I am reading The Mahabharata by R. K. Narayan. One of my favorite stories from this section
of the reading was the story of the battle.
I found that the battle was interesting in that leaders of the two
armies knew each other well. Most of the
issues could have been solved if the leaders had turned over Duryodhana and his
cohorts. Instead they remained loyal to
him even though they knew what he was doing was wrong. During the battle, it was interesting in how
well some of the people fought against the Pandavas even though they were sons
of gods. One of the saddest moments was
when Arjuna’s son, Abhimanyu went into battle knowing that he would probably
die because he had not learned how to escape a formation on how to enter the
formation. Then he did die after being
trapped and Arjuna is heart-broken and vows to kill the person
responsible. Another sad moment in the
battle is when Bhishma is defeated. Then
he was left on a bed of arrows for days until he died. If Bhishma had permitted it, he could have
probably been saved. Instead, he decided
to die. At the end of the battle, I
found it interesting that Duryodhana remained obstinate until the end. After the battle, it was odd that they did
not remove Dhritarashtra from power. It
was due to his hypocrisy and his inability to keep control that the situation
arose in the first place. In addition,
he tried to kill the Pandavas on more than one occasion.
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| Bhima and Duryodhana's battle (Source: .wikimedia) |
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