Last Saturday I was at the BAPASI annual book fair at YMCA grounds, after almost a decade and WOW! it has become so much bigger and better. Almost 400 stalls and I felt as excited as a child during her first visit to a circus… not sure which direction to go and wanting to buy everything my eyes fell upon.
Anyway one of the books I bought was Ajaya by Anand Neelakantan. This 2 book combo is Mahabharata from Duryodhana’s perspective. Needless to say I was immediately attracted. I have always maintained that Mahabharata is about shades of grey with Pandavas and their allies being the darker grey. Duryodhana, while not the best of humans, was nevertheless never as villainous as either the Pandavas or he is purported to be.
But I never found anyone in my circle who agreed with my take on things [leading to many a healthy debate] and so had been feeling quite unique until I saw this book.
[The book is as expected – trying hard to make Pandavas look villainous while whitewashing Kauravas – which personally I don’t think is needed as Vyasa has done a good job of it himself]
Then today I was doing my usual wiki browsing – where I start reading on one topic and then jump to another and to another and so on – and Lo – to my surprise I found that more than 2000 years ago, – The great Indian Poet Bhasa in his Urubhanga, has made Duryodhana his protagonist. While the book does not detract from his ill-deeds, he is still shown as a heroic character.
Also do you know that there is a temple dedicated to Duryodhana in Kerala?
In one of my earlier posts on the same subject I had mentioned how disappointed I was with Rajaji’s Mahabharata – where the villainous Karna suddenly becomes the virtuous Karna as soon as he learns he is Kunti’s son.
So much is lost in translations and they get tainted by the translators perspectives. Take Rama Charitha Manas for example- I am told Valmiki never calls Rama a god or vishnu avatar – it only starts from Tulsidas. One of my retirement plans is to learn Sanskrit so that I may read Ramayana and Mahabharata as originally written and the loads of other beautiful works of arts that I get to read only the translations of today.
After all my ramblings my point is that it is great to know that my way of thinking on Duryodhana is not only not unique but great minds have thought along the same lines couple of millennia ago 🙂 Feeling quite accomplished!!!
Sanjana says 