Skip to main content

Book Review: The Mahabharata: a Child's view by Samhita Arni

Book Review: The Mahabharata: a Child's view by Samhita Arni


Quote: Once, Shantanu the king of Hastinapur fell in love with a maiden. He asked her for her hand in marriage, and the maiden, being equally attracted, agreed. However, she laid down certain conditions--that Hemant never asks who she was or what she did. He agreed and they got married.



A book I have reread multiple times over the years. I have not read Mahabharata in actual Sanskrit, closest I have come to read it in regional tongue was in Hindi years back.
Samhita Arni's book is from the perspective of a child. The book was in making since Arni was a child. At the age of four, she read the epic, her mother had asked her to rewrite the epic during vacation because the author was finishing her books too fast. At age of four, I barely could construct spellings! The author even illustrated the scenes in simple pen and ink.


This book is special because it just narrates, minus the higher thought process and dictum of morals. In the introduction Arni tells that we should let the children learn the story as it is; with its blood, gore and brutality, instead of censoring it. Where she also speaks about a ten-year-old boy who spots the pattern of mistakes or character flaws in the story. When Shantanu again falls for another beauty by the river, the kid uttered: that's no good.

Indeed Mahabharata has repetitions, parallels, and mistakes made because of hubris or wows or ill-hearing. Which you start to spot when you take away the base morality and religiousness from it and treat it as narrative text. This version makes me nick a quote from D.H. Lawrence: In a sense, the Bible is a great confused novel. Mahabharata too is!
It's a smart book that has commonality in the language with fairy tales, short crisp narrative, short chapters, and funny art. I found the art as fascinating doodles that are to the point and very practical from a child's perspective. The wooden bird on the tree that Arjuna struck, doodle has a tree and big enough bird to spot.
This Mahabharata, with all its origins, detailing, actions and consequences is beautiful. Simplified for a child to read on her own, chaptered well for a parent to drag the story for months.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: When The River Sleeps by Easterine Kire.

Book Review: When The River Sleeps by Easterine Kire. Quote: Perhaps the answer lay not in striving but in being. In simply accepting that the loneliness would never be eliminated fully, but that one could deal with it by learning to treat it like a companion and no longer an adversary. Ville a hunter wakes up from a dream, ventures out to search for the heart-stone; that holds the power of the river that's asleep. And this stone is guarded by wailing-angry-widow-spirits. Many attempts have been made at magical realism in Indian English writing, and I didn't like them. My personal opinion is that magical realism needs a deep connection with nature, maybe never explicitly explored in the text, but the traces of that connection always shows in the words written. And I have always argued that North East India is the most fertile ground to plant the seeds of magical realism in. Easterine Kire, pens our deep connection with nature for the national readership to gawk...
Post a Comment
Read more

Word Addict...

                Witch that resides in my heart becomes rest less every-time I loiter down the only bookshop (actually there are many,only two of them have readable books) in my Town. The witch again goes wild, when her stumbling feet walks down College Street in Kolkata. My every visit to Kolkata compels the witch to go there and I feel immense joy running down my blood vessels         I chanced upon Penguin  blogspot  about the modern methods of buying books how times have changed and how the writer feels about it... I was having personal thoughts to write about my evolution as a book addict , and the blog post  helped me to write my own..                  Being a girl I know shopping is the best therapy to distress soul, but for me book buying is the biggest therapy which irritates my family. I still remember my first visit to College S...
1 comment
Read more

Book Review: #Orangetoons by Shreya Sen

Book Review: #Orangetoons by Shreya Sen Quote:You are anyways going to carry the baggage right? So how about caring nice things in it? Just the perfect little pocket size comics you need before you end your day and curl up under your dohar. Hilariously illustrated, gives you what was once known as pearls of wisdom and what we would call as: two penny thoughts every millennial carries in her purse. Superbly relatable if you wear glasses and have untamed hair and have a thing for boxers. I deliberately did not photograph the inside of this tiny book. But it is a good example on how to do your independent or self-publishing gig right, the size, the colour and the binding are to the point and nothing extravagant or flashy. A lesson for young creators of comics can learn from, keep it short and simple. Just get your own copy from @shreyasensagoli. I especially loved the art with the caption: Allow objects to change if you wish to preserve them!
Post a Comment
Read more