A modern-age retelling for the new-age suppandi and Ghore-log

=== Context ===

The Mahabharata or it’s more popular yet completely unread sister Gita; is based on the ancient poetic epic that is written so long long ago it cannot be dated by humane metrics. But it is agreed upon that it happened roughly some 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The poem chronicles the fight between the judicious Pandhavas and the vile Kauravas. It also acts as a mirror to an individual’s own inner conflict and serves as a Moral treatise to uphold true dharma in the universe. This means that, if you are truly gullible you can believe any shit, a bearded dude with holy beads will say, as long as it’s entertaining as hell.

=== ACT Negative 100 ===

The story starts with this old horny dude who dies without any progeny. So, his mom calls upon his half-brother to do the nasty with his wives, in order to continue the line. The horny-half brother spawns a blind son and another non-blind one. Horny Half-brother dude leaves upon their birth; passing away his horniess to his sons (This is a quite an important theme in the whole story as it gets passed often between characters). The non-blind horny chap ascends the throne, but does some mumbo jumbo down at the jungle, hence gets cursed that if he ever has coitus then, he dead. The depressed chap leaves his kingdom to his blind brother; takes his wives to a lonely forest to spend the rest of his life in isolation. One thunder-filled storm night, the loins of the non-blind brother are on fire. He spots one of his wives and pounces on her, only to die in the next scene. Wife (2) regrets what she has caused, by wearing scantily-clad burka-saree, so she commits Sati. Wife (1) takes her sons (three of hers + two of wife (2’s) ) back to her husband’s Kingdom

=== ACT Negative 10 ===

The birth of our heroes – Pandavas (Arjuna, Bhima, Yudhistir; lets be honest no one gives a crap about the other two), is perhaps the greatest example of plot convenience. Now Pandhu, the dead-king, couldn’t continue the lineage himself, so wives took the aid of Sun, Wind, Time (sometimes dharma) and twin-doctor gods; which is an odd sequence for anyone to think of. The Sun and the Wind, aided the birth of Arjuna and Bheem; the only two interesting characters among Pandavas, Time/Dhrama – an ambiguous concept spew out another boring ass character like Yudishitir and twin-doctor gods gave birth to twin children, who just like their fathers, were not main-character material.

Pandavas is probably the oldest epic to popularize the five-troop writing trope (fighter, tank, healer, mage, stealth) with the fighter role going to Arjuna, who just like his father Indra, is promiscuous af. He goes around kidnapping and marrying princesses randomly. We have the tank, Bheema; who has the absurd strength to move mountains unlike his father, the wind. And Depending upon how you look at it, Yudhistr usually fills the role of the mage and just like his dad – Dhrama, Yudhistr preaches moral science classes to anyone he talks to. Stealth is covered by Nakul, who looks the bomb, but is dumb. Healer’s role is given out to Sahadav, who looks like a slob, but has the foresight to see the future correctly. (But he also gained the ability of “if he ever uses his powers to tell the future to anyone, then his head will burst into a 1000 pieces” so he is functionally useless)

=== ACT Chapter 1 – Finally ===

So, remember Wife (1); her name is Kunti and she brings her children down to her husband’s kingdom – Hastinapur. Remember the blind horny dude; well he was so horny he gave birth to 101 kids, who called themselves “Kauravas”. Now the blind guy was called Dhritrastra and he was the current ruler of Hastinapur. He welcomed his brother’s wife + children, but his sons hated their guts. And thus began this elaborate to and fro repartee between the cousins. Just your usual pranks. Like getting beaten up blue, so in retaliation you try to drown the dude who beats you up. Basic kids stuff.

This went on for a while. At this point even the writer got bored so he introduced a new character called Drona. (Cue the fuckall background score from Abhishek Bacchchan’s movie with the same name). Now, Drona was no ordinary guy, he learnt archery. And everyone living in the MahaBharat mythos knew archery is the schiznit. Archery to Mahabharat is what AI is to our generation. Anyone who even knows the basics got the swagger.

He showoffs his archery skill by building an arrow centipede to fetch a ball thrown into the well by our stupid ass Pandavas. Everyone in the story at this point forgot that a bucket tied to a rope or even an arrow tied to a rope, could have done the same task, but easier. But nooooo, every dude who saw that, got so impressed they wanted to learn from him.

Let me paint you a picture, you go to a concert and you see this amazing musician. He plays this really awesome tune which you’d like to learn. So you join his classes, specifically after hearing him play for that tune. You’d expect him to teach you the tune at the get-go but he teaches some other crap. You still wait thinking he will teach that, but he still is stuck on Sa re ga ma pa da ne sa. But wait, then your cousin Sharma ji ka beta enters and plays the tune. He compliments him in front of you. Charges you extra for next month’s tuition. Same situation. Only this time Drona asks for a whole kingdom instead of double payment. Sly bastard.

=== ACT Chapter 2 – Post-training Trauma ===

Now, the princes (Kauvravas + Pandavas) both started to attend Drona’s school. As part of their training, to understand the psyche of his students he conducted a test. He asked his students to aim for a parrot’s eye, which was atop a tree. His idea was to weed out the top-star student among the 105, who had the utmost concentration. Some chaps answered to Drona that they saw other things as well, apart from the Parrot’s eye; like the leaves or the bird itself. But only Arjuna answered that he saw only the Parrot’s eye; which evidently is a testimony to his concentration ability. Now here is my two cents to this, if you are in a war and you took aim to a random enemy standing opposite to you. You have cocked your gun and are about to take the shot. But, some dude from the background bashed your head while you were concentrating, cause you could only see the eye of your enemy. That isn’t good War strategy. That is stupidity.

“Teach a man how to fish and he will not go hungry. But teach a man to concentrate then he at some point will feel the need to pee” – Lord Sri Iskon

So, post-training at Drona’s place, as part of the graduation ceremony; the princes had this massive Olympian exercise, where they had to show off their skills to the world (which, at this point, is just Hastinapur and the kings of the neighboring cities). And right when you thought that the animosity between the cousins couldn’t get any worse; comes about this golden-plated iron man called Karna. He was all up the Pandavas hood, challenging Arjuna to this massive fruit-ninja tournament using arrows. But Arjuna is a wuss and goes “Bruh, you no prince. I don’t fight with peasants” (Which spoiler alert he isn’t, but that is for much later on). This enraged the already pumped-with-redbull Karna and he is about to snap. That’s when Duryodhana – the chief antagonist of the story, leader of the Kaurava cousin camp; comes along and appoints him the king of this village. Karna is damn impressed and pinky swears he will be his life-long friend.

Now, after this incident, the Pandavas all go to the blind-king dude and ask for their kingdom as he was just a seat-warmer for their dead dad. Which pisses off the Kauravas major. So, to ease in tension between the two groups; the blind king sends them to this shit-hole village and asks them to live kingsize in this huge ass bungalow.

That’s when things take a bad turn, Duryodhana starts hatching a plan to kill the Pandavas,using bricks made from ghee. Remember that bungalow; apparently that was made from this special soot that is quite flammable. His plan was using the same science, Wile.E Coyote used in the Roadrunner show, so it obviously backfired. Yudhistr and the boys, start noticing something fishy as soon as they enter the house. And that’s when they plan their escape….

*****

Now I can’t write down the whole story in one sitting, cause it is very long. In short, to be continued…