Note to readers

Dear readers:

I've been away for a couple of days. Thanks for tuning into this space. Retelling the Mahabharata is no easy task. In addition to my every day work of teaching university classes here in Mexico, I'm preparing scripts for different film projects, including the Henri Mouhot movie that we filmed a piece of in Cambodia amid the ruins of Angkor Wat. This last year I've been  traveling to Russia, Ukraine, Thailand, Cambodia, as well as painting.

I'm trying to finish my Mahabharata painting: Krishna and Arjuna at the Battle of Kurukshetra

I planned this blog as a window into my personal journey; it's morphed into the continuing saga of the Mahabharata. But I'm not just posting something I found on Wikipedia. This is my own retelling, and as such I actually have to sit down and write something every day.  The writing process is an intense journey for me.

On my way to Helsinore. Sweden, left. Upper right, teaching yoga in Stockholm, 1986

I'm going through the Ganguli translation of Mahabharata, following the thread of the story amid the Victorian language and myriad digressions, side-stories, and Levitican instructions regarding caste, diet, omens, rituals and ceremonies perhaps later interpolated by smarta brahmanas centuries after the original work was composed and set down by Vyasa. I consult commentaries, the summary version written by R.K. Narayana, the novelistic version of Kamala Subramanian, various internet sites and versions as well as books on Indian art, Vedic architecture, ancient warfare, the chronology of the Puranas, especially that given by Bhaktivinoda Thakura in his Krishna Samhita.

Bhaktivinoda Thakura

After a careful consideration  of the psychology of the personalities of the Mahabharata, their place in history, their reputation in legend, the traditions surrounding their heroic deeds, I try to picture them as living breathing souls. And when I feel I have lived with their stories long enough, I try to retell the story the way my guru might have told it to me. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to remember how Shridhar Maharaja or Prabhupada, or Govinda Maharaja told the story. What I learned from my gurus colors my point of view as narrator, of course, as much as I may hew to the academic version.

Govinda Maharaja reading

Each personality in the Mahabharata is a strong, heroic figure. Even the most terrible villain has a shrine somewhere in India dedicated to his memory. The deeds of Mahabharata are firmly rooted in the cause and effect of karmic reaction. Demons become heroes, heroes become demonic.
Man-eating rakshasas become friends, gurus become enemies. The mishaps of the heroes are sometimes punished by a curse. Every action has a reaction, and  no curse goes without mitigation.

Bhishma and Duryodhana at Battle of Kurukshetra

The Mahabharata is often tragic, sometimes comic, even lyrical. And yet, the histories defy easy moral outcomes. These are not fables. In fact there are many moral contradicitons. The greatest heroine of the Mahabharata is the fire-born Draupadi. While she is an emblem of chastity, she is also married to five husbands. The most powerful and courageous warrrior of the saga is Arjuna: and yet he is famous for having what amounts to a nervous breakdown at the moment of truth. He loses his nerve. Perhaps the most macho of all the heroes is Bhishma; he kidnaps virgins at will, and yet he is sterile. He dies an infertile old man, a human pincushion, murdered by his own grandchildren.

Bhishma on bed of arrows, bas-relief Angkor Wat about 1100 AD

And yet the great moral contradictions of this epic are what make it one of the great classics of universal literature, revered as scripture by hundreds of generations for thousands of years. The great moral contradictions that puzzle us parallel the ethical dilemnas of our own lives. Centuries after the iron age of Bhishma and Arjuna, we still grapple with the problems of war and peace and the ultimate destination of the human spirit.

Thoreau once said, "Read not the Times; read the Eternities." The universal problems faced by the heroes  Mahabharata have timeless application even now.  The problems of family rivalry, lust, envy, greed for empire, exile, the search for truth have not been cured by the palliatives of our modern age. And amid all the stress, the noise and haste of daily discourse, some truth-seekers still search for divine origins or reality and the eternal nature of the soul.

These reflections flash over the dusty mirror of my mind as I try my best to represent the story. Every day I rise early and try to make sense of the great narrative that runs to over two million words in translation. How can I make it simple and easy to understand for a reader with little time?

But as I work, I face innumerable interruptions.

San Antonio Church in San Miguel de Allende. I live about 100 meters from the church.

 The clanging of the bells at the San Antonio Church next door, the banging on the door from an endless parade of street vendors: the donkey-man, his burros loaded selling dirt for plants or firewood according to the season; the fruit boys with wheelbarrow laden with mangos, bananas, tomatoes, avocados, pineapples, walking from door to door; the knife-sharpener who walks his bicycle down the street and blows his pan-pipe flute to let all know that you can sharpen knives, scissors, scythes, and chisels.

Burros with firewood and dirt

There's the trumpet player with a big bass drum who bangs the drum and plays a military march outside your door until you go outside to pay him so he'll shut up and move on.

Wheelbarrow of fruit

The Jehovah's Witnesses are no slouches either. They won't take no for an answer and if I say, "I'm working on the Mahabharata," they just laugh and move on, radioing their english-speaking counterparts to knock again after ten minutes. The phone rings and its the bank offering me free credit cards, free money, free vacations in Puerto Vallarta, all for a low monthly price. Then the oompah band marches down the street 20 strong with 5 trumpets, 2 cornets, a couple of baritone horns and a big brass tuba. They have 5 clarinet players and a soprano saxophone playing a weird and crooked offbeat and out-of-tune version of "Oh yes, we have no bananas," mixed in a medley with "Turkey in the Straw" played as a Mexican Waltz. They stride over to the church where they are met with a gang of kids dressed as the "Minions" from the film Despicable Me and a group of Aztec dancers with feather head-dresses and mandolins.

The Aztec maidens wear white. They walk barefoot or wear sandles and their ankles are decorated with strings of conch-shells that rattle as they move. As the brass band approaches with the minions, the Aztecs set up a huge drum covered with goat-skins that they beat with a big stick. The beat goes like this: oneandaTWO oneandaTWO oneandatwo anda one andaTWO. The dancers turn circles around the drums. The leader of the group is about forty. Corpulent, bare to the waist, visibly sweating, he whangs on a huge mandolin with a tortoise-shell plectrum. Oblivious, the brass band moves a few feet away. They change their tune. Now it it is, "La Guadalupana" mixed with "This Little Light of mine" in the key of E-flat. All this is visible from my balcony.

 I ask my wife what's going on, and she explains, "It's the Locos." Of course, I remember. Their making preparations for the "Locos" parade, which is something like the "Mummers" parade they have on New Years, in Philadelphia.

Locos of San Miguel

Still, I'm a long way from Philadelphia. Salvador Dali was Spanish, but didn't want to live in Mexico, because he said, "How can I be a Surrealist in a country that is more surrealistic than my art?"



Sometimes the distraction is too much and I just can't travel back in time three thousand years ago to the battle of Kurukshetra.

But discipline takes over and I keep writing.

So, if I'm late with an installment of the story, consider the work that goes into it and be patient, dear reader.

Thanks for checking in,

Michael Dolan/B.V. Mahayogi.