updated 26 Sep, 05
Though I’d read the Mahabharata in my childhood days – all abridged versions, though from multiple sources , I heard a story today in a seminar in IISc that I had never heard before… (What’s in italics here is merely a verbatim repetition to the best of my memory…)
After the war was over, Duryodhana lay mortally injured on the battlefield, his thighs broken, simply lying there awaiting his death.
Krishna is with the victorious Pandavas, and suddenly thinks of Duryodhana and feels “he is in such a bad state, after all he is also my brother-in-law, let me go and atleast visit him”. Yudhisthira readily agrees but the other Pandavas would have nothing of it and stay back. So Krishna and Yudhisthira go and visit Duryodhana and contrasts him lying there in a terrible condition with Yudhisthira who is the victor of a kingdom. How did he end up like this…?
And Duryodhana lying there, says to Krishna…
jaanaami dharmam na cha me pravritihi
jaanami adharmam na cha me nivrutihi
kenaapi deven hridasdhiten yatha
niyuktosmi tatha karomi
Not only Yudhisthira, I too knew all about right conduct and the right thing to do at the right time and all that kind of thing. But… the only difference was that when actual situations came where I knew I should do something, I could not bring himself to doing it! And when actual situations came when I knew I was not to do something, I could not really get myself to refrain from doing it! There are some unknown forces within me dragging me in other directions which I simply cannot resist!
And after narrating this story, the speaker in the seminar posed this question to the audience: Do you know this person Duryodhana? Do you know him?? Where is he?!
Pin drop silence for what seemed to be eternity.
(As far as I am concerned… I was stunned – stone stunned – to clearly see him in me …in so many situations of my own life! )
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[Btw after hearing him quote directly, for the first time in so many years, I wished I’d learnt Sanskrit properly when I’d studied it in school 😉 ] …but anyway, I felt this story represented the very core of the great epic.
Literally, Duryodhana means “hard to conquer”
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