I listened through the Ramayana. Twice.
It’s not that it was so great I had to enjoy it again, nor was it overly complicated. The best reason was that it was short. It was also enjoyable and the kind of archetype laden story that can be used as the basis of other stories I make up for my boys. A hero so talented he can shoot a tree on the horizon and it blasts trough the 6 trees behind it and then returns to the quiver. A ten headed demon who knows the best way to hurt the hero is to steal the woman he loves. And a monkey warrior who flies and battles mountains for fun.
Only drawback is the ending which is so sad if only because it is considered happy for the audience it was written for a few hundredodd years ago. The woman, though blameless and untouched in her captivity is so ostracized by her husbands people after her rescue that she must not only be banished, but when their twin sons come of age and she is inconvenient, she is swallowed up by the earth for her piety.
But it’s so episodic that you can just stop the story at any point. Say the earth swallowed the ending for being inconvenient, and the family lived happily ever after.
troykoelling 