You got to understand what you are getting into with this story.
First things first. Sure, you’ve known all about stories with a beginning, a middle and an end from kindergarten. But then, you’re now a sophisticated story consumer. You’ve read stories that alternate between character’s perspectives. And stories with some parallel plots. You know all about stories within stories, flashbacks, 19-years-later formats, sequels, and prequels. Now with the Mahabharata you take all of every story type you know and multiply it by a gazillion.
Normal stories be like
The Mahabharata
Don’t expect to get from one end to another in any sort of orderly fashion. Also bring on your best bingeing game if you expect to get through it.
On the other hand, it makes versions and remixes that much more interesting, and confusing. Most versions of the story will agree on the broad strokes, but the details almost always vary wildly. This version will just have details that I know about, which is not a great deal, but enough to progress the story along nicely enough and get us somewhat done by the time you are 18.
Then there’s this issue of how time is structured in Hindu Mythology. And why should that butt in on the story on hand? Because our story spreads over a very long time, working its way through dozens of generations and plot backs and forths. You’ll hear about how things happened over several “Yugas”. I guarantee you’re going to be thinking how long did this stuff last? How long ago did it happen? Several hundred years? Several thousand? Does it tie in with evolution and history? That one’s going to be tough to answer.
You’re probably used to thinking of time running in one direction: Big bang → dinosaurs → today. In Hindu mythology, time is a circle, with circles within circles. Think of multiple gears, one within the other, moving round and round and round.
We’re on solid ground as far as general agreement on how long a year, or 64 years lasts. Things get messy after that. One set of folks think a set of 4 yugas lasts about 12,000 years. The other lot thinks it lasts 1.7 million years. Just a minor difference, huh? And they’ve been arguing about it for a yuga by the look of it, and an agreement is not on the horizon. So we’ll just have to live with the uncertainty if we ever hope to get to our story. You see, sometimes we have the same characters appearing after several generations, or in a different Yuga and no, they are not time traveling. It does boggle the mind if you try to put a timeline on it. Best to just go with the flow and suspend beliefs of time as you know it.
One last sticky point before we start our story. Gods, demons, Heros and Villains are somewhat interchangeable. You’ve probably heard that Hindu gods, like the Greek or Roman ones, are very many. 30 million of them in fact. What can I say, the Hindu myth masters were fond of large numbers. Thankfully, not all of them will make an appearance in this story. At least not in this 2022 version. But be warned – gods become humans and animals, humans become gods and demi gods, villains are also actually heros, there are folks that are a bit of everything. And then there are the gods who do truly villainous things and then provide very complex reasoning about why that does not count as villainy. It’s either deeply philosophical or just double standards, depending on how you see it.
Then there are the plain vanilla villains – predictably villainous. Others are actually good guys that were so powerful, that the gods had to trick them into villany. Some others are normally good folk who got on the wrong team and became, by association, villains. Yet others did questionable things and didn’t have the equivalent of a good lawyer who could come up with some crafty way of reframing their actions as good. See, the gods would have gotten away with that. In short, when reading this story, don’t expect any binary good-bad / hero-villain / god-demon. In any case, this fluidity is more relatable, no? Plus, completely shiny heros and utterly fiendish villains do nothing for a good story. Best leave them out.
So, you’ve read the terms and conditions to making sense of this story.
Click Agree to continue.
Manasvini 
Leave a comment