Adventure 8: The Kaunteyas, Madhavi.S.Mahadevan
To retell the Mahabharata, India’s oldest, biggest and most told epic, in a new light is no mean task. To present the new perspective of this colossal story in under 300 pages of not-so-small font is not easy either. Madhavi.S.Mahadevan (It’s my first time reading her work) attempts to do both in a convincing manner, and leads us into a new narrative of the great war fiction of India. To those who haven’t heard of the Mahabharata, it would perhaps make sense to Google it or at least read a brief synopsis, before you read this book or this post.
The book makes no secret of what it sets out to do from the beginning: to showcase the viewpoints of the war’s least heard of section, the women. Narrated from the perspective of the mother of 60% of the Pandavas, the book aims to explain the lives and perception of the women in the society at the time. The central character, Kunti, as all those who have read the Mahabharata know, has a lot of tough decisions. Accepting her husband’s practice of polygamy, having to form a working relationship with his second wife, choosing to abandon her first child, and having to choose sides between her children during the great war, she is perhaps one of the most complex characters in the epic, and is surprisingly underwritten in most versions of the retelling. Her decisions and choices shape the war subtly, yet decisively. The book satisfyingly attempts to give her the much required importance she demands, and follows her through her decisions, offering us her perspective from her marriage to Pandu and moving into a new kingdom to meet new people and make new friends (and enemies), to her erstwhile passing away after the war.
“Death is important to a man, but survival is more important to a woman.”
It is evident that the author has done quite a lot of background research on the book, and it can be seen in the meticulous way that even the smallest incidents (from the Mahabharata’s perspective), have been presented. By cleverly employing fiction to fill in the blanks, and twisting one or two facts around for preserving the pace of the story, she has ensured that the book surprises you, and keeps you from putting it down, just. Being a work of fiction, her way of interpreting certain facts (Draupadi’s sharing of husbands, for example) certainly didn’t seem ‘wrong’, although it was a deviation from the original version.(which, in itself, is fiction anyway.) What is also commendable is the perspectives the book offers. By giving a voice to some of the strongest and ignored female characters in the epic, she humanizes decisions, gives logic to relationships, subtly exposes sexism and caste-ism, and engages us in the larger conversation of women in the ancient Indian society — if they were really worshiped, or if they were mere objects in the hands of their respective husbands and fathers.
Sadly though, the promise of the feminine perspective is all the book seems to offer. Once you get past the freshness of the treatment, the book falls rather flat. The war itself is treated as a side story, and the story has to do more with pre-war and post war scenarios. When the synopsis leads you to think that this is about the war, and the book doesn’t give you much of it, you end up feeling disappointed (I was!). Also, the book assumes a certain level of knowledge (however basic) of the Mahabharata as a pre-requisite. So if you haven’t read the Mahabharata before, it probably makes sense to give this a miss! I also felt, somehow, that the book could have been a lot more, but lacked that touch which makes a good book a great one to read. Most times, my motivation for reading on was to get done with it finally! I would be curious to hear the perspective of a reader who hasn’t read the Mahabharata before, but for me, there was no excitement.
Comparisons will obviously be drawn to Anand Neelakantan’s retelling (The Ajaya series), and it remains to be seen how this book fares in comparison. (I haven’t read this, but follow this series for more on that.) This book, to me, was one of could-be’s. It promised a lot more than it delivered.
P.S. Kudos to the cover design!
