Thursday, January 29, 2009

mahabharata and the butterfly effect

As we all know the main reason why the great mahabharata war was fought coz duryodhana refused to give back the land of hastinapura which he had forcibly grabbed back from the pandavas through devious means (read shakuni mama and the game of dice).
Duryodhana understandably felt shortchanged that despite him bein the eldest son of the eldest son of his grandfather dharmaraja was considered ahead of him and was made the prince of the state. Reason for this as we all know was his dad was born blind and hence pandu was coronated as the king as he was born with no apparent disability to speak of. Ofcourse speaks highly of the fair practise followed back then.
Now comin to the butterfly effect bit, as we all know Vyasa the scriptwriter of the Mahabharata fathered both Dhritharashtra and Pandu(not to forget Vidhura too). He was asked to do this favour after the unfortunate death of vichitravirya which meant the kingdom of hastinapura had no male heir. Vyasa carefully laid down this condition to his mom that he will appear before her bahus one after the other in his ugra rupa and depending on their reaction on seeing him the child will be born accordingly! newtons 3rd law for u :D
On seeing the ugra rupa of Vyasa, ambika couldnt take it and immediately closed her eyes and hence dritharashtra was born blind. Ambalika being her younger sister, ambika must have informed the implications of closin the eye or givin any such reaction to her younger sibling. So ambalika gave a restrained but still stunned expression on looking at Vyasa. This meant Pandu was born relatively healthier with no apparent disability to speak of and hence was unanimously chosen as heir of hastinapura over pandu.
If suppose ambika had closed her ears instaed of eyes , "newtons 3rd law" would have still been valid and dritarashtra would have been born deaf instead of blind and Pandu would have still got an advantage over his elder bro as his mom might have again been informed of the implications by ambika!
So as planned by the scripwriter Vyasa, one thing led to another after this and the GREAT MAHABHARATA war was fought.
Now y is this Mahabharata war so important to us? Yeah it gave us the Bhagwad Gita.

1 comment:

Sachin Shanbhogue said...

nice one KB.. I like the kind of humor u use which can be described as subtle yet it registers with the reader.. :)

Keep em coming..