing of an elderly Rishi's son. The victim, when

breathing his last, curses the Emperor to suffer from the same pangs of

separation from his progeny, which the slain Rishikumara's elderly and blind

parents would. Though Dasaratha must have had many a private moment with his

Queen Kousalya during his long reign of sixty thousand years, the Emperor sees

fit to tell her about this, only after Rama's departure to the forest, his

memories jogged by his own Putra Shokham. The Flashback here serves to emphasise

the poignancy of the situation, with Dasaratha, about to breathe his last due to

the sudden loss of the apple of his eye, engaging in a bout of soul-searching

and confession.

 

 

 

Another interesting Flashback, relating to Sita Piratti, occurs in the Sundara

Kandam, whereas the event actually belongs to the Aranya Kandam. While Aranya

Kandam contains many an intimate detail about the idyllic sojourn the Divine

Couple had in the picturesque woods, somehow the incident involving Kakasura,

(the vile crow that pecked at Piratti's breast and was duly chastised by Sri

Rama) is omitted. We come to know of this only much later from the words of Sita

Devi, when She narrates it to Sri Hanuman in the Asoka Vanam, guarded day and

night by Ravana's bestial minions.

 

 

 

A perusal of the Ayodhya Kandam alone would leave us with the impression that

arrangements for Sri Rama's coronation were undertaken immediately after the

wedding at Mithila and the marriage party's return to Ayodhya. Sri Valmiki does

tell us that Sri Raghava spent many a pleasurable month in the company of

Vaidehi. However, the exact time that elapsed between the wedding and the

departure to Dandakaaranyam is to be known from the Lady's own words much later,

in quite a different context. Sri Janaki tells Ravana (come in the garb of a

Sanasi to abduct Her), in a self-introductory speech, that She spent an

extremely pleasurable twelve years at Ayodhya, before the cruel machinations of

Kaikeyee drove Her to the jungle.

 

 

 

Several such Flashbacks can be found in Srimad Ramayanam, which add colour and

character to the beautiful tale. In chronicling the story of Rama, Valmiki could

very well have struck to a prosaic form of narrative, of recounting events in

the chronological order in which they took place. It is the Master Story-teller

in Valmiki that makes him resort to strategic omissions and inclusions at

appropriate places, to make the Epic not only a guidebook of human conduct, but

an extremely interesting one too.

 

 

 

Srimate Sri LakshmiNrsimha divya paduka sevaka SrivanSatakopa Sri Narayana

Yatindra Mahadesikaya nama:

 

dasan, sadagopan