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The Women of The Mahabharata — The Question of Truth
As with his earlier works he uses simple language with none of those contrived bandobasts. Before I move ahead, it is important to offload more about the author as a lot depends on who is writing. And this alone is much more important than what he or she is writing. And here, in this case, Chaturvedi is one of those civil servants who quit the IAS (after 30 years of service in the Tamil Nadu cadre) and took to writing — writing one volume after another. He also delivered a series of lectures on dharma and its application in our times. And in between all this writing, he has been shuffling between Tamil Nadu and Gurgaon. At present he is settled in a place midway between Pondicherry and Auroville. Living far from the maddening crowd, he lives life on his own terms. In fact, much before I’d met him, I had heard all those inputs — he lives life on certain strict and honest terms come what may but he will not compromise whether he has his career or property at stake. In fact, before selling the two houses he’d constructed, his sole condition was that the buyer would pay nothing at all in black. And though initially it was difficult for him to get such a buyer, he didn’t budge from that condition. And finally, he did get a buyer who matched his standards of honesty and forthrightness. And so with that in the foreground or background, he writes in that same strain. A strain streaked with that basic sense of honesty and truth. Coming through each page. In this particular volume Badrinath focuses on the women of the Mahabharata — Shakuntala , Anamika, Savitri, Damayanti, Draupadi, Suvarchala, Sulabha, Madhavi, Urvashi, Devayani, Uttara Disha. The story of each one of them is told in a simple and forthright manner but it conveys a lot. Message is relayed very subtly. But since each story revolves around the life and circumstances of a character, so there’s an abundance of emotions. Such stories never really fade and the manner in which he has written these stories makes it certain that this volume is for keeps. High up on the shelf.
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THOSE
of you who have read Chaturvedi Badrinath’s earlier books — The
Mahabharata : An Inquiry In the Human Condition; Finding Jesus in Dharma
—Christianity in India — would be well aware of the great flow
and that story rendering style of his prose. Yes, he writes in what can
be aptly described the ‘dastangoi’ (story-telling) style. And this
is what can be termed as pure bliss for the reader, for one can just
about keep reading effortlessly, as though one is in the midst of a
story- rendering session.