Mukunda Rao’s Shambuka Rama: Three Tales Retold is not the usual retelling of episodes from the epics. Instead it asks the reader to look at the choices people make. Three simple stories that leave the reader’s brain buzzing with queries, thoughts and more.
‘Another Bheema’ portrays the second Pandava not as a man as ready to eat as he is to kill. In Rao’s hands, Bheema is a sensitive man, capable of great anger and violence but also of great tenderness. After the Pandavas escape from the house of lac, Bheema finds some measure of peace in his marriage to Hidimba. When it’s time to leave and go to Ekachakra, Bheema decides that he does not want to leave his wife and son.
In ‘Sanjaya Speaks’, the battle may have ended but the war continues. Duryodhana lies battered and dying. Unable to say a word to his parents or wife, he finds he cannot stay silent when his son, Durjaya, swears to kill his father’s killers. But he has already unleashed Ashwattama, Kripa and Kritavarma to take revenge on the Pandavas.
‘Shambuka Rama’, the titular story, features an anguished, disillusioned Rama. At Jabali’s ashram, he is told to “go southwards for 10 yojanas . You will find what you have been seeking for. Trust your instincts.” Soon after, he meets Narada, who warns him to “beware of sceptical thinkers and wild cats. Think twice, think thrice, do not trust your instincts.” What Rama, Lakshmana and Sita find is a hermitage, but the people are not what they expect. Sita and Lakshmana settle down quickly among the renegades and heretics, but Rama struggles with views that seem to go against all that he has been taught.
Given the veneration with which the epics are treated, it is interesting to see Vyasa and Valmiki as authors watching their creations take on lives of their own. Vyasa is anguished that his years of hard work will come to naught if Bheema walks out. Valmiki, on the other hand, is watching his character Rama evolve. At the end, I wonder: what would have been if these had been just stories and nothing more?
krithika.r@thehindu.co.in
Shambuka Rama; Mukunda Rao, HarperCollins, ₹299
