Mahabharat – My appreciation

Not that anyone is interested in why I appreciate the epic Mahabharat as is being shown on Star TV. Yet, I felt a compulsion to put in writing why I tune into it every weeknight at 7:00 PM and am rooted to the couch in front of the TV for 30 minutes.

The story of Mahabharat is not new to me. The first telling I heard, if I can remember that far back, was on the lap of the widowed elder sister of my mother. That must have been nearly 55 years ago. Yes, the tale fascinated me more and more as I grew up and as the number of distinct tellings from varied sources also increased. Of course, as regards the characters, the variety of tools employed in character development will put to shame any story writer today. But bear in mind that the writers (note the use of the plural) of the epic were not constrained by size; indeed, longer the better seems to have been the reigning norm of those times.

Now I am 60 years old and I have learned to differentiate between myths and history. I do not take the epic as a version, however much exaggerated, of truth, perhaps except in its kernel.

What exactly is the kernel? That it is a story of the feud between dysfunctional families, across generations!

Add a host of sundry characters and a number of sub-plots and you have the epic. If you felt like it you would bring in certain social issues that allow you to interpret as per the social climates of the time of the telling, hearing or reading. You also bring in the concept of God playing his inscrutable games with the morality dice and one can really capture the imagination of the gullible people. This is how I see the epic. Truly.

About people becoming gullible, I have my own story to tell. It is for you to believe or not believe. There was this Indian graduate student in the 1980s at the University of Kentucky who claimed that, without any sense or logic, every word said in the epic is true, word by word. Indeed, he went to the extent of fixing the global population of the time of the epic as per the number of people who took part in the war. I argued quite vigorously against every point, with facts and figures, he made but in vain. Yes, that is one of the few instances of my witnessing utter gullibility.

Thus far I have tried to undermine the credibility of the epic, with no expectations of success in my endeavor. Now it is time for me to take a different tack and explain why I appreciate it.

The epic weaves into a consistent narrative what must have been distinct folklores across a wide region. And, the inter-weaving of the stories is what makes the epic so colorful while also retaining a level of consistency.

The connection to Ramayan is established by bringing in Hanuman as the brother of Bhim. If a spurned woman has to kill the cause of her misery, then create a transgender out of the woman. A son is brought into the world for the express purpose of killing someone who had insulted the father. A fetus is taught only how to enter a war formation and not to come out of it. In a war, then, he is doomed after half success. You develop, through the accident of birth, hatred between two sons of one of the central characters. You weaken the brother who appears to be the more invincible (I know invincible cannot be used in a comparative sense, but please bear with me), through any number of subterfuges. You set the stage for the grand war by creating a mosaic of such enmities. A wonderful creative effort.  

 If you have to be draped in an infinitely long saree in desperate times, all you have to do is to dress the wound of a character by tearing off a piece from your dress earlier. If the antagonist has to be evil, say he is the advance incarnation of the upcoming era of the baddies. Someone has been killed and if his murder has to be avenged, one makes a loaded dice from the bones of the diseased. If a serpent king takes a vow to make a clan go extinct, then bring in the story of a worm transforming itself into a fearful serpent and kill the last emperor of the clan. If a clan has   to be exterminated at the end of their time, then bring in sharp edged grass growing in the beach and create chaos among people and let them annihilate each other.

Along with these, add the frolics of the God himself and you have an irresistible story. All through one dances along the knife edge of morality. If at times the protagonists’ acts appear to be immoral, never mind – these are justifiable through the argument of ends justify the means!

No wonder I sit still for 30 minutes each weeknight to watch this tightly woven epic; so many interesting sub-epics!

Raghuram Ekambaram