The Greatest Stories on Earth

The Iliad, the Odyssey, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata are the original dynasts of the oral story telling practice – written down and embellished several times over, down the ages. And like all noteworthy bloodlines coming out from the same gene pool, they share resemblances powerful enough to set one off on a journey of what ifs, and whys in the exotic corridors of the mind. The startling similarities that stand out as prominently as the ‘Hapsburg jaw’, could have occurred due to cross – cultural chinese whisper sessions on a telluric level, gifting the successive generations the thrill of the guessing game, and plots and details to be replicated over and over again, in the grand narrative of the human imagination.

Both the Iliad, and the Ramayana can be described as the search for Helen, and Sita respectively though the circumstances leading to their disappearances are as different as chalk and cheese (one eloped, the other was abducted), while the prime mover of the Mahabharata plot line was indubitably Draupadi’s unmitigated desire for vengeance. Forgetting the desensitization of the expression, it is possible to glimpse the genesis of the parochial, and perhaps partly true view of the world’s (definitely true in the ancient world)  troubles emanating from three distinct agents – land, riches, and women, successively leading into the French proverb ‘Cherchez la femme’, when one takes into account that the elopement of Helen with Paris, gave Greece the perfect excuse to lay siege on Troy, which it was eyeing for a long time with the thought of capturing-from the focal points of the three epics.

Similarly, the demon king Ravana’s abduction of Sita can be epitomized as the minority’s simultaneous revulsion and fascination for a female from the majority, closely paralleled in the Red Indian’s equation with the white woman as depicted in the John Ford Westerns and its numerous inheritors.

One thing is certain, that the founding fathers of civilization had a tough time with the distribution and safe keeping of land, wealth, and maintaining the identity of the female half of the population – a problem which exists even today in veiled avatars and to a reduced degree and probability of occurring.

As with the problem of guarding one’s possession, the dawn of civilization must have been occupied with outwitting the other clan as a basis for survival, which gets reflected in use of decoys in the Iliad, and the Ramayana. While Troy remained invincible till, Odysseus had a brainwave in the form of the Trojan horse, Ravana, too, could abduct Sita only with an illusory golden deer which took her protectors away on a wild goose chase. Be it getting behind the enemy lines, or snatching an object of desire, deception remains the absolutely indispensable ingredient from the days of The Guns of Navarone (1961), Where Eagles Dare(1968) to the more modern The Departed(2006).

It is also easy to discern, that such an environment fraught with the fear of loss, and humiliation in the next corner would put a prime value on machismo built up to be legends, as a possible measure of safeguard from secondary threats. Awe is a powerful protective vest, which is why America faltered with the destruction of the twin towers, and was swept by a momentary wave of paranoia in the last millennium. Both, Achilles in the Iliad, and Karna/Duryodhana in the Mahabharata, are demi gods in their almost immortal status. While Karna derived his super power from an armour, and a pair of ear rings with which he was born; both Duryodhana and Achilles were gifted this near immortal status by their respective mothers.

While Thetis immersed an infant Achilles in the river Styx, holding him by his heel (which remained the only vulnerable point in his physique); Gandhari asked an adult Duryodhana to stand in front of her open eyes (which she kept covered) without any clothes, which he did with the exception of covering his middle with a banana leaf which made his thighs, the only vulnerable portion of his body.

Needless to say, that both of them succumbed to injuries in those respective portions of the body; Achilles from an arrow, Duryodhana from a mace blow. A legend grows more authentic, if a strand of vulnerability is written in its code, and the trio is a fitting example of the practice.

A time which would require legends of machismo as a safety measure, would also require tales of immense resourcefulness and self sacrifice in their females, highlighting their integrity and loyalty, to prevent any unwarranted advances. Both, the Odyssey, and the Mahabharata shares exemplary loyal female protagonists in Penelope, and Gandhari. While Penelope would save herself from the suitors gathered for her hand in the long absence of her husband Odysseus, by spinning a cloth in the daytime which she would herself unravel in the night (so that it remains incomplete, and keep the suitors at bay, because they have to wait for its completion); Gandhari would put on a blindfold forever so that her blind husband could feel that she was his partner in life, in every respect of the term.

There are other similarities galore. Priam’s blind love for his son Paris, would make him overlook his indiscretions which would lead him on to the greatest one in his life, and that of his nation, i.e, seducing Helen and carrying her off, while Dhritarashtra’s besottedness with Duryodhana would push him to commit a blunder of equal scale and calamity. Achilles would ask his Myrmidion troops to fight, when he himself did not participate in the initial phase of the battle, while Krishna would order his equally formidable Narayani troop to fight on the opposite side, while he himself would act only as a charioteer.

We may find some of their aspects redundant, parochial, gender-biased, and even passé, yet we are living the greatest stories of the world in our lives, we always did.