Reading Notes: The Mahabharata Part A

Whoa. There are a ton of characters in this epic. And to make it even more confusing their names are even similar... (Amba, Ambika and Ambalika for example). That reminded me of my great aunts who were named Reeva, Rita and Reeba. I was astonished by how many sexual encounters were going on here. It seemed that the top priority was to make sure that the dynasty lived on and that there was an heir to the throne. They were desperately trying to pop out sons in order to keep their kingdom alive! So far it has also been very dark. Like with Ganga drowning every child she had and then letting the eighth live but sentencing him to a life of celibacy. Or also, it was pretty morbid when Pandu died because the curse placed upon him (during intercourse, yikes) and then his wife Madri killed herself as well. So far this isn't much of a feel good story. I haven't thought of ways to make it my own just yet but I might attempt to give them each a bit happier endings. This reminded me of how I used to tell stories as a child... I would end every story with "and then they died." Comical as a little girl but not the best ending for a story. Also I wanted to note that my friend pointed out that in the beginning of the first chapter when Ganga drowned the children in the river it reminded him of the lady of the lake who is in many fairytales. He said that this story in particular was a lot like the Irish fairytale. He told me as well about all the fairytales in which the disney moves like Cinderella, Snow White and The Little Mermaid were based off of and how all of them ended morbidly. I found that super intriguing and was able to relate to how Disney changed these stories to make them appealing to us and turned them into movies. I feel like this is very similar to what we are doing in this class with manipulating the stories to make them more of our own!

Bibliography: (I didn't know where to find the link to Narayan's Mahabharata.)

(The Lady of the Lake)