After Kurukshetra
Mahashweta Devi's three new stories have been translated by Anjum Katyal and brought out by Seagull books under the title After Kurukshetra. There are three stories in this collection, all to do with the Kurukshetra battle of Mahabharata and its aftermath. The three stories sometimes read in an run-on fashion, picking from leftover themes in other stories.
The first story is about five women from the janavritta who are asked to keep company with the pregnant Uttara, the young widow of Abhimanyu. Devi, much like in her other works, brings to notice, the ways of the marginalized, and opens our eye to their feelings, emotions and situations. Relevant snippets are: "The prostitute quarters, an essential part of war, now lie abandoned", "The chandals have no role in war, they arrive when the battle is over", "Was this some natural calamity? So many kings join in a war between brothers". “Five Women” captures through Uttara's eyes the different lifestyle of the tribals. They have rivers' names and songs to sing. That they remarry when their peasant husbands are killed in war is beautifully brought out along with the accompanying philosophy. "Once we return, all of us together will perform the necessary funerary rituals for our dead. Then the elders will arrange marriages. We need husbands, we need children. The village needs to hear the sound of chatter and laughter. We will...create life. That’s what nature teaches us." The futility of war is brought out by showing that the peasants who are not given armours and get killed, do not care for dharmayuddhas: "This was not our dharmayuddha. Brother kills brother, uncle kills nephew, shishya kills guru. It may be your idea of dharma, it’s not ours."The second story, “Kunti and the Nishadin” sounds more like the usual reading-against the grain. The Nishadins, tribals here remind Kunti that she forgot to confess that she and her sons killed a tribal mother and her five sons in the lac house, so that Duryodhana could believe that she and her sons were dead. The situation is when Kunti is in the forest tending Dhritarashtra and Gandhaari. The third story “Souvali” is about Yuyutsu, a son born to Dhritarashtra of a maid called Souvali. Yuyustu the only surviving son of Dhritarshtra performs last rites for him although he was never acknowledged as one. Feelings of love, separation, belonging and duty are nicely painted here and critiqued of course.
These three stories are well written and strongly-put, but there is still something that is lacking. Let me try to put it across. Firstly, there is the rajavritta which is painted for us and then the janavritta. Secondly, a comparison or conversation ensues in these stories whereby the both of them mourn the loss created by the war, yet the tribal worldview seems to offer better alternatives to war or the life dictated as its aftermath. This way of living has to do with harmony with nature and a close contact with one’s own feelings. Now, what seems lacking even as Devi argues that the marginalized have better alternatives is the fact that the worldview of the rajavritta painted by Devi is hardly engaged within its own terms; and, more importantly such a worldview has not been painted often at all. Credit goes to Devi for painting one such and doing it imaginatively. In fact, is this not the reason why Spivak adores Devi as well? Devi is not simply a slogan-mongering person passing off for an artist, but genuinely seeks to represent the world she speaks about in believable and true ways. The rajavritta that Devi paints us is itself most interesting in terms of the life and subjectivities we get to see. I guess one must first enjoy the legitimacy of this subjectivity first, taste its dimensions and then seek other possible alternatives or assess it.
In common parlance, one finds more number of critiques of the Mahabharata than genuine attempts to understand that world without anachronizing it. Thus Devi’s painting of the rajavritta needs to be taken into account first, engaged with and then, only later on, can we assess the rajavritta worldview against the janavritta one. It seems to be a tragedy in contemporary times that we carelessly judge the rajavritta kind of worldviews without examining whether they are actually helpful and worthy ways of living or not.
See for example, what Devi misses, while she says the following in the voice of Kunti: "The role of daughter-in-law, the role of queen, the role of mother, playing these hundreds of roles where was the space, the time to be her true self?" This seems both unconvincing and sounds typical. Would not have Kunti and the subjectivities of her time have learned to live with roles or perhaps more accurately, would not roles themselves have been authentic ways of being the true self? These possibilities are awarded to the tribals by Devi and denied to those of the rajavritta. The again when Gandhari consoles women who have lost their children with these words “We must not allow ourselves to be undone by grief”, -there is something precious about the control and the bringing of the control over one’s self that is very valuable. This however is laughed at by Yuyutsu as an artificial world. So, I feel that one must not lose the right to retain the dharmayuddha reading of the Kurukshetra battle. That one may offer critiques is necessary and a precursor to any intellectual engagement, but that must not lead to a displacement of one way of life with the other in a normative fashion.
The first story is about five women from the janavritta who are asked to keep company with the pregnant Uttara, the young widow of Abhimanyu. Devi, much like in her other works, brings to notice, the ways of the marginalized, and opens our eye to their feelings, emotions and situations. Relevant snippets are: "The prostitute quarters, an essential part of war, now lie abandoned", "The chandals have no role in war, they arrive when the battle is over", "Was this some natural calamity? So many kings join in a war between brothers". “Five Women” captures through Uttara's eyes the different lifestyle of the tribals. They have rivers' names and songs to sing. That they remarry when their peasant husbands are killed in war is beautifully brought out along with the accompanying philosophy. "Once we return, all of us together will perform the necessary funerary rituals for our dead. Then the elders will arrange marriages. We need husbands, we need children. The village needs to hear the sound of chatter and laughter. We will...create life. That’s what nature teaches us." The futility of war is brought out by showing that the peasants who are not given armours and get killed, do not care for dharmayuddhas: "This was not our dharmayuddha. Brother kills brother, uncle kills nephew, shishya kills guru. It may be your idea of dharma, it’s not ours."The second story, “Kunti and the Nishadin” sounds more like the usual reading-against the grain. The Nishadins, tribals here remind Kunti that she forgot to confess that she and her sons killed a tribal mother and her five sons in the lac house, so that Duryodhana could believe that she and her sons were dead. The situation is when Kunti is in the forest tending Dhritarashtra and Gandhaari. The third story “Souvali” is about Yuyutsu, a son born to Dhritarashtra of a maid called Souvali. Yuyustu the only surviving son of Dhritarshtra performs last rites for him although he was never acknowledged as one. Feelings of love, separation, belonging and duty are nicely painted here and critiqued of course.
These three stories are well written and strongly-put, but there is still something that is lacking. Let me try to put it across. Firstly, there is the rajavritta which is painted for us and then the janavritta. Secondly, a comparison or conversation ensues in these stories whereby the both of them mourn the loss created by the war, yet the tribal worldview seems to offer better alternatives to war or the life dictated as its aftermath. This way of living has to do with harmony with nature and a close contact with one’s own feelings. Now, what seems lacking even as Devi argues that the marginalized have better alternatives is the fact that the worldview of the rajavritta painted by Devi is hardly engaged within its own terms; and, more importantly such a worldview has not been painted often at all. Credit goes to Devi for painting one such and doing it imaginatively. In fact, is this not the reason why Spivak adores Devi as well? Devi is not simply a slogan-mongering person passing off for an artist, but genuinely seeks to represent the world she speaks about in believable and true ways. The rajavritta that Devi paints us is itself most interesting in terms of the life and subjectivities we get to see. I guess one must first enjoy the legitimacy of this subjectivity first, taste its dimensions and then seek other possible alternatives or assess it.
In common parlance, one finds more number of critiques of the Mahabharata than genuine attempts to understand that world without anachronizing it. Thus Devi’s painting of the rajavritta needs to be taken into account first, engaged with and then, only later on, can we assess the rajavritta worldview against the janavritta one. It seems to be a tragedy in contemporary times that we carelessly judge the rajavritta kind of worldviews without examining whether they are actually helpful and worthy ways of living or not.
See for example, what Devi misses, while she says the following in the voice of Kunti: "The role of daughter-in-law, the role of queen, the role of mother, playing these hundreds of roles where was the space, the time to be her true self?" This seems both unconvincing and sounds typical. Would not have Kunti and the subjectivities of her time have learned to live with roles or perhaps more accurately, would not roles themselves have been authentic ways of being the true self? These possibilities are awarded to the tribals by Devi and denied to those of the rajavritta. The again when Gandhari consoles women who have lost their children with these words “We must not allow ourselves to be undone by grief”, -there is something precious about the control and the bringing of the control over one’s self that is very valuable. This however is laughed at by Yuyutsu as an artificial world. So, I feel that one must not lose the right to retain the dharmayuddha reading of the Kurukshetra battle. That one may offer critiques is necessary and a precursor to any intellectual engagement, but that must not lead to a displacement of one way of life with the other in a normative fashion.
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