Life of Panchali!!

Every Indian would agree that one of the greatest epic of all time is "Mahabharat" by Vedvyas. I don't know whether it is mythology? Or it is fact?Or our history? Or it is just a fiction story? but whatever it is, It is simply brilliant. The great author and sage Vyas has placed  every event in Mahabharat so beautifully and strategically that it leaves pervasive influence on us.

Everyone who knows the story of Mahabharat would not stop praising the Pandavas for their victory in the legendary war and their dedication to protect "dharma". Apart from them one would also praise Lord Shri Krishna, the mastermind, the support system of Pandavas, without whom winning this war would have been just a dream for Pandavas.

But I want to write about someone else over here. No one but common wife of Pandavas "Draupadi".After learning the entire episode of "Mahabharat" I was very impressed by the strong personality of "Draupadi".

   

Draupadi was daughter of Drupad, king of "Panchal". She was also known as "Panchali"(Princess of Panchal). She was not an ordinary female. Just like her, her birth story is also not ordinary. Her father had an old rivalry with Dronacharya (Teacher of Pandavas). Drupad performed rigourous yagna to have a son who could fight with Dronacharya and take his revenge. As a result of this yagna, he was blessed with twin children. Extra ordinary thing here is both children emerged from fire(I am still wondering how can this happen). First emerged a male child who was named "Dhristadhyumna" and second one was "Draupadi". Another thing to be noted here is she wasn't born from a mother's womb but from fire that's why she was also called "Yagnaseni". It is said that she was very beautiful. We get to know about her beauty at different stages of this great epic where different people gets attracted to her at different stage of her life. She wasn't just beautiful but very strong minded person also, she was known for speaking out her mind in the world of men(Incident where she questions everyone in the court when she was dragged with her hair to courtroom). 

I guess Draupadi is the only female in our mythology who was married to five husbands. Polygamy is very common in our mythology but this must be only example of polyandry. It is said that in her earlier life Lord Shiva was pleased by her devotion and gave her a boon. She asked Lord Shiva to give her husband who is symbol of dharma, who is very powerful like Hanuman, who is greatest archer of all time, who is very handsome, who is very intelligent. Lord shiva said that it's impossible to have all these qualities in one man hence she would have five husbands.

One would say that wife of such mighty husbands would have led a happy and safe life. But that was not so. She was treated like an object from the day she got married. Arjun, who won the archer's contest held at Panchal was supposed to be her husband but Pandava's mother Kunti ordered her sons to divide whatever they have got home among themselves without even looking at her. Was Draupadi an object to be divided amongst brothers? That was not enough, her husband Yudhishtir lost everything including his brothers and wife Draupadi in a game of gambling at Hastinapur. I ask again was Draupadi an object to be bet in a game. I think even in Kaliyug no gambler must be betting his wife in game, how Yudhistir gambled his wife in that era of "Dharma". What happened with Draupadi after that in that courtroom does not need a mention. It was for Lord Krishna that Draupadi was saved in that royal courtroom which consisted of King Dhritrashtra, Bheesma pitama, Drona, Kripacharya and Vidur. 

As I have mentioned Krishna already, Lets look at the relationship of Krishna and Draupadi. They were Sakhi-Sakha (Friends). I admire Krishna as perfect package, who knows how to love, how to be a true friend, how to be a brother, how to be ideal son, the perfect strategist. Draupadi's life was full of hardships in-spite of being queen of Indraprasth and wife of five mighty husbands. In her hardships of life Krishna played the role of true friend and rescued her time to time.There goes an incident where Durvasa Rishi was about to visit Draupadi's cottage for lunch while they were in exile for 12 years. When Draupadi came to know about his visit with 7 other rishis, she got tensed because she was left with only one grain of rice. Krishna reached Pandavas cottage at correct time and asked Draupadi to feed him that one grain of rice. As soon as Krishna eats that grain of rice, automatically Durvasa Rishi and his fellow rishis suddenly felt that their hunger has disappeared. Not only that, they felt as if they have just finished a heavy lunch and can't eat even a grain. Thus they cancel their plan of having lunch. This shows us what actually a bond of true friendship is all about, how to keep the promise of being there for your friend when needed. Krishna stood by Draupadi as a true friend in all her hard times.

I mentioned that Draupadi was a very strong minded person, I said so because I was fascinated by the fact that she didn't tie her long beautiful hair after she was dragged with hair by Dushasan till  she washed her hair with his blood. She made it a point that her husbands take revenge of her insults (Draupadi Vastraharan, Jayadrath scene and Keechak scene). She was full of kindness and affection too. In-spite of fact that when Dushasan pulled off her saree, both Dhritrashtra and Gandhari didn't say a word. But still after the war she took care of Gandhari with all respect like she did for Kunti. 

Overall I would say a lady who was princess of Panchal, daughter of King Drupad, wife of five extra ordinary husbands, Queen of Indraprasth and friend of Lord Krishna himself had to face all sort of problems. Right from humiliation in courtroom, hardships of living in jungle for 12 years, living as a slave of a queen for one year and at the end losing all five sons. Who would say a lady with such high status and connections will have to go through all these things. She was feminine, generous  to the right ones while she would create havoc on the wrong ones. Definitely she is most interesting and complicated character of all in the greatest epic Mahabharat.

On Krishna's Chariot stands Shikhandi!!

 This is not my post. It was published in Midday, Mumbai, 12 July 2009, written by Devdutt Pattanaik. I loved this article so much that posted it here.

It was the ninth night of the war at Kurukshetra. The exact midpoint of the legendary 18-day bloodbath. Not the start, not the end, but the middle. The war had been inconclusive. Sometimes the Kauravas led by the old sire Bhisma had the upper hand; sometimes the Pandavas led by the young warlord, Dhristadhyumna, Draupadi’s twin brother, had the upper hand. A see-saw that was going nowhere.

“Bhisma loves us too much to defeat us,” said the Pandavas.

“Yet not enough to let us win,” reminded Krishna. “He must die, if dharma has to be established.” But Bhisma had been given a boon by his father that he could choose the time of his death. No one could therefore kill him. “If we cannot kill him, we must at least immobilize him.”

“But no one can defeat him,” said the Pandavas. “Even the great Parashurama could not overpower him in a duel. So long as he holds a weapon in his hand he is invincible.”

“Then we must make him lower his bow,” said Krishna.

“He will never lower his bow before any armed man.”

“What about an armed woman?”

“A woman? On the battlefield?” sneered the Pandavas, forgetting they themselves worshipped Durga, the goddess of war and victory. “But it is against dharma to let women hold weapons and step on the battlefield.”

“Who said so?” asked Krishna.

“Bhisma says so. Dharma says so.”

“Dharma also says that old men should retire and make way for the next generation so that the earth’s resources are not exploited by too many generations. But Bhisma did the very opposite. He renounced his right to marry, so that his old father could resume the householder’s life,” argued Krishna.

“He was being an obedient son.”

“He was indulging his old father at the cost of the earth. That vow spiraled events that has led to this war. It is time to be rid of him, by force or cunning, if necessary. We must find someone before whom the old patriarch will lower his bow. If not a woman, then someone who is not quite a man.”

“What about Shikhandi!” said Dhristadhyumna. “He is my elder brother. He was born a woman. But my father, Draupada, was told by the Rishis that he would one day become a man. Though born with female genital organs, Shikhandi was raised a son, taught warfare and statecraft. He was even given a wife. On his wedding night, the wife, daughter of king Hiranyavarna of Dasharna, was horrified to discover that her husband was actually a woman. My father tried to explain that actually Shikhandi was a man with a female body and that Rishis had told him he would someday acquire a male body. The woman refused to listen. She screamed and ran to her father and her father raised an army and threatened to destroy our city. A distraught Shikhandi went to the forest, holding himself responsible for the crisis, intent on killing himself. There he met a Yaksha called Sthunakarna who took pity on him and gave him his manhood for one night. With the Yaksha’s manhood, Shikhandi made love to a concubine sent by his father-in-law and proved he was no woman. The wife was therefore forced to return. Now, it so happened, that Kubera, king of the Yakshas, was furious with what Sthunakarna had done and so cursed Sthunakarna that he would not get his manhood back so long as Shikhandi was alive. As a result what was supposed to be with him for one night has remained with him till this moment. My elder brother, Shikhandi, born with a female body, has a Yaksha’s manhood right now. What is he, Krishna? Man or woman?”

Krishna knew things were more complex. Shikhandi, may have been raised as a man and may have acquired a manhood later in life, but in his previous life, he was a woman called Amba, whose life Bhisma had ruined. Bhisma had abducted her along with her sisters and forced them to marry, not him, but his weakling of a brother, Vichitravirya (a name that means ‘queer masculinity’ or ‘odd manliness’). When she begged Bhisma to let her marry the man she loved, he let her go. But the lover refused to marry Amba, now soiled by contact with another man (Bhisma). Distraught she returned, only to have Vichitravirya turn her away, and Bhisma shrugging helplessly. “When you have taken the vow of never being with a woman, what gave you the right to abduct me,” she yelled. Bhisma ignored her. Amba begged Parashurama, the great warrior, to kill Bhisma but he failed. Exasperated, irritated, she prayed to Shiva. “Make me the cause of his death,” she begged. Shiva blessed her – it would be so, but only in her next life. Amba immediately leapt into a pyre eager to accelerate the process.

“I think, Shikhandi should ride into the battlefield on my chariot. Let Arjuna stand behind him,” said Krishna. The tenth day dawned. The chariot rolled out. Behind Krishna stood the strange creature, neither man nor woman, or perhaps both, or neither, and behind him, Arjuna.

“You bring a woman into this battlefield, before me,” roared Bhisma seeing Shikhandi. “This is adharma. I refuse to fight.”

Krishna retorted in his calm melodious voice, “You see her as a woman because she was born with a female body. You see her as a woman because in her heart she is Amba. But I see her as a man because that is how her father raised her. I see her as a man because she has a Yaksha’s manhood with which he has consummated his marriage. Whose point of view is right, Bhisma?”

“Mine,” said Bhisma.

“You are always right, are you not, Bhisma? When you allowed your old father to remarry, when you abducted brides for your weak brother, when you clung to future generation after future generation like a leech, trying to set things right. There is always a logic you find to justify your point of view.  So now, Shikhandi is a woman – an unworthy opponent. That’s your view, not Shikhandi’s view. He wishes to fight you.”

“I will not fight this woman,” so saying Bhisma lowered his bow without even looking towards Shikhandi.

“Shoot him now, Shikhandi. Shoot him, now, Arjuna,” said Krishna, “Shoot hundreds of arrows so that they puncture every inch of this old man’s flesh. Pin him to the ground, immobilize him so that he can no longer immobilize the war.”

“But he is like a father to me,” argued Arjuna.

“This war is not about fathers or sons. This is not even about men or women, Arjuna. This is about dharma. And dharma is about empathy. Empathy is about inclusion. Even now, he excludes Shikhandi’s feelings – all he cares about is his version of the law. Shoot him now. Rid the world of this old school of thought so that a new world can be reconstructed.”

And so Arjuna released a volley of arrows. Hundreds of arrows punctured every limb of Bhisma’s body, his hands, his legs, his trunk, his thighs, till the grandsire fell like a giant Banyan tree in the middle of a forest. It is said that the earth would not accept him for he had lived too long – over four generations instead of just two. It is said the sky would not accept him because he had not fathered children and repaid his debt to ancestors. So he remained suspended mid-air by Arjuna’s arrows.

With the fall of Bhisma, the war moved in favor of the Pandavas. Nine days later, the Kauravas were defeated and dharma had been established.

Without doubt, Shikhandi changed the course of the war and played a pivotal role in the establishing of dharma. He was without doubt a key tool for Krishna. A cynic would say, Shikhandi was used by Krishna. A devotee will argue, Krishna made even Shikhandi useful. But his story is almost always overlooked in retellings of the great epic Mahabharata, or retold rather hurriedly, avoiding the details. Authors have gone so far as to conveniently call the Sthunakarna episode a later interpolation, hence of no consequence.

Shikhandi embodies all queer people – from gays to lesbians to Hijras to transgendered people to hermaphrodites to bisexuals. Like their stories, his story remains invisible. But the great author, Vyasa, located this story between the ninth night and the tenth day, right in the middle of the war, between the start and the finish. This was surely not accidental. It was a strategic pointer to things that belong neither here nor there. This is how the ancients gave voice to the non-heterosexual discourse.

Shikhandi embarrases us today. Sthunakarna who willingly gave up his manhood frightens us today. But neither Shikhandi nor Shthunkarna embarrassed or frightened Krishna or Vyas. Both included Shikhandi in the great narrative. But modern writers have chosen to exclude him. That is the story of homosexuals in human society. Homosexuals have always existed in God’s world but more often than not manmade society has chosen to ignore, suppress, ridicule, label them aberrants, diseased, to be swept under carpets and gagged by laws such as 377. They have been equated with rapists and molesters, simply because they can only love differently.

Indian society, however, has been a bit different from most others. Like all cultures, Indian culture for sure paid more importance to the dominant heterosexual discourse. But unlike most cultures, Indian culture did not condemn or invalidate the minority non-heterosexual discourse altogether. Hence the tale of Shikhandi, placed so strategically. Hence the tale of Bhangashvana, retold by none other than Bhisma to the Pandavas, after the war before he chose to die.

I am fortunate enough to say that my family, both maternal and paternal always clarified the questions we asked of them. As a child,  I asked my parents as to why Shikhandi was described as both man and woman. They answered explaining the detailed story, including the Yaksha part. They taught me to consider these examples of people not as men or women, but just as humans, who feel, who live just as we do.

I am just making an effort to help people understand that Krishna, who created us all, is a loving god and does not differentiate between us on basis of whom we choose to love.

What is Love?

We see, hear, and talk (sometimes even feel) a lot about one thing called “LOVE”. It is an endless topic on which one can go on and on and on. But the question still remains the same. What is love?

“All you need is love” the world famous song by Beatles. If we see the meaning of this famous song, we realize that how true it is. We are told, Love, is all we need. It is the subject of enormous bollywood movies, books, songs, plays, poems and for that matter we even have a “Day” dedicated for it(Valentine’s day).Everyone is longing for it.  But unfortunately, Today’s love has become materialistic; people try to measure the love with amount of money spent.

 In reality Love is not something which can be measured in any way. Love, always tends to grow. A lover can never believe that theirs is a fully developed love; it cannot be expressed through words; In Love there is giving and giving alone without any expectation of returns. In short love is selfless.

If you want to learn to love, you should learn from “Krishna”, the symbol of divine love. Krishna loves all and everyone loves Krishna. He is a selfless, flawless, purest form of lover. His love knows no boundaries of caste, language, power or status. Most fascinating part of his love is that every “gopi” felt he is hers and only hers. He would love each one of them in the form or language in which he/she is most comfortable with. His love for Radha was immortal and innocent. His love for Draupadi was brotherly love. His love for Arjun was friendly. It is only for love that Krishna didn’t accept Duryodhan’s delicious meal but ate “saag” at Vidur’s place.

Krishna’s selfless love earned him respect and glory from all over the world. He loved without any condition he didn’t bother about reciprocation. He was never afraid of losing anything. Krishna teaches you to forgive and forget. Shishupaal his cousin, whose heart was full of hatred for him, insulted him 99 times, each time he forgave him. It was his misfortune that he didn’t utilize his 99 chances of converting his hatred into love. But we are lucky enough to learn from his teachings and his life.

Let’s imbibe following things in our life which Krishna demonstrated to us:

1.   There is only one language- language of heart

2.     There is only one race- race of humanity.

3.     There is only one religion- religion of love.

4.     There is only one almighty- Krishna, the ultimate god

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

After spending 3.5 long years in one of leading IT services company I switched my job. It was my first day at new job. Everything seemed wonderful, Beautiful office premises, awesome people around, new smiling faces, new desk and everything looked perfect.  I was at new phase of my life but I felt like something was missing here at new place, “what was it?” I asked myself; then suddenly something attracted my attention on adjacent desk. What was it? It was nothing but a photograph of gang of friends. I looked at it and instantly went into memory lanes where I spent wonderful moments with friends. Yes that’s what I was missing. “My Friends” That’s when I realized I have so many friends and each one is special and different in nature yet precious to me. I am trying to list down different types of friends probably we all have.

I am sure we all have one friend of each category given below. Read it and try to relate it with your friends

1. Angel Faced: A friend, who has got very innocent face but his/her mind is no less than a devil’s a workshop. They just look like saint from Himalayas but are biggest trouble makers of all. Beware of such friends, don’t get fooled because “Jasa dista tasa nasta mahnun jag phasta” (things are not what they seem and that is why the world gets fooled) ;)
2.  Drama queen: A friend, who has a habit of portraying their problems larger than they actually are. Sometimes it becomes annoying to handle all the drama in their  life. Such friends constantly feel that everything is going wrong in their life no matter what happens to them. Best way to deal with such friends is to keep safe distance.
3. Good one: A friend, who may or may not be close to you but is very generous and kind to all.
4. Quiet one: These friends are the ones who are quiet, introvert in nature. They are usually mistaken as rude and arrogant just because they don’t talk much when in group but that is a big myth.They are good listeners and such people are best one to be approached when in need. We can safely unload all our worries in front of them and usually our secrets lies in safe hands with such friends.
5. Troubled one: These friends always look unhappy and struggling with one thing or other. No matter what they try to do, always end up in some kind of trouble. 
6.  Grumpy one: We all have a friend who seems annoyed with us for every damn thing we do. I call them as grumpy friend. You have to be very careful with such friends when you joke around; you never know what will trigger them.
7.   Cry Baby:  A friend, who is always crying out about one thing or other. you can say they are super sensitive. They always sound negative about everything around. 
8.  Khatarnak one: A friend, who show you that they are loyal to you until the time comes when you need them and they walk away that very moment.
9.  Frenemy: we all have one in our social circle, i.e. a person who masquerades as a friend but is secretly jealous and would enjoy it if something bad happened to you. In essence, the very opposite of a friend.
10.  Best One: A friend, you can count on and turn to them when in need at any time and for anything in this world. Such friends are protective; they are there not only as friend but to watch your back. They are the most sincere ones. They know the best and worst about you and still stand by you. They are often known as a true friend, one who is there through the thick and thin. One who you may not talk to in months, yet with a single phone call they are there at your side in your time of need; OR may be you talk to them daily but they never get bored with your stupid tantrums. We can bear our souls to them without getting judged. They are there in times of need because they know what it is like to be alone. They are friends for lifetime, keep them safe and secure.