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Stories of Barbareek, Aravan, Astika, Madhavi, and Jaimini form a special portion of this book. The book has been divided into 108 chapters. With a master stroke, the author has elaborated the storyline by including lesser-known folklore stories of the epic, while keeping intact its original form and style. Other than retelling the interesting parts of the Mahabharata, what makes this book a favourite among audiences is Pattanaik's rendering of the various local folklores and tales that are associated with the epic, which have been presented in a whole new genre. If you are a geek like me you can go for Flowchart (helped me a lot).Jaya: A Retelling of the Mahabharata has the whole epic, which was originally known as Jaya, condensed into a tiny capsule in this book. *Warning*- The story has a considerable number of characters so my advice to the readers would be to find a way to remember the relations of two people that the author is talking about in a scene just to understand the story better. It is a treat to know more of my culture through his imagination. This is my first Devdutt Pattanaik’s masterpiece, and needless to say not the last one. The way he has traced the ancestry and origins of the Kauravas and Pandavas, relating stories about their ancestors, illustrating how every event is the result of Karma is an indicator of the immense hard work done by an author to put together a book. The author has successfully reached the readers with clarity and simplicity of his retelling of the Mahabharata.
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The beauty of the story of Mahabharata is the relatability to general masses be it any generation. It is not that he has anything less but that his cousins have more that makes him suffer. This epic gives great importance to the law of karma and teaches us how the root of all human tragedy is human folly since Duryodhan’s envy of the Pandava fortune is the root cause of the tragedy that is the Mahabharata. The theme of asceticism as a practice to rid oneself of rage is a recurring theme in the Mahabharata. For me the hero has always been Karna, one who could not refuse his mother’s begging to forgive her “own” children and not kill them but he shows a balanced thought process also because he cannot promise to forgive Arjuna, who defamed him the most in front of all. Karna, the most revered warrior of them all. Woven throughout the story are elements which strongly communicate the woes of an abandoned child, Karna.
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social outcast of people born in lower castes, Varna-system. It focuses on many of the problems of present world viz. The Pandavas enter the gambling hall with neither. Krishna represents intelligence and Draupadi represents luck. In Gambling, throw of dice indicates intelligence and luck.From him descended the Kauravas and Pandavas. Puru became the patriarch of the illustrious kuru clan.Like other Yadavas, he would never be king, but only a kingmaker. Krishna would be born in the Yadava clan. The descendants of Yadu were called the Yadavas.Apart from that there are many ‘Oh My God’ moments for me in this engrossing book viz. What I liked the most in this ambitious effort by “Devdutt Pattanaik” is when he intervenes and writes his own interpretation at the end of each chapter to analyse the situations and scenarios, providing different perspectives which are often overlooked by us. Mahabharata is an epic describing the issues of family feud where cousins fight among themselves for the division of the family property. This is because I am one of those ‘modern’ people, who does not know about the origin/story of Mahabharata, and reading this book gave me some idea, if not much, about the hows and whys of the story. Fortunately the book is real gold and I found myself rejuvenated after finishing it. I am not such a religious person that I would deliberately read a religious book, but I chanced upon reading ‘Jaya – Retelling of Mahabharata’ when one of my friends gifted it to me. Within infinite myths lie the Eternal Truth