Reading Diary B: Narayan's Mahabharata

The miracle of the cloth; Source: wikimedia

The second part of this week's reading was a lot easier to follow. I will admit that I got a bit lost with trying to keep all of the characters names straight in the first 40 pages, but now it seems like the division between the two sides of the family is a lot clearer, so it's a lot easier to keep up with all of the different names and characters. That, in turn, makes the story waaaaaaay more interesting!

I really liked the scene between Yudihistira and Sakuni. It was a bit predictable in that you could tell Sakuni would win with every wager, but it was still really entertaining to watch the usually serious and rational Yudihistira fall deeper and deeper into a gambling frenzy. The story also brought up some really interesting moral questions: if a person engages in something willingly and in full knowledge of the consequences, are they the only one to blame for their circumstances? This was exacerbated when he wagered Draupadi, because she brought up a pretty straightforward argument about how he couldn't have wagered her as he was already Sakuni's servant. I think the most interesting aspect of this whole story is how it humanizes most of the characters. All of the named characters have some aspect of divinity or  the supernatural as part of their characters, but in this scene it was just two guys gambling over things and everyone arguing about the rules. Of course, the scene at the end with Krishna's miracle of the endless cloth can't really be considered "normal" but it was pretty cool.