Mythology has always been a topic of keen interest. I remember how while growing up we used to be glued to the TV screens every Sunday morning to watch the BR Chopra series on Mahabharata.
The stories in Mahabharata or even Ramayana hold us in rapt attention even today. Not just because they seem so historically accurate (the jury is still out on that) but also because they are relevant and contemporary even today. They have captured the imagination of filmmakers, authors, and researchers to such an extent that now we've begun exploring different perspectives of the same stories.
The stories hold various layers and points of view that one can get lost in. It truly is like the ‘gyaan ki ganga’ that the title song in the Mahabharata TV series of the 90s’ likens it to. The lessons, values, and the various plots and subplots that play out within these mega epics are mind-boggling. For me, just researching these stories opened a whole new world of learning.
Another realisation that I came to while researching these stories is – the questions that one must keep asking. What is evil? As per whose definition and point of view, should we judge a particular incident or action to be malicious? And, a bigger question that the additional reading of other mythological books led me to – are things as simple as they seem? Often what appears to us is not what it really may be. One must delve deeper to understand the motivations for someone doing what they did. One must look at all possible perspectives of a situation to understand the developments, and often something may not have just two sides to it.
I had talked about why it is important to keep reading the various reimaginations of Mythology in another article. Books like Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni’s Palace of Illusions or Mallar Chatterjee’s Yudhisthira are two examples that come to mind when I talk about the need to understand the same story from a different perspective.
But sometimes, it may even become important to go back to the original. Sometimes, it’s important to just understand the stories from an impartial third-person perspective, with a non-biased angle to the story-telling. With Dashavatar – Stories of Lord Vishnu I am attempting exactly that.
These stories that I bring to you aren’t reimaginations or a different narrative from another character’s perspective. They are simply an attempt to tell them in today’s context and relevance – an attempt to relook at the stories, albeit with a mild allusion to the modern-day societal and political context.
The questions that come to mind from reading these stories are relevant even today. And, like the original scriptures, the stories too are open to interpretation. Additionally, I have made no attempt to provide the answers to these questions. My intent is only to trigger each reader to ask those questions and embark on their own individual journey to find their own answers.
I can only hope that we seek the answers and that when we find them, they are the right ones.
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Piyusha Vir's mythological debut, Dashavatar: Stories of Lord Vishnu is available online and in all major bookstores.
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