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.

Comments

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...

Webcomic Review: One Day by Pan

Webcomic Review: One Day by Pan (link at bottom) Quote: You love the book The Dreamcatcher, right? Hum...right. That novel is really awesome! I've come to your store for three days. Finally, I finished it. What? You finished all of it? One Day is a short webcomic that's sweet, fluffy and warm like pancakes which leave you happy after you devour it. In a rainy city, Bella a bookworm college student meets a backpacker in the bookshop she works at. They bond over an out of print book that Bella hides behind shelves so that she can finish it before someone buys it. They walk around the city, have coffee in Bella's favourite café and talk about their looming future as working adult. Bella doesn't want to work in a corporate job but her family is strict, and her new friend has a little secret of his own. There are two side stories, of a tomboy teen named Luciana who has a crush on her basketball teammate, and how her friends try to d...

Unrequited? Nah, I am Bhaizoned!

[Another Bloagathon! This is for Women's Web Finding Mr. Right Stories competition in tie up with the Woo App ] Love has been a constant in this blogger’s life, I have always been in love with the idea of love. Fueled by Mills and Boons initially, I always wanted a Tall, Dark, Handsome lover, well I was fifteen when I read my first Mills and Boon, the shift to Tall, Fair, Handsome Vampire happened quickly at sixteen, and I wanted a blood sucking creature for my husband. While Elizabeth Bennet said yes to Darcy, I sighed and imagined myself in her gowns and laces! Oh, how much I love those silly novels by lady novelist and how much I waste my monthly allowance on them! The Twilight hangover had made a racist out of me and I would hanker after any cute fair guy with decent height! It was always the lips of the guys that caught my eyes first. By the time, I reached enlightened eighteen my eyes searched for Jang Keun Suk alike, Suk is the perfect blend of husk...

KhepiAri

Search This Blog