People may have been writing about the Mahabharata for over 2000 years, but when Gurcharan Das comes to town — you can be assured that the lecture will not be cliched. The author spoke at Apparao Galleries at Nungambakkam recently, deriving contemporary interpretations to the epic. This was based on his bestselling book, The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma.
“My interest was to restore the notion of dharma in our present day discourse,” Das said simply. However, for those uninitiated with the term or the story of the Mahabharata in general, he went into details of specific portions, drawing comparisons of the characters to modern day India.
The Pandavas — good, hardworking and high performing were compared to IT professionals. This drew a laugh from the audience. And dharma is looked upon from various perspectives as he recounts their tale. When Yudhisthira loses his kingdom to a game of dice, he worries that it goes against his dharma to reclaim it. His wife Draupadi, on the other hand, is very angry. Her claim is that being a ‘rigged loss’, the right thing to do was to gather an army and go to battle. The next day, their quandary is taken to their uncle — a royal counsellor who offers a different perspective of dharma altogether. For him, the prospect of dharma was what was best for the people. Right and wrong, in effect being subjective, had several members of the audience raise their hands at the end of the lecture. “How does one decide when there’s such a huge grey area?” asked a lady who had been listening with rapt attention. “Well that’s the difficulty in being good,” Das responded.
Other portions narrated and introspected upon were Dushasana trying to disrobe Draupadi of her sari, Arjuna attempting to stop the Kurukshetra war and Yudhisthira refusing to enter the gates of heaven because a dog who travelled beside him was refused the same courtesy.
When Karna’s story came to the fore – the moral learning from the story takes a different turn.
Those who know this character well will remember that although born of royalty, Karna grew up as a charioteer’s son. He is one of the most formidable of the Pandava brothers, yet always suffered from “status anxiety”. This is certainly something we all can relate to, Das pointed out.
The author also managed to weave in nation-wide problems of corruption such as the 2G scam and spoke of the Anna Hazare movement — all the while linking the moral code to portions of the Mahabharata.
“What’s great about this epic is that the Mahabharata does not tell us it’s a perfect world,” related Das. He summarised, “It’s really about us.”
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