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Yesterday I was talking about brothers and how unlikely it is that they teach or learn from one another, with examples from Ramayan.
Today let me talk about Mahabharat and continue our investigations on this topic. As we know, Mahabharat (unlike Ramayan) boasts of no empty idealism and is peopled with characters full of contradictions, very like ourselves. So there are innumerable lessons that can be learned from it (to no avail) and it is therefore called the Panchama Veda (Fifth Veda).
Let us take the Pandavas.
Each one of them is not only gifted differently but also curiously.
Yudhistir is the embodiment of of Dharma: truth, justice and honesty, and later, much learning during his exile. But he was a sucker for gambling and betting and playing with loaded dice and getting cheated and losing his brothers, wife and kingdom. A frightfully contradictory combo. I don't think he would pull on easily as a member of the modern betting syndicates ruled by Dons living in Dubai and Karachi alternately.
Bhim excels in macework and is given to taking blood-curdling oaths. And is famous for splitting the lower limbs of his foes and hitting them below the belt under the direction of Krishna. He is a famous eater but also a famous cook...an unlikely combo again...all great chefs and cooks I know are poor eaters suffering from chronic indigestion, acidity, and sugar. On the other hand, voracious eaters tend to be bad cooks...they are always in a hurry to eat.
Arjun is a great archer and strategist. He is also, funnily, capable of acting as a eunuch (pardon me...a transgender) excelling in dancing (without clapping as in the sleeper compartments of the Howrah-Madras Mail of my times).
Nakul is a great horseman. He is said to have the curious gift of riding a horse in pouring rain but never getting wet. But he was very proud of his good looks as testified by their common wife, Draupadi, and so can be termed a narcissist to beat all narcissists.
Sahadev is great at tending cows apart from being a great warrior who vowed to kill Shakuni and accomplished it finally. He also was the only one among his brothers to have tasted a bit of his father's flesh (after his, i.e. Pandu's, death as per his, i.e. Pandu's, wish). With the result that he was blessed with a knowledge of the past and future and knew that there would be a war to end all wars and Krishna is indeed God. Naturally, Krishna didn't want him to spoil the fun and cursed Sahadev that he would be incapable of answering any question put to him by anyone except with another question, like:
"Why do you answer each of my questions with a counter-question?"
"Why not?"
(We had a very popular chemistry teacher at IIT KGP by name Sahadev Banerjee whose son was a topper in our physics departmnet. But neither the father nor the son evaded questions from students and teachers, respectively).
And then there is this Karna. He is a great archer rivaling Arjun and could have won the war easily for his acquired masters, but he was addicted to charity. He could never refuse any gift asked by unscrupulous brahmins like me. Unwise charity can be a curse...none of the famous American donors like the buffets and gates is likely to end up dead on the battlefield like our poor Karna born of Kunti as a direct result of their charities.
So we are done with the 5 (or 6) Pandavas with their incongruous traits. Obviously none could learn much from the others or teach them well.
Kauravas, on the other hand, were too many in number...a hugely unwieldy class resembling my Jumbo first year classes at IIT KGP.
Duryodhan is an equal to Bhim in his macework but he was prone to enormous jealousy and wickedness. Also to ask other people's wives to sit on his lap. But he is gifted with the rare boon of the ability to sit hiding in deep water for days together without breathing. But he was also a sucker for insults, which infirmity leads to his ultimate death.
Duhshasan is devoted to his elder brother, but all that he is famous for is to drag other people's unclean wives into public and try to disrobe them...unsuccessfully.
Can these variety of skills be taught and learned from brother to brother?
The answer is a resounding "No"
That brothers can be endowed with unlike gifts is attested by our own famous brothers, RK Narayan and RK Laxman.
The elder one is so famous a writer that many of his readers wonder why he wasn't given the Nobel.
The younger one is an equally famous cartoonist.
RKN never learned much of cartooning from his chota bhai.
RKL tried to write some novels like his bada bhai but no one wonders why he didn't get a Nobel for his writings...there is unfortunately no Nobel for cartooning.
At IIT KGP we had two famous and popular brothers who were great teachers: Dr Ram Gopal Chatterjee and Dr Braj Gopal Chatterjee. The elder, however, was in Physics and the younger in Chemistry. But they were never seen together...not to talk of learning from each other. RGC was known as Ram-da (SDM used to say that ramda in East Bengali mans a weapon like a sword) while BGC was known as Bhom-da because he had a voice like a veritable Diwali atom bomb.
That about sums up my thesis...with honorable exceptions like the Wright Brothers, Warner Brothers, Marx Brothers and such.
...Posted by Ishani
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