Tag Archive for ‘Mahabharata’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Mahabharata'

Mahabharata for modern times

Published

on September 12, 2009

. 1 Comment

In the Indian Express, Meghnad Desai reviews “The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma” by Gurcharan Das (published by Allen Lane):

Gurcharan Das

Gurcharan Das is a multi-talented man. He has been a successful business leader, an author of plays and novels and the book India Unbound, which told the world that India had arrived. Now he has taken on the difficult task of reading the Mahabharata and interpreting its many messages in light of contemporary circumstances.

Unlike many people in their dotage, who turn to religion and spout untutored nonsense, Das took his task seriously. He took out a year of his life and went to the University of Chicago to study the Mahabharata critically. It is a dying shame of the Indian university system that even to study a Sanskrit classic, there is no institution with the library facilities or the Sanskrit expertise that Chicago has.

The result is a book rich in ideas. Das does not retell the story as has often been done. He takes episodes and characters who pose moral and ethical questions. Why is Duryodhana so envious, how could every male of the Kuru clan sit passively as Draupadi, in her menstrual state and wearing but a single garment, was physically assaulted, indeed all but publicly raped by Dushasana, why was Yudhishthira so meek and why did he later agree to a war of genocidal proportions? Arjun’s hesitation is well known but there is also Bhishma’s self-abnegation, Karna’s resentment at the injustice meted out to him because he is just an OBC and then there is Krishna’s willingness to play dirty to win, Ashwatthama’s heinous killing of the five Pandava children etc More:

Bhagavad Gita — the opera

Published

asianwindow

on October 1, 2008

in Music

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The Brooklyn Academy of Music is presenting the Bhagavad Gita in the form of a 70-minute chamber opera, “Arjuna’s Dilemma,” by Douglas C. Cuomo. An Indian singer, Amit Chatterjee, “improvises segments of the score in raga style, in Sanskrit.” From the New York Times:

A scene from Arjuna's Dilemma / Stephanie Berger Photography

On the eve of battle Arjuna surveys the field in despair. The enemy battalions are thick with beloved kinsmen, teachers, comrades. His cause is just. But what is he to do? His charioteer urges him to embrace his duty.

Action is better than inaction, the charioteer argues. Nothing is better for a warrior than a legitimate battle. Either you will be killed and attain heaven, or you will prevail and enjoy life on earth. Finally the charioteer assumes his true form as Krishna: time, destroyer of worlds, “the existent and the nonexistent.” Kill your enemies, he commands. “Be the instrument, for I have already killed them.” Arjuna resolves to do Krishna’s bidding.

Written in Sanskrit more than 2,000 years ago, the Bhagavad-Gita, has been called the bible of Indian civilization. It forms a 700-verse episode in the oceanic “Mahabharata,” which in India has served as a source for drama for centuries. In the West, Peter Brook adapted “The Mahabharata” for the stage in epic style. And on Nov. 5 the Brooklyn Academy of Music presents the Bhagavad-Gita in the intimate guise of a 70-minute chamber opera, “Arjuna’s Dilemma,” by Douglas C. Cuomo.

And in the Washington Post:

Cuomo is best known to the world as the composer of the theme for Sex and the City; he’s also a jazz guitarist. In this opera, he blends classical Indian singing, jazz improv, the busy minimalist-style patterns that appear to have entered the bloodstream of so many composers and the jewel-like tones of a four-part women’s chorus, all worked into a seamless whole, like a golden Indian brocade.

It’s easy on the ear, and very beguiling. I’m just not sure it’s opera. Based on the Bhagavad-Gita, the piece depicts the hero Arjuna about to join battle against an army that includes family and friends; he turns to Krishna for guidance, and learns the secrets of the universe. This is thought-provoking, but not necessarily the stuff of theatrical drama; and while I enjoyed listening to it, particularly as the voices and styles wove together in the work’s culmination, I wanted more emotional depth beyond the prettiness.

[via SAJA]

All Indian life is here

Published

asianwindow

on August 23, 2008

in Art

. 0 Comments

In The Guardian, William Dalrymple takes a look at an ongoing exhibition at the British Library on the Ramayana miniatures — many of them painted by Muslims

The BBC recently celebrated its success in drawing 10 million viewers to the final episode of the latest series of Doctor Who, but it was still a long way short of the figures achieved by Doordarshan, the Indian state television company, which in the late 1980s drew more than 100 million viewers to its mythological epic, the Ramayana.

This 78-part series was at the time the world’s most viewed religious serial, and between January 1987 and July 1988 it more or less brought India to a standstill for an hour each week. Everyone stopped what they were doing to sit in front of whatever television was available. In villages across south Asia, hundreds of people would gather around a single set to watch the gods and demons play out their destinies. In the noisiest and most bustling cities, trains, buses and cars came to a sudden halt, and a strange hush fell over the bazaars. In Delhi, government meetings had to be rescheduled after the entire cabinet failed to turn up for an urgent briefing.

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