Having just finished reading Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni's Panchaali's Mahabharata or Palace of Illusions my head is buzzing with battles and prophesies and plans of vengeance aided by divine intervention. It was a wonderful read that I thoroughly enjoyed. It brought home to me a number of truths about the epic itself, that i had, oddly enough, not really focussed on before.
The Mahabharata is probably the sexiest book i've ever read. It's subtle innuendoes and references to that biggest human failing of all are aplenty. In this alone it makes itself less of an epic, not only a telling of heroic tales, but more of a story. This story is about human beings and not just gods and godesses who, too, appear to have their own failings and weaknesses. The relatability to the tale is it's nicest quality. It appears to have relevance even today if we scratch below the surface. And Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni has allowed us to shed our inhibitions and do just that.
The warring factions could be two large industrial houses in today's India. The Ambani brothers for one. Or the Reliance-Bombay Dyeing fued of yester years could be compared given a little imaginative license. There are characters then and now, that fit the bill exactly or with a bit of creative tweaking. It was quite exciting actually to see the similarities, and futility, of events thousands of years apart.
I realised, too, not for the first time that the author of the tale was actually Krishna. Vyasa was part chronicler, part actor - when his ego got the better of him. The Mahabharata was conceived, plotted, played-out by none other than Krishna. In fact it would not be an exaggeration to say it was a large puppet show where master pupeteer was our very own Krishna.
I must say, I enjoyed the woman's perspective with which Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni purports to have written this version. I am glad she was not a feminist, glorifying the role of the women in this story. Instead she told it as it was, but with a deeper appreciation of what the women felt, whether it was good, bad or indifferent. I think she especially deserves praise for her characterisation of Draupadi. She was so human, so real. She was no goody-goody saccharine sweet heroine that our movies and TV serials are used to portraying her as. She was fire-spitting, vengeful, proud and haughty and yet she always managed to hit the spot in the reader's heart. I never thought of her as hateful or mean. She managed to justify each of her questionable actions so well, we readers felt we would have done the same, had we been placed in her stead. Her character was sculpted artfully and once again could be related to with all her weaknesses and strengths as much as one would to a present day character or real life person.
Draupadi's love for Karna had never been so out in the open to the reader as it was through Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni's book. It was bold and I loved the way Draupadi dealt with it. Feeling it, not showing it. Burning with it all her life, knowing it was wrong merely to feel that way, finding salvation from her desires for Karna only in death when she goes to his arms in heaven. Who would have thought a woman with five husbands would actually need a sixth to love and cherish her in the way she desired!
Each of the mighty characters of the story had failings, including by the way, Krishna, who was as human as he has been in any story, yet his divinity was known to all. In this this story is more real than the Ramayana where Vishnu's avatar, Rama, is truly a God who walks on earth. Not so in the Mahabharata. All the characters are real. They could be you or me. The beauty is that the story points out these flaws and faces them as weaknesses. It does not hide behind perfection or godliness. It also hints at what one can do to conquer one's weakness. If Arjun was an egoistic kshatriya prince, he is reduced to a eunch, even if it is only for a year. Why a eunch? The curse he was given by Urvashi could have turned him to a dog or a snake or any other reprehensible life form. But he turns into a eunch. Maybe it was for him to appreciate another's point of view. To awaken in him the female energy he so lacked. Yudhishtir lost everything to dice, he a man most righteous. He could have been lured by flesh, duped through drink. But it was dice, a game requiring no mind, only luck, that brought him down. Why? It is a lesson to those of us who pride oursleves on our thinking rational selves, that there is a role that luck, fate and destiny play that cannot be forgotten. We must bow to such forces and recogise when they are at play. We must not let pride in ourselves blind us to the work of such forces. Other examples abound. But this brings me to an important tool that the Mahabharata arms us with. That of divine astras.
I believe we each have a weakness, much like the plentiful characters of the Mahabharata. We have more than one, in fact, but one is bigger or worse than all the others put together. Identify it. If this lifetime is to be of any use to any of us, find that big fault that has been given to you. And then work with all your god given might to overcome it. Find your divine astra to fight that demon. It is your right to earn and obtain it. Use prayer, meditation, yoga, concentration, pranayam, bhakti, chanting, solitude, rituals, worship, abstinence, penance, doing your karma or anything else to identify and overcome your weakness. For, to me, that is what the Mahabharat urges us to do.
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