Standing on the line between desire and duty. Review on Mahabharata - C. Rajagopalachari

Mahabharata War was fought around the year 3000 BC. A lot of us who have read or heard stories from this epic must have either scoffed at, or felt fascinated by them. There is no other state in between.

This book is obviously an abridged version of the real epic and omits all sequences which author feels do not contribute significantly to the progression of the central story. I would say this is an excellent book from that perspective that not only does it preserve the original message well but also makes it for a crisp and exemplary reading. At no place does the author get into villain-bashing or hero-worshipping. He gives facts as they were back then and leaves it to you to think and decide.

The villains here are presumably the Kauravas and the heroes are their brethren - the Pandavas. Why? Well, it is all based on whose side Lord Krishna chose to be with, and why.

The book provides all important events from the very inception of the story till the end of the war. It does not mention the famed trip to heaven by the Pandavas after the calamitous war. If you have wanted to read Mahabharata in entirety and have been wary of its size, then this is the book for you. It will not take you more than 2-3 sittings to complete it.

First of all it is an amazing feat to write a book with so many a diverse characters. More so because most characters represent one or the other human aspect in a powerful manifestation. I have done some in-depth reading of various writings on Mahabharata and one point I noted is that the language(Sanskrit) used in the epic is not from the same period. This means that there are verses and texts in the epic which have Sanskrit written in the way Rg Veda was written. The text in other places in the book reflects Sanskrit of a much later period. This proves that there may have been many modifications to the original text later. It helps to keep this in mind when reading the book.

This is a great story of people blinded by hatred, of people bound by duty and hence forced to serve the side they do not necessarily support, of people who have stuck to righteousness when the whole world seems out to harm them, of people who are held captive by desire, by love, by self-respect. This is also the story of Supreme Lord and how He ensured that the side sticking to the path of righteousness wins.

Lord Krishna- The epicenter of the whole story, although never made to appear as one. He has a simple role to play in the whole story - that of a charioteer of Pandava's army's fate. And truly how he does it leaves you dumbfounded. That someone can provide such profound lessons and lead a much weaker side to a victory so convincingly is possible only through a divine intervention. In doing so, the Supreme Lord **plays tricks, makes people speak lies, plays with the forces of nature and still sounds truly convincing as to why He did what He did.

Draupadi - The wife of the Pandava brothers. She becomes the reason behind Pandavas pledging to fight Kauravas and wiping them from the face of this earth. She represents the true power of the womenfolk. Can any fury be greater than a woman scorned? And then any greater than Draupadi scorned?Worship will not appease her. The blood of her tormentors will.

Arjuna - The ace warrior and the crown in Pandava's armor. Standing on the line between desire and duty he is the most important character to compare you against. To me he represents true human behavior. He is selectively selfish and gives in into pleasures of life. He also feels sad at the prospect of killing men of tremendous discipline and outstanding characters just because fate has brought them face to face with him in a battlefield. He has his eyes set on his target firmly and is one of the best in his fields.

Bhishma - The grandsire of the two sides. He has an amazing strength of character and is one of the greatest warriors of the age. Such are his arrows and their celestial powers that Pandava army can never imagine of winning the war with him in the way. He is fighting for the Kaurava army as he is bound by his pledge to always protect the kingdom.

Duryodhana - No parent in their right minds would name their son as Dur-yodhana. "Dur" in Sanskrit means bad. So the name should have been Sur-Yodhana, but given his evil ways and haughty mannerism, no wonder his name got changed over a period of time. He represents the other end of spectrum as the Pandava Army does - villainous, cold-blooded and above all full of deceipt.

Karna - He is truly a hero worth reckoning. He has a true friend in Duryodhana(the Kaurava prince) and his sense of duty comes from being bound by the sense of friendship and of loyalty even when he knows that all his real brothers are fighting on the opposite side and he has to kill them to ensure victory for his head-strong friend.

Drona - The teacher to the royal clan of Kauravas and Pandavas. He is an ace-archer and his favorite pupil is Arjuna. Such is the largesse and favoritism of this guru towards Arjuna that it makes him pathetically narrow minded and prejudiced towards Arjuna. He also has to fight for Kaurava Army because he is also bound by duty.

There are other characters which are very powerful(Yudhistra, Bhima, Dushasan, Shakuni, etc) but it is impossible to note them here.

So the stage is set for a war of the magnitude never heard before. On one side is the many times more powerful Kaurava Army with all of the greatest warriors on their side and an army many a time greater in size than the Pandava's. On the other is Pandava Army guided by Lord Krishna who has vowed not to fight in the war at all. This is a weak side with very few individual performers. They cannot really stand the might of Kaurava army on their own. It is the presence of Lord Krishna that makes all the difference(?). He stands well and above - untouched, unaffected, and moulds Pandavas in His clay.

The entire Kaurava army is wiped out with all its greatest warriors slain. Pandavas also suffer humongous losses. The Pandavas victory in no way means that they were always right. In fact all of us have a bit of all these epic characters like Arjuna, Krishna, Duryodhan in us as well.

A powerful sequence in the story(of the many that are there) is that of Draupadi praying to Krishna to help her out. The power of prayer is one power which is probably not fully understood by most of us or considered as no power at all. Pray in God. Can you hold it all inside your brain?

That somewhere we are connected with the divine and have the ability to manifest divine behavior ourselves is something that I took away as a lesson from this book.