War is all consuming β every minute of your time, every corner of your mind, is filled with the enemy who comes at you in endless waves. The days pass by not in minutes and hours but in the blood of the enemy you just killed so you can move beyond him to the enemy you must kill next.
It was as I took position at the head of our formation on the morning of the 17th day that I realized just what all those many moments added up to. Sixteen days ago when I had stood in this identical position and looked ahead, it had seemed as if we were confronting an enemy without end. The Kaurava forces had stretched out in front of us, as far as the eye could see and then beyond.
I realized with a start that today, from that identical position, I could see where the Kaurava troops began β and where it ended; beyond the last enemy I could see the expanse of the Kurukshetra battlefield, now shorn of so many of the soldiers that had once covered it.
The view brought home to me with great clarity that the war was effectively over — we had the greater troop numbers left standing, and there was no question that we would prevail if only through sheer numbers. Yet the killing would not stop — not until Karna, Duryodhana and Dushasana lay dead on the field.
Those deaths had to happen, and of them I would regret only Karnaβs β but that wasnβt something I could tell my brothers, even during that endless night I had just spent with Yudhishtira and Arjuna.
Of the two, Yudhishtira was the easier to convince β when I left Krishna and went to his lodge, I found him already regretting his ill-considered words.
βI wish I could take it all back,β he told me even before I could sit down. βI donβt know why I said what I did β the humiliation of defeat at that suta putraβs hands, added to finding Arjuna here in the lodge and not on the battlefield facing Karna β I must have hurt our brother grievously…
βAsk Arjuna to come,β Yudhishtira told me. βI must tell him how sorry I am, I must take back my words….β
βWhy?β Arjuna demanded when I went to his lodge with the message.
βHe insulted me, abused me without cause — and now because he has had a change of heart, I have to go to him so he can be magnanimous and tell me how sorry he is?”
βGo to him, donβt go β Iβm beyond caring,β I said and stormed out of the lodge, knowing even as I put on that display of calculated anger that it was the one thing most likely to force my brother, in his present mood, to listen to me.
I wasn’t wrong — Arjuna came running up as I strode through the empty lane. βBrother, if it had been you who said those things I would not have reacted as I did β but this man who hides behind our army, behind the strength of your arms β he had no right to accuse me of cowardice. How can I now go to him?β
βBecause he is your elder brother,β I told him. βBecause he is your king β and the reason you are fighting this war. You could die tomorrow and so could I β and it wonβt matter because as long as Yudhishtira lives, the throne of Hastinapura remains at stake.β
Words tumbled out of him then β hot, bitter, angry. So many years had passed, so much blood had been shed since the day he had, in Drupadaβs court, bent his bow and hit the target β yet even today, it was the one thing that rankled above all others.
βYudhishtira lusted after Draupadi from the moment he set eyes on her, yet he didnβt lift a finger to try and win her; instead he tricked our mother, he manipulated us all just so he could enjoy her… What kind of elder brother is he that he could do that, what kind of king is this we are hell bent on making, who can subvert justice for his own pleasure?!β
I listened in silence, fighting down my rising impatience β an impatience exacerbated by the fact that I felt the justice in some at least of his criticism. This was my kid brother, the one person closest to me. Clearly he needed to vent; as clearly, I was the only one he could say all this to β knowing him as I did, I knew that loyalty to family would prevent him from speaking in such terms even to Krishna, his dearest friend.
I had no choice but to stand and to listen as years of accumulated angst poured out of him in a tidal rush.
And then he stopped, all talked out and looking drained, spent. He had nothing more to say, and now he did not know what to do.
What could I say to him? It was not, I realized, in me to suggest that he should seek out our brother β while I understood the deference due to the eldest, I couldnβt help thinking that as the older brother, it was Yudhishtiraβs responsibility to care for the feelings of his brothers — and besides, he was clearly the one at fault.
βBrother, I agree with much that you say; times without number during these last few years I have felt that our brother was wrong to do what he did or to say what he had. I cannot ask you to go to him now, to make peace when the quarrel was not of your seeking.
βBut this much I know β I cannot now abandon this war. Before it began, I made two promises. I promised mother that I would see our brother on the throne of Hastinapura or die in the attempt. And I promised myself that I would kill every one of those who that day insulted Draupadi in open assembly. I will not live with the knowledge that I went back on my promises β so if you withdraw and I have to face Karna at dawn, to kill him before I can get to Duryodhana, then so be it — I will kill Karna, or die trying.β
I walked away.
When I reached my lodge, I glanced back over my shoulder β and saw Arjuna walking slowly, painfully, in the direction of our brotherβs lodge.
Filled with a sense of portent, we moved into formation even before dawn. As they passed my position, Krishna stopped the chariot. βBrother,” Arjuna said to me, “today only one of us, Karna or I, will leave the field alive.β He jumped onto the deck of my chariot, hugged me with a sudden fierceness, and was back in his chariot before I could react.
The heralds sounded their trumpets. Arjunaβs chariot darted forward, heading straight to the focal point of the Kaurava formation where Karna had taken position, with Dushasana protecting his left flank and Ashwathama his right.
With the field denuded as it was, I found it easier to sense what was going on across the two formations. I saw Satyaki dashing up to challenge Dushasana and ordered Visokan to drive at an angle, cutting across his path. βHelp Dhristadyumna against Ashwathama,β I yelled as we crossed. βDushasana is mine.β
Visokan was at his best β weaving the chariot deftly through the Kaurava lines, he cut in at an angle that separated Dushasana from Karna.
Finally, I exulted as I roared out my own challenge β finally, a chance to fulfil a vow I had made so many years ago.
There is something impersonal about fighting from a chariot β you fire your arrows, the enemy fires his, the charioteers manipulate the horses, and all you can do is wait for the enemy to make a false move, to expose some chink you can exploit.
The rage I had nursed deep inside of me for close to 14 years needed more β I needed the immediacy, the physicality of hand to hand combat.
Dushasana had a weakness he was not aware of β he was always just that little bit jealous of his elder brother. The world acclaimed Duryodhana as peerless with the mace; deep inside, Dushasana always thought he was as good or better.
I threw aside my bow and quiver, picked up my mace and vaulted onto the ground, roaring a challenge I knew he would be unable to resist.
I knew I could defeat him β he was not half the fighter he thought he was. But I wanted more β I had to humiliate him, I needed to confront him with the fact of his own death before I dealt the killing blow.
He swung his mace, a powerful overhead swing at my head, trusting to his strength to somehow smash through. It was a blow of anger, not sense, and easy enough to block. But instead of blocking his blow overhead, I skipped out of line and, as the mace whistled past me, swung my own mace in a short, hard stroke powered by every ounce of muscle in my shoulders and arms. My mace smashed into his. He fought to control it and swung at my ribs; again I hit him with the double strike, the first one a defensive tap to push his mace out of line and the second a powerful crash of my mace on his, forcing him to exert all his strength to keep the mace from being wrenched from his grasp.
I saw the sweat break out on his brow as Dushasana backed up, looking bewildered. He charged headlong, mace held in front of him. Exulting in my knowledge that he was finished, I sidestepped and again, smashed his mace with mine; this time, I followed up that blow by pressing my attack, aiming not for his body but for his mace, which I bludgeoned in short, hard strikes.
Dushasana backed away, gasping for breath; I noticed him flexing his arms, where the strain had begun to tell. I threw my mace away. βBare hands, Dushasana,β I roared. βYour hands were strong enough to drag Draupadi to the assembly β now show me what you can do to me!β
He ran at me, more desperation than skill in the charge. It was a lesson I had learnt a long time ago β when fear swamps your senses, the techniques you had learnt are always the first casualty. With clenched fists, he struck at me β blows that were badly timed, lacking in any real power.
I absorbed his blows, taking them on the body and on my shoulders β and laughed loudly, deliberately, in his face. I saw the first hint of fear dawn in his eyes β and switched from defense to attack.
In continuation of a block, I smashed the heel of my palm up under his chin, jolting his head back in time for my left elbow to crash into his exposed throat. As he fought desperately for breath and balance, I hammered my open palms into his ears. He reeled back; I turned sideways and drove the heel of my foot hard into his stomach.
He stumbled, staggered backwards β and fell. In an instant I was on him, my knee on his throat, bearing down while my hands hammered down at his ribs. My hands splayed, fingers curved to hook into his ribcage, I gradually brought all my strength to bear on his lower ribs.
I took my time, increasing the pressure gradually and ignoring his feeble struggles. I waited to see the realization of death in his eyes β and bore down hard.
It was as if the world around us didnβt exist anymore β my whole being was consumed with the lust for a revenge I had long dreamt of.
With a sudden crack, his ribs gave way. I pushed down harder, driving the broken bones into his lungs, his heart.
A great gout of blood gushed up from his shattered chest, drenching my face.
Involuntarily, I licked my lips.
The metallic, slightly sour taste of warm blood reminded me of that day in Hastinapura. I will drink your blood, I had vowed then as I watched Dushasana dragging Draupadi to the center of the assembly, the blood dripping down her legs.
I licked my lips again β this time slowly, deliberately, lingering on the taste of revenge.
In a daze, I walked towards my chariot, my thoughts on a woman waiting somewhere on the other side of the river β a woman with skin of gold, with hair that hung down her back like a black waterfall… a woman who loved to hear of battles, whose lips would part and breasts heave as she listened to stories of killing, of blood.
“Go,” I told Visokan. “Go to Draupadi. Tell her Dushasana is dead… tell her I’ve killed him and drunk his blood. Tell her from me that she can tie her hair up again…”
53 comments
“I licked my lips again β this time slowly, deliberately, lingering on the taste of revenge.” *shudder*
Brilliant!! Both, the dialogue between Bhim and Arjuna, and also the description of the battle with Dushasana. Awesome episode.
Another point I noticed is that Yudhishtira is true to his character. Even though he realized that he had hurt Arjuna with his words, he does not make an attempt to seek out Arjuna himself, instead asking Bhim to tell Arjuna to come to his lodge. How typical of the elders at that time (and in the present time also, in some households).
Yeah. *LOL* Believe it or not, when trying to figure this incident out what I used as a reference point was my experience of living in a joint family. π
Chilling.
Prem,
Were you a vampire in a past avatar. You seem to be enjoying the blood and gore.
You’ll find the answer to that one when I start doing ‘my story’ π Erm — I believe the “conventional” narrative has Bhim not just licking lips splattered with blood, but actually drinking it with relish. I toned the thing down, mate. π
Yes. I was also thinking on the same lines. The conventional belief is that Bhim drinking Dushasana’s blood with relish and carrying a pot of blood for Draupadi to apply it on her hair (yuck)
Chilling, shudder et al. But does it really deserve to be tagged T20WC 2009?
(-:
*LOL* Fixed, slip of the typing fingers, that.
Prem,
I have always enjoyed your write-ups of the cricket games from way back on rediff. You are a great story teller. I want to thank you for some exhilarating reading here. Like somebody mentioned before, you should consider puttng this together as a book. I started reading this a few days ago and after reading the first few, i was hoping that all episodes were complete. Now i have to wat for the next one. I would love to give these to my son (11 yrs old), but it may be inappropriate for his age.
Thanks.
Thanks, mate. Your son will probably enjoy it a few years down the line, later in his teens [then again, kids these days are far more immersed in blood, gore and such than we used to be]. Wish him for me.
Oh for heaven’s sake. Please finish this off soon prem. Even though I know what happens finally in mahabharata, this waiting for episodes is a bit too much for me. The anticipation always builds when I see a new alert in my RSS reader and when its the “Bhimsen”, I savor it slowly, as if reading it quickly will somehow make the episode go bad.! π Excellent writing, really created vivid pictures in my mind.
*LOL* Guys like you need to read books, not blog-style treatments.
It’s kind of like the difference between opera and rock. MTV’s book treatment is operatic — each chapter has many moods, many emotions all coming in succession, a series of crescendos and diminuendos converging onto an emotional high. Like, in one chapter you could have Bhisma dying, Drona taking over, Abhimanyu dying, the killing of Jayadratha, Bhima learning of Karna’s parentage, Yudhishtira’s angst, the battles between Bhima and Dushasana and Karna and Arjuna, and the killing of Duryodhana, all of which dovetail towards one overriding emotion.
Mine is more rock: each piece has one driving beat, one emotive undercurrent. In the book, all the stuff in this episode is dealt with in, oh, about four paras or five, tops, before the narration moves on to the next beat; in mine, each episode picks a beat, a leitmotif, and stays with that, expands on that one note to a logical crescendo.
Actually, in MTV’s narration the killing of Dushasana blends seamlessly with Karna’s duel with Arjuna — but if I tried that in this kind of treatment it would hit a false note, because one moment you have the image of a triumphant Bhima savoring his revenge, and the next the image shifts, to another part of the battlefield — kind of like a false climax in a movie. Wouldn’t work, or at the least, would tend to dilute impact.
So. Wait. π
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Completely unrelated comment-
I was just reading the foreword of these episodes when I came across this:
“But to recount that discussion will be to jump the narrative gun; Iβll keep this thing in mind, and bring up the discussion when I get to that point in the story that triggered it.”
Has that point come yet? Or have I missed the discussion?
The bit involving my uncle? In a sense it has come and gone; in a sense not. When I wrote that, I didn’t anticipate the high volume of discussion the posts would trigger — and over time, this discussion has meandered over rationales, construction, the underlying thinking behind various characters, their motivations, and much else — a lot of which my uncle and I had discussed, and I wanted to crystallize as a post.
At this point, I reckon on letting things go on as is; maybe when it is over [I realized with some alarm that there is a fair bit to go yet — the war gets over fairly quickly, but there is considerable development of the story beyond Kurukshetra], maybe I’ll opt for a discussion post or some other such device, and at that point hark back to what I referred to in the foreword.
Hi Prem,
The description or rather choreography where Bhimsen battles physically always struck a chord in me. Reading it today I was again strongly reminded of Lustbader novels – the thinking , the reading of the situation and the almost logical choice of moves.
Thanks, mate. Coincidentally, a friend just mailed asking how on earth you prepare for writing these things — by watching WWF?!
In responding to her, I realized that so many things happen in life that we never, at the time, identify as “influences” — but which, at unexpected times, materialize in your mind to impact on what you do.
As a child I loved spending endless hours in the family kalari watching the students train, handling their weapons. And a large part of my youth was misspent in reading the historical fiction of Dumas pere et fils, of Sabatini and others, where battle and emotion mingled nicely.
Never thought of those things as useful, let alone influential. But now, when I try to take two paras from the book and convert it into 2000-plus descriptive words, it all comes back: the moves you watched those guys make, the 1-2-3 logic of their maneuvers that individually make little sense but collectively produce a desired end…
I actually recall from childhood watching the resident gurukal in the Kalari use that double-tap in a simulated sword fight with one of his main students: deflect, then strike not the man but the weapon. One of the people working in our home at the time seemed to spend all his time running to the kalari carrying my grandma’s increasingly impatient demands that I come back — for study, food, whatever. Who knew?! π
the arjuna – bhima conversation was really well written! and the mace/ hand -to-hand combat was so vivid , the characters in my head came completely to life. brilliantly written.
small typo – “…I felt the justice in some atleast of his criticism…”
Well my comment is kind of an accumulated one .. Both in Bhimsen and relatively underworked Palace of Illusions, I find that Yudhishter is being taken off the perch which he is traditionally revered to be more than any other character , I am actually looking forward to Crystal Blur’s interpretation on acts of Yudhister , but based on past pace of post the topic might come out somewhere in 2015
One problem is that the pedestal is too lofty for the enshrined occupant.
It is not difficult to conceive of Y as a man who is well versed in the concepts of Dharma as obtained at the time. But the problem is in postulating that he never once detoured from that righteous path — which is what the conventional narrative seeks to sell.
In doing that, it stumbles over its own feet, since it cannot account for many actions of Y’s that militate against his own beliefs [analogous is the portrayal of Ram as the Maryada Purshottam, perfect in all things — buy that, and you find it difficult to explain why he would hide behind a tree and kill Vali from behind, for instance].
Our epics try to justify such out of kilter acts by dressing it up in high flown philosophy, but the effect really is of ‘the emperor is naked’ variety.
Re-tellings like this one have Y as an essentially well-meaning, but occasionally conflicted, human being — which is a portrayal that is far more easy to identify with, and far less open to questioning.
To cite one instance, to peg Y’s marrying Draupadi because of some random words of his mother strains credibility. Say instead that the guy was human, that he desired her, and that his marrying her in common with his brothers was in keeping with accepted social mores of the time, and you are far closer to believability. It doesn’t make him a bad person — it merely humanizes him.
Great explanation!
Great thought !
I agree with you on most part, but my observation (grudge) is Y’s portrayal is moving more towards inept , rather than as king with human flailing as compared to the perch he was put. Dharma was the most and by far the only skill set Y possesses when you pierce that Y becomes a weakling. The equivalent would be saying Arjuna was a good archer but he has significant weakness which could be exploited. Then the whole credence of character goes for a toss.
I think while replying to this comment I found my answer , Y looks the most screwed cause what traditional epic portray as his greatest gift is what modern the retelling find not plausible as a human. I Mean it is easy to agree that Nakul/Sahadeva were good administrator and Horsemen , but how do you substantiate a Man with supposedly lofty principles and physical evidence to the contrary.
Yes well, Karthik, the thing is that Y was groomed, from birth, for just one thing: to rule. That is to say, to sit on a throne, to dispense justice, to think of social welfare, to ensure that his citizens got to lead the best lives they possibly could.
No one expected him to be resourceful in a jungle, or to lead troops in battle against great warriors — it was always understood that those were the province of Bhim and Arjuna.
The thing with the narrative and in fact with the story of the Mahabharat is that for almost the entirety of the epic, Y never gets a chance to do what he is best fitted to do.
The only aberration is during the brief Indraprastha interlude, when he transforms what his two more action-oriented brothers dismiss as a barren patch of land into a vibrant kingdom.
If you think about it, people left Hastinapura in droves not because of Arjuna or Bhim, but because of Yudhishtira, and the expectation that their lives will be well off under his rule — an expectation he more than fulfilled when in a short span of time he made Indraprastha so vibrant that the established dynasty in Hastinapura had reason to be jealous.
It is in a peacetime environment, therefore, that his lofty principles will show to advantage — the problem with such principles is that they rarely if ever can remain undiluted under the stresses and strains of war [his lie about Ashwathama for instance, or his panicky recriminations about Arjuna].
That does not make him a weak character — it makes him a human being, period; maybe it is our fault that we fail to make allowance for that [in fact, that is our main problem with all our heroes: it is not enough for instance for Sachin Tendulkar to hit a cricket ball further and harder than most, we expect him to be a moral example, and are pissed when he does something we think is not consonant with a character we have created for him].
I know there have been many comments through this retelling where people have said I’ve demolished the perceived image of the man and held him up as an object of scorn. I’d grant the first part — but then again, it is the “perceived image”, and that is not Y’s doing but our own. The second part? No — I don’t think there is anything wrong in your finding yourself outside of your natural element, and war is not where Y would show to any sort of advantage.
great insight ! This would be like I keep saying but may no follow in true spirit “Expectation is mother of most evil” .
Lol, I have no problems with calling Y as ‘human’ rather than a “twisted, using dharma for his own means sicko” as regards the polyandry episode.
But it is equally frustrating to not be able to criticise him for his less than stellar decisions, as there is a whole horde of “Y is dharmaraja and the epitome of righteousness and is right all the time” religious fanatics who use all the ‘previous birth karma’ explanations and what not. Even if you accept the “previous birth 5 husband boon from Shiva”, even then Kunti and Y’s decision and brow-beating of the Panchalas never sits well with me. For K it was a political+cunning move for unity, for Y it was also lust/selfishness. Maybe because K and Y are never allowed to be criticised much. Y is my least favourite of the P bros.
Again the end part where they all climb mountains to die, Y’s death-justification never sat well with me. Not exactly his justification (I tend to think of it as his view and he is entitled to it) but the acceptance it has in our society that it was the correct justification i.e Y’s views were the gold standard and were never wrong.
Brilliant description of the Bhim-Dushashan combat. The handling of Y is also very novel and interesting.
Wouldn’t it be great if someone made a ‘realistic’ episode based series out of mahabharatam… say, Vishal Bharadwaj makes a soap opera broadly based on Mahabharatam.. now, that would be something.. !!!
Not in our country .. That would give reason to certain sections to start a riot and burn few buses ..
Absolutely on the money — there are enough idiots out there looking for a cause and enough “leaders” looking for a controversy to grab headlines with; for them, this kind of treatment is good enough reason to riot in protest of “outraged Hindu sensibilities”.
Excellent episode Prem.
As you rightly pointed out earlier, the family norms and beliefs bestowed unlimited power and leadership to the eldest son of the family.
However, I am curious to know if there was any means to rate this eldest son’s ability to take on the responsibility and wield this power?
I am sure there are instances in history where the eldest son was considered incapable of shouldering such responsibilities and was replaced by the younger son. There are other instances where the younger siblings revolted and overthrew the eldest. Case of the point is Aurangzeb slaying Dara Shukoh to succeed Shah Jahan as the Mughal Emperor. History could have been different had Dara become the Emperor.
Coming back to Mahabharat, there is a good case for both Yudhishtra and Duryodhana to succeed Dhirthirashtra right? Would you know who is the older of the two? I think it is Yudhishtra. If Yudhishtra was older and eldest son of the previous King (Pandu), why couldn’t the elders make a decision, very early on to appoint him as the heir apparent?
They could also have taken the alternate choice and by similar logic, clearly made Duryodhana the successor.
The succession plan was not successfuly formulated and communicated very early. This has led to grave consequences.
This is the case of the point in today’s world , especially so among our political parties, regional and national.
Another angle here:
Bhishma the patriarch actually was the heir to the throne but had taken his vow to not ascend the throne. He also made the decision to annoint Pandu as the king since Dhirthirashtra was blind.
If he had the power to decide who would be King of Hastinapura, why did he not make the decision for the generation after Dhirthirashtra?
Why did the intelligentia, including Vidura, not request Bhishma to make this decision? The court had a lot of knowledgable folks like Drona, Krupa to advise the old King and Bhisma that could have averted this calamity.
Eagerly awaiting your next episode.
Warm regards
Mani
I think they did it earlier.. i mean Bhisma along with Dhirthirastra made the choice to split the Kuru Kingdom to 2, and made Duryodhana and Yudishtra heirs of the 2 kingdoms (When Pandavas come back from Drupada’s palace and after marrying Panchali)
The war arises b’se Duryodhana refuses to give them back their part (or even 5 villages) . Again they could have forced him, am not sure why they did not though π
Btw, Y was the eldest of all and according to legend was much more qualified in dharma than D and being the eldest son of the King Pandu was the heir to the throne too.. also King Dhirthastra was supposed to rule as a regent when Pandu was in the forest but became the actual king after Pandu’s death. so Y was supposed to be actual ruler according to the rules of the time!
You don’t need to look too far: Dhritarashtra was the eldest, but the Kurus decided that Pandu was better fitted to lead — and remember, Pandu was the youngest, there was Vidura in between. So yeah, the ‘eldest rules’ law wasn’t ironclad.
The case for either D or Y is hazy, hence the controversy. Y was the eldest son of King Pandu, so he would base his claim on that. D would base his own claim on the fact that he is the eldest son of the reigning king. Y being older than Duryodhana is not in itself a good enough reason, since they belong to different branches of the dynasty.
The silence of Bhisma and others is understandable in context — the authority of elders depends largely on the willingness of the younger generation to respect them. From a very early age, Duryodhana rode roughshod over everyone, including his father the king — witness his unilateral decision, while still in his teens, to impromptu crown Karna king of Anga.
Bhisma and the others are responsible for bringing the Pandavas back to Hastinapura out of the forest when Pandu dies, when they could have left them there since it was P’s decision to exile himself. Again, the elders force through the decision to split the kingdom — even though they can’t stop the king and prince from fobbing the Pandavas off with a barren patch of land.
By this point, however, D’s power grows to the point where he is no longer interested in listening to anyone — so there is little the elders can do short of going to war with D and his brothers, which is not an option, really.
Prem,
Excellent episode and I think some bit of gore was necessary. Now on the primogeniture rule: while Dhritarashtra was the elder, Pandu (though impotent) was crowned as D was blind and as per laws and customs of that time, this was a valid exception to the rule.
Vidura could not have become the king, as he was the son of a slave. This class (i.e. born out of the relationship between the king/royals and slaves) were called “suta”, and while they were respected and took up positions like advisor, charioteer etc. they were not considered while deciding on succcession.
As an aside there are scholarly writings suggesting Vidura to be Y’s biological father. The Mahabharata (Jaya) give hints of this: (i) Vidura has time and again been referred to as Dharma incarnate and so was Y; (ii) it was very much accepted for the husbands brother to act as “niyoga” ; (iii) at the end of the Mahabharata, when Vidura dies he asks Y to lie on him, this was an accepted belief of the times of passing wisdom from a father on death bed to his son!; (iv) throughout Mahabharata, V was perhaps the only real ally that Pandavas had in the Kuru court, and he was esp close to Y.
About primogeniture, I agree with much of what you say, but I suspect it is not quite as clear cut in Vidura’s case — what seems to have been the norm is that the child born to a king is eligible for succession. For instance, Satyvati was no kshatriya, she was the daughter of a fisherman, and yet it is her sons who succeed to the throne, and the race flows through Vichitravirya. So in that sense, there is no obvious bar on Vidura’s succession — or at least, there is precedent to make a case for him.
About the other part of your question, I suspect it is going to come up again in context of an episode further down the line, so will leave the whole question of Niyoga alone for now — I’m sure you will remind me of this discussion soon enough π
Dhritarashtra was born to the Ambika, queen of Chitrangadan while Pandu was born to Ambalika who was the second queen. So both were official heirs as per the Niyoga tradition. However, Vidura was born to the maid – and is in no way connected to the Kuru clan. He is just another son of Vyasa born to a maid. He cannot claim rights to the Hastinapur throne at all.
Hi Prem, the war episodes alone seem like a novel. With this blog style, you’ve achieved the near impossible (well, atleast to me) task of keeping the pulse and momentum…. I vaguely recall few years back when you reviewed Bourne identity in Rediff, you stressed on this “beat” editing concept…. did you adapt that here as well…. brilliant. Although i hate keeping my heart rate going up in anticipation like this !!!!
Thanks, Raj. Um no, that was more in line with pacing a movie, where you have three/four plot spikes and you need to pay some attention to the movement between the spikes, the beats of your narrative so it doesn’t flag at any point.
This is more — how do I put it? One of the best books on writing I ever read was The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics. You’d think that is of interest only to illustrators and comic book creators, but at a journalism seminar once, a Pulitzer Winner, Tom French, pointed me at that book as one of the best for narrative journalists.
His point — which I fully understood after reading the book — was that the narrative journalist needs to construct his story around images that he will invoke in the mind of the reader. I tried to do that with my cricket writing, and have used the same thing to a greater extent with this Bhim thing.
Before writing the episode, I’d need to know where I am going to end it. I picked the image of Bhim, job done, sending word to Draupadi. More than anything else, it is that day in Hastinapura that has dominated his mind for the next 14 years, so to me that seemed to be the first thing he would do: tell his wife that the man responsible for her ultimate humiliation is dead.
From that point it is about finding the intermediary images: a deserted lane between the lodges of warriors all sleeping in exhaustion; two brothers facing an epiphany while another waits for a chance to do a mea culpa; an image of a field considerably thinned out, to bring home the fact that the war is nearly over; a blood-stained image of a battle between Bhim and the one person even more than Duryodhana he has nursed a grudge against…
Get the images fixed in mind in sequence, then narration becomes merely a matter of linking them up in sequence.
Some versions mention that Bhim took Duhsashna’s blood back to Draupadi and she soaked her hair in blood before tying them up. Mention of this, in your chilling style, would have meant this episode dished out directly from cold storage!!
“I have to face Karna at dawn, to kill him before I can get to Duryodhana, then so be it β I will kill Karna, or die trying.β – thats what is lakshya!!
Would rate this as a blockbuster episode…excitement as the climax approaches near
Yeah, is what I meant in my earlier post to ‘Tamil Indian’ — strangely, some [and more in mail] wrote in to say while they liked the writing, I seemed in this episode to have gone overboard on the gore.
I wonder what the reaction would have been had I written it the way conventional narratives have it — him killing Dushasana, tearing open his chest, scooping up his blood, washing his hands and face in it and then carrying a handful to Draupadi for her shampoo!
π π
Dont leave the gore!!! Bring it on!!..For God’s Sake we are talking about the biggest war known to mankind!!! I dont mind the gore…its how war should be descirbed…I used to hate the Ramanand Sagar and to some extent BR Chopra’s picturisation of war….it felt more like a mass Dandiya session….foot soldiers playing dandiya and the warriors playing with chinese lights studded arrows!!
I guess this was a bad day for the Kaurava army. Isn’t this the same day when Shahdev killed Shakuni and Yudhisthir killed Shalya ….. besides Dushasan (Bheem) and Karna (Arjun) ofcourse.
Karna and Dushasana are the big casualties on day 17. Shalya then leads the Kaurava army out and dies, so does Shakuni, but time is a bit of a blur, and Jaya has all of that happening in the morning of day 18 — which is the version I am sticking with. MT dances around the timeline and just lets the battle flow one into the other without dating each individual episode, at this point.
At the end – Gandhari is furious that Bhim drank her son’s blood and asks him why he did it. He says it was just symbolic and adds not even a single drop went in his mouth – but here it is shown as drinking with relish. I would have liked if it was stopped at the “Involuntarily…” line.
Like many have already said this is an R rated episode for gore – mainly because of the hand to hand combat involved.
Yeah, well — dozens of versions, take your pick. No intention of producing an R rated episode, incidentally — I wrote it the way it flowed.
Prem, a question: After reading this I went back to MT’s original, and noticed that his version has just a quick three paras on the Bhima-Dushasana encounter. Also, while he talks of the showdown between Arjuna and Yudhishtira, it is again a quick aside. In your account there is the whole Bhim-Arjuna dialog that is an addition to that text. I’ve noticed this with some earlier episodes as well — that you tend to occasionally pull a single paragraph or two and expand.
I agree with the readers who found this superbly written, chilling even in its ending — but my question is, what prompts such elaboration from the original narrative? How do you decide what you want to elaborate on and why — and related, how do you then get the material for such elaboration, is there some other source material you rely on to supplement MT’s text?
Sorry if this is getting technical, but for me the discussions following the various episodes are proving to be as fascinating as the episodes themselves. Oh, and best wishes to the missus, hope she gets better in time for you to deal with the Arjuna-Karna duel π
Ow. Increasingly, some of the questions you guys ask remind me of the essay-type things I used to have to do in school. π Oh, and I’m with you on that last bit — the discussions [funnily enough, nothing cricket has provoked this kind of sustained discussion/debate in a long time] have been the unexpected bonus of doing this.
Large parts of the answer to this are contained in earlier responses, but still: while doing this, I don’t go back to the source book. I read it for the nth time before starting this series, but once I began episode one, I put it aside and rely largely on memory, and a scribbled timeline of the sequence of events that I made at the time I was reading the book. Only rarely, when some complex episode is in the offing, I find the need to quickly re-check something. And related, I don’t rely on any other source book, outside whatever my memory has retained of Jayam as I read it in the Malayalam translation years ago.
About this episode: MT in writing a novel would be pushed to move the story along. Since my treatment is episodic, I don’t face similar constraints, so first up that gives me a freedom he likely does not have [think word counts, for instance].
Given that freedom, I figured early on that what really fascinated me about MT’s book was not so much the story, which in any case is common knowledge, so much as the way character tended to come through when the omniscient narrator gives way to a first person point of view. That POV allowed MT on occasion to talk of internal motivations, of personal angst powering public acts, all of which made the characters, especially Bhim, come alive in a way the more one-dimensional conventional epic never does.
So throughout this narration, I’ve tended to give myself a free hand to explore that characterization, that freedom to delve into thought processes, motivations.
Here there are two main incidents: at an emotional level, the conflict between the brothers; at a physical level, the duel between Dushasana and Bhim. Both seemed to me to lend themselves to explication, to a more elaborate narration. The brothers clashed, yes — but how did Bhim handle it? We don’t really know — so then the option was to gloss over it, or to try and imagine it. Through these 60-plus episodes, Bhim has developed a certain character — so how WOULD he handle the situation? Given various things in the past and given his own sense of fairness, it is highly unlikely he would be on Yudhishtira’s side. Equally, given the kind of person he is, it is highly unlikely he would compel Arjuna to make the first move to rapprochement. So then it had to be subtle — a show of indifference that would prompt Arjuna to listen; a clear statement that Bhim has no intention of telling his brother what to do, but equally, that he is very clear in his mind what he has to do, with or without his brother’s support. I doped it out on those lines, and the dialog then naturally followed.
The battle with Dushasana HAD to have been one of the high points of the war, for Bhim, since it was D’s actions that triggered his own driving desire for vengeance. So again, it didn’t seem right to say, oh, they fought, B killed D, see you next week. So again, I needed to think D’s character through — the bit about his living in the shadow of his brother, for instance. That done, it was more a case of imagining two people fighting with the mace, and then with bare hands — and for that, as I pointed out in another response to this episode, I have a childhood spent in a kalari, watching seasoned warriors in combat, to thank.
I’d think the overall answer to your question is, I expand on MT’s version wherever I think there is scope to broaden and deepen the characters of the main protagonists; where there is no such scope, I tend to rush it through [as I recall someone complaining earlier, when the Pandavas zipped through the house of wax and their jungle interlude]. Cheers, mate.
Hi Prem,
Your treatment of the Yudhishtira-Arjun tiff and Bhim’s role in pacifying Arjun was just about perfect. The part on Dushasana-Bhim battle, on the other hand, while still being really good in it’s description of the technique used by Bhim in overpowering his enemy lacked the intensity with which such a physical battle would have been fought. I realize that Bhim being involved in the act would have little or no idea of the shock with which Karna, Shalya and others in the vicinity would have seen his act of breaking open Dushasana’s chest but as the blood spashes on this face and he relishes the “taste of revenge” he would have turned his head around to take stock of his surrounding as he prides himself on accomplishing one of his vows.
Again, as Bhim sits on Dushasana’s chest I would have expected him to tell him what he is about to do or just remind him of his vow. For someone who had spent 13 long years in the wilderness having very little to do but planning this act of revenge and constructing it in his mind, he would have seen himself telling his enemy his end has come just to see the fear of death in the eyes. Vyasa’s version incidentally, though greatly dramatizes the shock and awe experienced by Karna and others as they become mute spectators, has Bhim reminding Dushasana loudly of his vow. IMHO, adding this to the narrative would have enhanced the intensity of the battle.
Just my thoughts.
Prem, thanks for taking time to respond to mine and Madhavan’s post elaborating your thought process. I agree, more than the story, its these discussions, that are even more interesting.
I would like to know whether you envisioned “developing a character”, or you’ve fixed a character and then revolved the script around that. In your response to Madhavan’s post above, you mention that once you knew what was Bhim, then you thought about the sequence of his duel with D. What, hypothetically speaking, if you encountered a situation where your character (well, mainly Bhim here) had to respond differently because the sequence was more important than the characterization ?
Now, i almost know that you wont have much to write on Arjun-Karna duel as according to you, Bhim wouldnt have known much π but seems like your readers are eagerly waiting for this masterpiece in the original.
If you mean did I start out with a predetermination of what the character would be, Raj, the answer is no.
It could have been that way had I done this the conventional way — storyboarded the narrative start to finish before I wrote my first line.
I didn’t do that, though — I started writing the thing an episode at a time, with minimal pre-preparation. So typically, I tend [car rides to and from work are handy for this] to think an episode through, and at each point ask myself where Bhim is in his character development, and how from that point he would react to the events of that particular episode.
The thing is, ‘character’ is not cast in stone — I am not the same person I was ten years ago. Maybe at another point in his life he would have reacted differently, say, to Arjuna’s angst. So for me, the trick has been to mentally “be” the Bhim of that point in time, and to then think through the actions and reactions that are consisted with his character of the moment — I reckon if I get it right, then there will across the entirety of the narration be a sense of change, of growth, in the character.
When I told Madhavan I knew what Bhim was, I meant at the time in question. For instance, there are post war scenarios to come. I haven’t thought that far yet — when I get there, I’ll need to think of what Bhim has gone through till date, what impact those events have had on him, and how in the light of all that he will react to the situations that come up. In other words, I know the Bhim of episode 64. I have no idea who he is in episode 70, say. Like I said, once I am done with one episode I think of the next, just drift through thoughts while driving and when I reckon I have a fair idea of how it should go, find an hour of spare time to write it out.
Not just specific to this epsiode..but wanted to comment from a long time… The way you bring out the characterization of Bheem is amazing!! Through this episodes, we could better understand the way things could have been in those era. In the usual Mahabharth books and even BR Chopra’s version…War was the ultimate and everything led to it, but in your case..the war just unfolds as part of a bigger plan and not the ultimate goal as such. In schools, we do everything for the annual/board exam and end up not knowing anything. But in colleges we learn new concepts and ultimately put that to use in the final exams. Your version, i would say can be compared to the latter. Though its from Bheem’s perspective, I could really sit back and relish the whole epic better than any previous version i had known.
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