When I attended the India premiere of Christopher Nolan’s action adventure fantasy epic The Odyssey last week, the IMAX theatre turned into a roaring stadium in the climactic sequence. For those familiar with Homer’s ancient Greek tale, from which the film is adapted, it entails what in India is recognized as a swayamvar — the queen/princess testing her suitors and picking the winner as her to-be husband. Sounds familiar? The Odyssey and Ramayana parallel The swayamvar runs in the Indian DNA, thanks to the Indian epic Ramayana. Sita, the princess of Mithila and the daughter of King Janaka, picks her husband through a competition of stringing a bow. Since the said bow, Pinaka, is the celestial weapon of Lord Shiva, no king manages to even budge the arrow, let alone lift or attempt to string it. The only one who manages to is Rama, prince of Ayodhya and son of King Dashratha, who not only lifts it, but also ends up breaking it in the process of stringing it. This instance gets recreated in the …