The world around me is very unsettling. First, we have the incompetence of the governments of the day, and then the startling realities highlighted by Satyamev Jayate show, even if it is not the whole truth, and so on. And these strange behavior of man to hurt and not help starts from his kindred and extends to the society around him/her. Very depressing.
Coincidentally, I chanced upon Devdutt Pattanaik‘s book Jaya : An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata in a Crossword outlet. I couldn’t stop reading it, so I bought it, and continued reading at home. And I was thoroughly engrossed by it.
What is not incredible is the number of stories, characters or the breadth of it. What is incredible is that it seems that every situation that I can come across or have heard of could be generalized into one of the situations already talked about in the stories of the Mahabharata and you can relate to it!
The most important lesson reinforced was that life is meaningless (there is no grand plan), our greatest challenge is leading a “normal life with values” and to be human to each other. Think about that for a minute. Think about how it applies to every minor situation in every minute in the office and at home or on a bigger scale at the level of states and nations. If only we could be a little more human towards each other and lead a “normal” pleasant life. Why is it that we are all screwed up in so many little ways? Whether it is lack of trust or lack of intimacy or lack of friends or lack of self-confidence or lack of support or lack of pleasantries or lack of humanity… so on.
While I did not find the answer to it in the Mahabharata, I did come to the stark realization that this has been the way for generations and has been so since the age of the Mahabharata. So I should take heart in it and figure out what are the age-old approaches to overcoming this hassled life.
Coincidentally, this has been part of my initiative to “read older”, I’m trying to cut down on reading “newer tweets” and instead read “older books” and “older papers”, etc. So far, it’s been working out well, but that is a perpetual battle of focus. There is far more wisdom and far more to learn in older stuff than the newer stuff which tends to be mostly regurgitations.
Many of my realizations or understandings in the book came about because of the ‘interpretations’ by Devdutt after each story. Those interpretations put the stories in context – there is the usual intended “moral of the story”, but there is also cultural, political and religious explanations and sometimes simply how stories were changed to possibly cover up or make a story suitable for hearing by subsequent generations.
Table of Contents
For example, it is believed that man and woman are reborn as their grandchildren or any of their descendants – this probably explains the female foeticide issue on why men want boys and not girls, and that tendency has gone to an extreme in the last couple of generations. On the same note, it probably explains why rearing children is considered such an important part of life for our previous generations even though the current generation (including me) consider it as just another phase of life. In fact, in one of the stories, Bhishma is considered to have sinned because he decided to not get married because of his step-mother’s wishes that there be no other heirs to the kingdom! So many beliefs and fervour can be attributed to a simple age-old concept which has been twisted and extended by generations.
When Subramaniam Swamy says “we are fighters.For fighters for dharma there is always hope.” after the recent Presidential election, he is probably referring to is this quote by Krishna regarding Dharma:
Humans alone of all living creatures can reject the law of the jungle and create a code of conduct based on empathy and directed at discovering the meaning of life. This is dharma.
To live in dharma is to live without fear. To live in dharma is to act in love. To live in dharma is to have others as a reference point, not oneself.
Function therefore in this war not like that insecure dog that barks to dominate and whines when dominated, but like that secure cow, that provides milk freely and follows the music of the divine.
Do you fight this war to break the stranglehold of jungle law in human society, Arjuna? If not, you do not practise karma yoga.
As an aside, you also get to know why the cow is considered sacred.