The Mahabharata and I

Last night & early this morning I finally watched what has been a quest since before I even met my ex-wife (circa 1991) in a film that lasts 2 hours & 50 minutes, taken from a 9-hour play written by Jean-Claude Carriére & directed by the renowned stage director, Peter Brook (who also translated the work from the French). Yes, now I comprehend the significance as it becomes a symbol of my own journey since first hearing of it & seeing one of its 3 parts on Oregon PBS. The Mahabharata is legendary beyond its Indian mysticism for me currently due to this distance I have traveled to finally view it – 12 arduous years (much like the story’s five Pandavas princely brothers & their shared wife Draupadi, wandering the desert for 12 years before a 13th year entirely in secret).

I have tried over the years to watch it but no rentals had it. Not even Movie Madness in Portland, Oregon, & not Netflix until only recently.

Now, I feel I have passed through to a new juncture, expanding into a fresh, new-fangled sequence of my life without the sorrow of loss suffered in recent years. I can move forward.

Here is a quotation from the play, taking place at the end of the great 18-day war, when the Pandavas have defeated their rival cousins, Kaurava, spoken by the dead sons' mother, Gandhari (blindfolded to match her king husband’s blindness):
“Krishna, you didn’t keep your word. You took part in the battle with weapons more terrible than all the others. You rejoiced in our misfortune; you watched my son die like a spectator. Krishna, I curse you: one day, all that you are building will crumble; your friends will be massacred by your friends; dry blood will coat the walls of your dead city where only vultures reign; your scattered heart will mourn; you will leave, solitary; a passerby will kill you.”

And in Krishna’s death, I can go off into an undiscovered life…