Perfect man, perfect son,
Ram’s loved by everyone.
Always right, never wrong,
We praise Ram in this song.

Sing his love, sing his praise.
Ram set his wife ablaze.
Got her home, kicked her out
To allay his people’s doubt.

Ram’s wise, Ram’s just,
Ram does what Ram must.
Duty first, Sita last,
Ram’s reign is unsurpassed!

[Warning: This video may offend you. Viewer discretion is advised. ]

Things get interesting and quirky pretty fast when you start looking at Ramayana as Sitayana… the same story, but from Sita’s perspective. That is what animator Nina Paley ended up doing after a devastating relationship. Five years, many hand drawn paintings, 500 flash scene files and copyright struggles later she brought out the brilliant and engaging – the greatest break up story ever told – Sita Sings the Blues. It is beautiful, epic, thought provoking and witty and that’s a tough combo to pull off in a single animation. And the best part, she’s put it under a CC-sa license, so download it and watch it… like right now! This is a mix of old jazz music, three funny chatty Indian narrators who know less about Ramayana then even me and the story of Nina’s own life and if you are anything like me, you will totally love it.

I give this a 4.8/5.

Update 0: A convenient 700 MB download.
Update 1: There’s gotta be a better way of importing facebook/twitter comments. None of the plugins I tried worked well. I hope this thread merge is ok.