The GREAT INDIA(in hindi)

Quite recently I celebrated my 22nd b’day, so that meant a lot of things…a day to feel special, when all around you seems to be “all about you”, a day made for you,with quite a no. of SMSes ,calls and…if you are a scrappofreak then you get about 20+ scraps on that single day. So cheers, I had a fantastic b’day. Well the point is not my b’day ,the point is that I completed my 22 years on this earth. No, not like this I completed 22 x365x24 hrs on this earth. Perhaps not, as for those 20 odd years I was made live a life I didn’t know, I just lived it, as in I was made eaten, made seen, made go,that’s why made live. So after 20+ I stopprd living ….and I started exploring, exploring myself and the world around me…..and still I am the same old explorer ,no doubt enjoying it. During this exploration last week I came across an 18 gb epic the largest in the world in electronic style , it was called the Mahabharat, quite rightly it is a MAHA bharat.

I don’t know the etymological origins of the word ‘epic’ but no doubt this word means something solid something sturdy, like that rock of Gibralter,stoically digesting those waves. Whatever it means, Mahabharat quitely fittingly provides all the requisites of the epic. But in our indian culture we , quite often dichomotize things, thus making them perfect , sometimes larger than life, thus forgetting the sourness which makes sweetness the greatness it is. We call Mahabharat from our mouth and we recall in our hearts the HEROIC Pandavas and the VILLANOUS Kauravas. This thinking alone is the marring of the great theory dealt by Vyas.
Life , more importantly ,living life is all about opportunities, getting them, grabbing them, stealing them, but cashing them. It doesent matter whether you are hero or a villain in that process , cashing that opportunity makes you a hero in all senses. Everybody amongst us is a villain, everybody amongst us is a hero , so if you are a hybrid, then you are a human. For me Mahabharat is based on the above principle.
If you were to ask me , nobody was a hero , nor anybody was a villain. They all were humans(though exagerrated). They all waited for opportunities to come ,and cashed on them. Whether it was Arjuna, mumb when Eklavya got his thumb out of place, whether it was Duryodhana in that game of dice. If Yudhisthira was such a personification of law, then why did he kept Draupadi at stake, knowing the atrocities of the game, and why Draupadi mocked at Duryodhana who was elder to her, if she was such an innocent girl, not to miss Duryodhana’s opportunism in various places of the story. So they all enter into a dead lock state , where none can move without each other, they all in a way sinned thus providing the way for more and more sinner stories and thus …..a bloodbath.

Now the war, which often recites the heroics of Pandavas, where they won with a modest army against a hurricane of Kauravas. Lets look into this whole heroism from a different angle. Arjuna didn’t want to fight , who persuaded him, Krishna, so war was started in an a way through Krishna who was one of the closest of Pandavas. Why?? Perhaps because he saw the opportunities in that war for them. This war,which can be regarded as the focal point of all the trajectories giving this story a parabolic stint, is one of its kind, like a test match, with scores of rules, incidentally,all of them broken at one point or the other, some times by the Kauravas, the other by the pandavs(who what heroically!!!!). Abhimanyu was murdered mercilesly, ruthlessly by the Kauravas, creating a mockery of injustice at the battlegrounds. And then, started an uproar of Pandavas, a cavalcade of whatever they could do, to oust those enemies. One can point out here that Abhimanyu’s death which is regarded as a mountain of tragedy is an opportunity for Pandavas to get their foes through the same old tricks. And look at stalwarts who were the preys, Karna, Dronacharya, the old warrior Bhishma Pitamah. So wasn’t the deal doen fair ‘n’ square here? What to say more when the signature killing of the battle was done (Duryodhana) by the lavish undoing of rules.

So who’s at fault, Pandavas , Kauravas, I guess none of them, they all did just what the ticking clock ordered. We often confuse the story with God, divinity, its never like that, it is(Mahabharat) a story about human biengs, their natural instincts, which compell them to go for success at any cost at any time. Nobody is God in it , even Lord Krishna is a human bieng with quite visible traits of human emotions(when he pulls on his Sudarshan Chakra against Bhishma, bieng animated by the latter’s skill). If Kauravas see the opportunity in the dice game, then Pandavas apply every tactics in the war. If the sari pulling of Draupadi was inhumane then the formers’s pledge of getting the blood of Dushasan is equally insane.
It’s a story that happened once, happened more, and still happens, amongst us many times. And unknowingly we many times create that same epic , many , many times.