Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

…Yeah, and then she comes back to Bheeshma and says that since he has abducted her, it is he who is responsible for the screw-up in her life. Later she vows to destroy him for that.

Well, what a bitch! Blaming the result of her choice on someone else. Bheeshma gave her a chance to marry Vichitravirya, and she was the one who turned it down and said that she would rather go…um…to that other king who she is in love with. And Bheeshma let her go accordingly. So, that’s not exactly his mistake, right? She didn’t have to turn down the chance to marry the prince.

You may have a point on that count, but what if she really didn’t want to marry the king?

Now, why on earth wouldn’t she want to marry the king? She was willing to marry Bheeshma, even if he was much older, wasn’t she?

Er…if you were a girl, and you were asked to marry somebody who’s name meant “funny sperm” would you marry him?? And all because you have been abducted against your will?

Funny sperm?

Yeah, Vichitra-virya means funny sperm. Or even weird sperm.

Hmmm…well, ok, that puts things in perspective a bit. Yeah, finally, this Vichitravirya’s wife had to be impregnated by that rishi, right?

And * Funny sperm * ? Hahaha…poor guy, some ex-gf might have gotten even with him by giving him a nickname that put off all women from marrying him.

Who knows? Well, his mother had some metabolic problem, too. Maybe he inherited something which made his sperm, well, blue or something like that? who knows!

His mother had a…metabolic problem? And you got happened to know her personal physician, who casually mentioned her precise medical problem to you, I guess?

See, his mother was Matsya-gandha, right?

Yeah.

So that means “fish smell”!

So? Naturally! She was the daughter of a fisherman, wasn’t she?

That may be one reason. But there is a condition called Trimethylaminuria, which gives your body a fishy smell.

I think that’s stretching it a little bit.

I’m not saying she HAD it - I am saying there is a possibility.

You can’t take a more far-fetched explanation as the more probably one without adequate reason.

Well, yeah, ok. But its possible.

Its equally possible that you are reading too much into a simple issue.

Equally possible, sure. But what I said is still possible.

No, I correct myself - its LESS possible than the fact that you may be reaching.

Ok, then - less possible. But still possible.

My God, you are one obstinate fellow. Listen, that way, anything is possible.

See, there was this Egyptian pharaoh, too. He made a deity in his own image, and insisted that the sculptor made it as accurately as possible. And man, that guy looked weird - really loppy body-structure. So, people think that he may have had a medical problem that made him like that - something called marfan’s syndrome.

What was he - deformed?

Not really - just some elongated bodily proportions. His name was Akhenaten. You know, Freud thought that this pharoah - Akhenaten, he invented monotheism. Some even think that this Akhenaten was the same fellow who was thrown out of the kingdom and became someone who came to be known as Moses. The same Moses of the Ten Commandments, you know.

Same Moses? No shit.

But he didn’t invent monotheism - the Zoroastrians did. They say the Judaic people was influenced by Zoroastrianism.

No way - Hindus were the original and true monotheists.

Well, at any rate, one thing is clear - it wasn’t God who invented monotheism.

Oh yeah? Aren’t there so many Gods who say that they are the only true Gods?

But its the priests who say these things, baba - when has God come down before everyone and said anything?

Hahaha - look at you characters - If I was God, I would never appear in front of jokers like you. Even God has some class, man. Just because he created you doesn’t mean he is obliged to give darshan to unworthy sinners like you all!

Whatever - the entity who the people think is God is saying this - that entity may be only a projection of their own minds - it just shows you how people think.

God *may* not be only a projection of their mind.

Oh, c’mon, don’t go into that “less-possible and more-possible crap again. Ok, see - have you seen Michelangelo’s painting on the Sistine chapel roof?

Yeah, that one where god extends his hand to man?

Yes, that’s the one.

What about it?

Well, it is portraying a scene from Judaeo-Christian mythology of course, but there is more to it - its actually symbolic.

Yes, of the fact that god reaches out to humans, etc. What about it?

Well, the image of God there is actually placed over the disguised drawing of a human brain - if you look carefully, it will hit you that the shape behind God is an anatomically correct rendering of the human brain!

Really?

You take a look at it yourself - it basically tells you that the entity called God emerges from the human mind. Michelangleo fully recognized the concept of God being only a neural archetype.

Wow! Would you believe Michelangelo’s balls? He drew it on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, and he was paid by the church, and he sneaked in what he actually thought of the religious stuff!

You might just be seeing a brain where there is none.

And you are just doubting the existence of the brain without looking yourself. Why don’t you first take a look before you start denying things, man?

Anyway, as someone said - If God didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

Or Her.

Yeah - or It.

But coming back to this Mahabharat thingy - even this Pandu dude must have suffered from some medical problem, right? Maybe some major blocked artery - he couldn’t handle sexual excitement and hence his doctor told him not to touch his wives, or he’d get a heart attack.

Poor wives!

Hell, why poor wives? They had those Gods who blessed them with sons, right?

Listen, it wasn’t for your pedestrian lust that they…er…sought blessings from the Gods - it was for the sake of having children.

Whatever - but one thing is clear - they weren’t Pandu’s children. And in the MB, there is one single verse which says - when the Pandavas came to the capital for the first time, the citizens doubted the fact that they were Pandu’s children. And the verse then says that after that people accepted them. The authors of MB very neatly pay lip-service to the issue of legitimacy, which must definitely have been a big issue - something at the heart of the matter.

Well, it is a very clear fact that the Ppandavas did not possess any of Pandu’s blood. Which means, they had zero legal right upon the throne. Duryodhana was quite right in refusing them anything. To top it, Pandu had already given up all right over the throne.

Well, the question of legitimacy does not seem to have been raised.

At any account, the writers of MB did not deem it fit to mention very openly this question of a legitimate right over the throne. The MB is quite a huge spin story - the story of the takeover of an entire dynasty by a group that had quite dubious claims over the throne.

The point is that the Pandavas were righteous - the Kauravas were not.

Now, that’s a load of crap - the Pandavas veered away from the path of righteousness whenever it suited them. I mean - that utterance of “Naro va Kunjaro va”, during the elephant Ashwatthama incident, is as hypocritical as it can get. This dude, who is called “Dharmaraja” actually does almost every unethical thing possible. He lies when it suits him, he gambles his wife and rights away, he happily suggests that all the Pandavas share draupadi, when it was only Arjuna that won her. Even Bheema could not defeat Duryodhana without hitting below the belt, without breaking the rules of gada-yuddha.

Tell me, did the Pandavas rub you the wrong way or something?? The way you are after their reputation, something must have happened!

Well, can’t you see that the MB is a spin story - I mean, the authors changed the name of Suyodhana and refers to him as Duryodhana - and that’s a classic way of denigrating someone and presenting him negatively, right? But Yudhishthir is conveniently renamed as “dharma-raj”!

The people named him.

Oh right! Which people - the ordinary citizens, or those who funded the writing of MB? You don’t believe that the authors, Vyas and his team, actually spent years writing the MB without having somebody support their efforts financially? Dude, funding is funding - regardless of the era. The investor dictates the direction of the effort.

Well, yes - some of the MB could be said to be biased towards portraying one side more positively than the other. Coincidentally it happened to be the winning side.

It was the side of truth and righteousness!

Like Dubya’s soldiers are the liberators of Iraq and Afghanistan and like how Dubya knows that God is on his side?

Oh, which story is balanced? The victor, by virtue of being the victor, writes the history. Someone said - The energetic get to write their own history. The lazy have their history forced on them by others.

Quite an intellectual glorification of the simple act of turning lies into truth.

See, warfare is an act of domination and force - it is the subjugation of one entity by another through power and deceit. Once that happens, whatever is done after that is only going to follow in the same pattern - whether it is doctoring of history or oppression.

You know, actually, in the Mahabharata, every character is imperfect, and pretty much everyone agrees that that is the entire beauty of MB.

Yeah, in MB they are all human - in Ramayana, you have archetypes of perfection.

Not every character in MB - look at Bheeshma - he is perfect, isn’t he?

Umm…actually…yes, I think so - he behaves always perfectly with ethical behaviour.

And what’s the use? If you consider it - he is also the most ineffective character in all of MB - he never manages to influence one single thing in a positive manner! He only watches helplessly and does what he is told, in spite of being the patriarch.

You could say - he is figuratively impotent - by choice. The day he vows Brahmacharya, he becomes a mere pawn, in spite of all his wisdom and knowledge and valour. After that he loses free will. Imagine, if Bhishma had simply told his father - look father, you may have the hots for that fisherwoman, but her father is a gold-digger. Why don’t I get you another much better looking and smelling wife?

Imagine! The entire MB would have been different. But no, he had to consider his father’s lust for MatsyaGandha as a very valid request and sacrifice his own desires for it. Very irresponsible as well, IMO - because he should have known that he was placing the kingdom in jeopardy by bringing in a fisherwoman into the ruling family. He should have known his father was being a bit batty when he fell for a smelly fisherwoman.

Maybe he thought that he could educate the royal kids properly and turn them into good heirs.

Well, see, that is crap, because before he took his vow of brahmacharya, he did not check whether MatsyaGandha would be able to bear heirs to the throne or not. What if she could not? Then no Bhishma, and no heirs, too. Kingdom down the drain!

This is empty hypothesizing. Like saying that history would have been different if so-and-so person hadn’t been born. See, events still go in the general direction that society goes in. Isn’t it ridiculous and egoistic to think that individual influence on society is anything more than marginal? You think that if Edison hadn’t been born, we would be today living in a world without electric lights? Or that if Ford hadn’t invented mass-production we’d all be buying handmade stuff?

You cannot deny that some individuals have altered the course of society and history.

If society can be decided by a single individual - it just shows that it was in a state of instability - and it could have gone in any direction. Which means only this - somewhere, someone would have influenced it in some direction anyways. If so, then what is so great about individuals who influence society? Face it - individuals don’t do much - we only delude ourselves.

You get too hypothetical, you know. It’s a fact that Bheeshma declared brahmacharya, and you cannot realistically deliberate on what would have happened if he already had a few kids by then.

On a tangent, that goes to show you - a man who wants to do anything must be…um…the opposite of Brahmachari, or he becomes incapable. I’m not using the street word for that. Speaking of which, you know that fellow I was with the other day at the coffee shop V_ ?

Yeah, I know him a lil bit - what about him? Oh, I get it - he is the opposite of Bheeshma - diametrically away from brahmacharya.

Oh, yes, absolutely! Anyway, his principle is that if someone is getting laid enough, and enjoying it, then other problems in life cannot bother that person. But if that is not there, then no matter what the fellow has, he will never be really happy. So, in his eyes, the key to happiness is to get laid as much as possible.

Very freudian.

No man, more Osho. Its a thing of happiness, and pleasure and joy.

That achievement thingy is not true - look at Gandhiji - he practiced brahmacharya and look at his achievements - he was the biggest leader ever, leading so many millions of Indians out of slavery.

With all due respect for Gandhiji, and I agree to the fact that he was the biggest leader this planet has ever produced - Gandhiji only tried very hard to practice abstinence - he wasn’t that successful, by his own admissions.

Listen guys, cut the BS - history is witness to the fact that all great achievers had a powerful sex drive. Genghis khan - the most powerful alpha male ever, most american presidents, most successful politicians - in India and anywhere else - they all have powerful sex drives.

Really, and does that mean that if I don’t want to get into the pants of every beautiful woman around then I am not achiever material?

Not really - there will probably be some fringe honorable exceptions like you. Nutcases who prefer respectability over pleasure.

Hahaha.

Very funny. For your information, it is possible to have both - morals as well as pleasure. But anyway, see, it may be a general rule - just like we can easily say that most people in jails are criminals. However, we all know that there are often innocents who are jailed.

Hey, have you heard this one?

Which one?

There is this professor, ok? And he is taking a postgrad class, and decided to take an impromptu survey with his grown up students.

ok.

So, he says, how many of you do it about once a day? And a lot of students raise their hands, and he counts them.
Then he says, how many of you do it about once a week? More students raise their hands, and he counts them.
And once a month? A few of them raise their hands, he counts again.
Then, in the passing, he just asks for the heck of hit - And once a year?
At this, one student in the back jumps up, raising his hand, and he cries our loudly, “me! me! me, I do it once a year!”
The prof is taken aback and says, well, if you do it once a year, I don’t see what is there to be so excited about it!
And the student jumps up and down with happiness, and says, “But TODAY is the day!!”

hahahaha. yeah, I can see why he’d be happy.

You know, you can imagine Kunti feeling so happy when she called up Indra to visit her.

Don’t insult the gods, you guys. Have some respect.

Respect for Kunti? Hell, she floated her baby into a river. No matter how great anyone may claim she is - I can’t respect someone who abandons a newly-born baby. And respect for Indra? No way. Man, Indra was known to be a philanderer - he was a complete rogue and there are so many instances of him seducing other people’s wives. You know, I think Kunti could have chosen a less promiscuous God.

Firstly, Indra wasn’t a real God - he was a demi-God, a jealous god and a philandering God, and that’s why Indians don’t like Indra enough to make temples to him. In spite of the fact that he is the most adulated God in RigVeda. And secondly, Kunti did not have much choice - she had only so many mantras given to her.

Hmmm…you know, Kunti must have been fat.

There you go again. Why, someone came and told you?

No no, you have to pay attention to their names. Most names in MB denote something about the person. Like Krishna means dark, Vichitravirya means weird sperm. Kunti’s another name was Prutha - which means round. So, she could have been a fat lady.

Maybe she didn’t have much motivation to stay in shape, I think.

Look, she was called Prutha because she was born of the round earth - Prithvi. NOT because she was round herself.

So YOU say. What if that was only a retro-justification? Maybe her friends teased her calling her “gol-matool”, and then she or someone made up a story to explain the nickname.

The way you guys talk about our ancestors, its disgusting. You make them seem ordinary.

But isn’t that how they must have actually been? Ordinary people caught up in major events? See, we turn people into superheroes, so that we can avoid looking sad next to them. Its like, then you can say, oh, they were Gods, they were exceptional people, we are just so ordinary, we can’t really have such integrity or courage.

You have a point.

Like, Gandhiji - who always was so honest. Give his example to someone and he will dissociate himself from believing that it is possible to be as open and upfront as gandhiji by saying, hey, he was the great *Gandhi*, whereas I am just an ordinary Pappu Pager and I can’t possibly be that honest. Or, they will point to some tiny flaw in the great man’s character and say - ha, he wasn’t great enough to be emulated - see, he was worse than me in this aspect.

Yeah - see how they hound Amitabh. And other celebrities, of course. The more apparent your success is, the more critics you have. Its like the opposite of that Birbal story, where he makes a line become relatively smaller by drawing a bigger line next to it. So people feel small when someone big appears on the scene. So they must either cut him down to size, or put him in a different category from themselves.

Ok, I think now we are getting too serious in our talk, so lets watch the movie, ok?

What’s the movie?

Golden compass.

It’s a children’s movie, man.

It’s a good movie. And you are wrong - this movie may be aimed at kids, but behind that façade, its got a lot going on . You know, the church has roundly condemned the trilogy - Golden Compass is only the first part. Because, the author has very expressly taken up an anti-church stand, even going to the extent of declaring that God may have become old and decrepit, and retired and someone other entity else may have taken his place.

What a thought! Original!

Not that original, actually. In the 11th and 12th centuries, there was this Christian sect, called the Cathars, in Europe that believed that the world was being ruled by an evil Lord, and they worshipped another benevolent God who, for some reason, was not currently empowered.

Oh, you always have some religious nutcase sect.

It was not a new sect - it was a descendant of some ancient beliefs. This particular sect, the Cathars were important and numerous enough for the church to send out an armed force against them. The entire unarmed Cathar population was massacred in this fortress in France, even with some catholics among them, under the slogan - “Kill them all - Let God sort them Out”. About 20,000 men women and children were slaughtered to get rid of the religious beliefs of the Cathars.

Wow.

Yeah, and after the 12th century, this concept of the world being ruled by an imposter and not the real God is again metaphorized in this trilogy - under the guise of a story for children. You can imagine how the millions of kids who love this movie will look at organized religion as they grow up.

Interesting. You go and study up on the philosophy behind movies? You must be nuts.

Nah. You just have to know your theology and its clear.

This is BS, man - must be some detractors of the religion.

That’s possible, too. Sadly, the situation is that even the mainstream bible is highly misunderstood and often misrepresented by priests.

And how is that?

Simple example - you have heard the story of genesis from Judaeo-Christian lore - about how God throws out adam and eve from the garden of Eden, right?

Yes, eve was tempted by the devil to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge and then God kicks out Adam and Eve from the garden of eden.

And what do you think is the meaning of this story?

Well, that’s an easy one. Its most probably a metaphor, like you say.

Of course, most stories are metaphors, and you have to know how to interpret the metaphor.

So, what metaphor have you seen in this story?

Its a story that talks about the original sin, that they lose their innocence, presumably by having sex, and hence God throws them out of the garden of eden.

Accurately interpreted - as per the current popular understanding of the story. And this is the example of a most fantastic subversion of the actual message of the story.

And what does it actually say, panditji?

The story itself is very clear in what it says - it says that Adam and Eve ate the fruit - not from the tree of knowledge, but from the tree of *knowledge of good and evil*.

Really? and that means…

It means that while earlier in a state of innocence Adam and Eve looked at things without judging them as good and evil, at this point they became judgmental and started categorizing things as good and bad - and this moralizing, this classifying things into opposites is what made them miserable and this was their fall from heaven.

Ahh…..

So, what does the devil do? The devil is actually the temptation to judge things as good and bad, to moralize. And is it not accurate, that when one categorizes things into opposites that one becomes miserable?

Then what is the connection of the adam-eve-story to sexual immorality?

None! Someone, somewhere cooked up the sexual connection - made it seem like a bad thing, and thereby the story was subverted into becoming precisely the opposite of what it is intended to convey - it became the vehicle of implanting guilt about sexual behaviour into the minds of millions of people. From being non-judgmental, the message was turned into one of condemnation.

Actually, then the story is then saying exactly what so many eastern dharmas say - that all misery is due to being caught in the illusion of duality.

Will you guys STFU, please?? My God! Look, you sickos, are we watching a simple fairy movie meant for children or not?

yeah, lets see the movie.

And NOBODY dare to point out metaphors and meanings in the movie, ok?

Ok, man, you got it. We will keep shut.

I just want to enjoy a simple fairy tale, and I do NOT want anyone to comment on anything.

Unless Nicole Kidman takes off her clothes in the movie?

Yeah, you know, it is sacrilege to finger a film the way you guys are doing.

Yessir! Here, you keep the remote, and lets watch a simple fairy tale. No sacrilege intended, promise…

– The End –