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Nowadays I find Yudhistir very charming. It was not always like that. My boyhood heroes were Arjun and Bheem (bada). Raam and Krishna were gods and so they were out of reckoning.
In my middle age I found Karna likeable for his prowess, and his faithfulness to his friend who promoted him to kingship, and his charitable nature.
But in my old age it is Yudhistir.
His name implies his steadfastness in battle but he is not known for either his valor or his archery. Just captaincy. Like Mike Brearley. He was content with his shared wife to win whom he didn't do much except giving moral support. His best years were in the forest while exiled from home, like mine were at IIT KGP. Both of us tried our best to learn subjects we found interesting but hard. He was not renowned as a spiritually enlightened king. That prize went to Janaka. Although steadfast in battle Yudhistir was averse to it. Somehow pushed into it like I was onto the academic ladder. At the end of the war he must have been beset with a mixed bag of joy and sorrow seeing the devastation and death of so many of his relatives and friends and gurus. And sensed the futility of it all. Like any old man looking back not in anger but in bewilderment.
Coming back to Janaka, he must have been feeling forlorn to see his fond foundling daughter off with Raam who, though good-looking, didn't quite excel as an ideal son-in-law, leading his wife into a forest, and then losing her. RKN would have empathized with Janaka.
After my didi got married, she was being whisked away by my IAS B-i-L the morning after in his second-hand chauffeur-driven car. My entire family were there seeing her off. My Father was in his default tears and my didi reciprocated fully. My B-i-L told me later on that he felt like a kidnapper caught in broad daylight. But apparently my didi's tears dried up as soon as the car turned the corner and she was eagerly discussing their honeymoon plans. My Father went into the kitchen for an extra cup of restoring coffee.
My wife was brought up by her granpa. He was a civil engineer working onsite at the Tungabhadra Dam when he lost his wife during delivery. Like RKN he never remarried. My wife's father was posted in the Railways in North India and my wife was left in the care of her granpa from her infancy. It was he who inspired her to do her M.D. and it was he who discovered me as the ideal bridegroom for her. And it was he who cried in public during her send-off ceremony.
And it was my turn to feel like a butcher to whom a lambkin was being passed on. But, as it happened, I turned out to be not a butcher but that camel. I had bargained to amuse my wife but soon I realized it was a package deal.
Oh, well...
Talking of mixed feelings, I get them whenever I dream of IIT KGP which I do on a daily basis even eight years after leaving it.
And nowadays I have also started dreaming of my wife in my dreams...I mean dreams within dreams within dreams like those famous embedded Kondapalli Dancing Dolls:
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Nowadays I find Yudhistir very charming. It was not always like that. My boyhood heroes were Arjun and Bheem (bada). Raam and Krishna were gods and so they were out of reckoning.
In my middle age I found Karna likeable for his prowess, and his faithfulness to his friend who promoted him to kingship, and his charitable nature.
But in my old age it is Yudhistir.
His name implies his steadfastness in battle but he is not known for either his valor or his archery. Just captaincy. Like Mike Brearley. He was content with his shared wife to win whom he didn't do much except giving moral support. His best years were in the forest while exiled from home, like mine were at IIT KGP. Both of us tried our best to learn subjects we found interesting but hard. He was not renowned as a spiritually enlightened king. That prize went to Janaka. Although steadfast in battle Yudhistir was averse to it. Somehow pushed into it like I was onto the academic ladder. At the end of the war he must have been beset with a mixed bag of joy and sorrow seeing the devastation and death of so many of his relatives and friends and gurus. And sensed the futility of it all. Like any old man looking back not in anger but in bewilderment.
Coming back to Janaka, he must have been feeling forlorn to see his fond foundling daughter off with Raam who, though good-looking, didn't quite excel as an ideal son-in-law, leading his wife into a forest, and then losing her. RKN would have empathized with Janaka.
After my didi got married, she was being whisked away by my IAS B-i-L the morning after in his second-hand chauffeur-driven car. My entire family were there seeing her off. My Father was in his default tears and my didi reciprocated fully. My B-i-L told me later on that he felt like a kidnapper caught in broad daylight. But apparently my didi's tears dried up as soon as the car turned the corner and she was eagerly discussing their honeymoon plans. My Father went into the kitchen for an extra cup of restoring coffee.
My wife was brought up by her granpa. He was a civil engineer working onsite at the Tungabhadra Dam when he lost his wife during delivery. Like RKN he never remarried. My wife's father was posted in the Railways in North India and my wife was left in the care of her granpa from her infancy. It was he who inspired her to do her M.D. and it was he who discovered me as the ideal bridegroom for her. And it was he who cried in public during her send-off ceremony.
And it was my turn to feel like a butcher to whom a lambkin was being passed on. But, as it happened, I turned out to be not a butcher but that camel. I had bargained to amuse my wife but soon I realized it was a package deal.
Oh, well...
Talking of mixed feelings, I get them whenever I dream of IIT KGP which I do on a daily basis even eight years after leaving it.
And nowadays I have also started dreaming of my wife in my dreams...I mean dreams within dreams within dreams like those famous embedded Kondapalli Dancing Dolls:
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