Apple Of The Earth

As I sighed to myself and compelled myself to get up and amble towards the kitchen, my mind inadvertently started to think of the permutations that I could churn up in the kitchen. I trotted around the tiny kitchen and switched on the exhaust fan before glancing around carelessly at the ingredients available- a pointless exercise considering that my mind had already decided on what to make. Again, sighing to myself, I delved into the wicker basket with my right hand and conjured, as if my magic, 3 potatoes and with my left hand fetched the chopping board. Humming the tune from “Five hundred miles away from home”, I poured water into an aluminium bowl and ran my fingers all along the inside of the bowl to rub off any dirt before throwing away the water. Refilling the bowl, this time I closed the tap and reached for the cylindrical polycarbonate container of rice. As I unscrewed the lid, a waft of summer suddenly hit my nose.

I had been cooking this rice for over a year now, yet the sweet fragrance of mango blossoms that inevitably filled the small kitchen every time I opened the container, would easily transport me years and light years into the past away from the hustling and bustling, never-sleeping metropolis of Mumbai to the always sleepy and cosy city of Calcutta. It would take me back to the numerous summers spent stealing mangoes from the neighbour’s trees and the many cuts and bruises all over my body – all incurred for a few heavenly slurps of the ripened nectar or a few crunches of the sliced green mango, nicely marinated in chili powder. I wrestled my mind away from the sunny skies and the tangy feeling in my mouth overpowering my nervous system and ordering the eyes to shut and the face to wrinkle momentarily and forced it to return to the dingy room. As I measured out the accurately named Ambemohar rice into the water-filled bowl, my mind couldn’t help but wander back to the carefree summers spent, what seemed aeons ago.

Nine spoonfuls later, I washed the rice in the water, before steeping it in half a bowlful of water. Done preparing the rice, I shifted my concentration to the potatoes and was immediately transported back to the narrow alleys and bylanes of old Calcutta where windows are too close for comfort and yet it comforted the soul to look through the wooden slats and iron grills at the rows of terraces all interlinked to each other – some decorated with potted plants and others bearing the last remaining vestiges of erstwhile pigeon feeders. 

As my father hobbled into the typical old Calcuttan kitchen, his balance hindered by the heavy jute bag filled with vegetables and fruits, I rushed to help him and through the corner of my eyes I could see that age was catching up with him fast and yet an adamant man, he refused to hire a cook even with my mother bedridden after an operation. An inquiring glance from me alerted him to the need for lunch and before I could follow up my questioning look with any words, he announced the menu for lunch. Frankly speaking I was disappointed. Having heard a lot about his cooking prowess during his days living alone in Kanpur and Mumbai before marriage, the stories having never been transformed into reality often left me utterly frustrated at having missed out on discovering this aspect of my father. Seeing that no one had given my mother an off-day in the last twenty years, fate had rather cruelly decided to take things in her hands and relieve my mother of all duties for a month in the summer of 2010. Frankly speaking, once I got over the shock of seeing her bedridden, I was rather excited at what my father would be cooking but his decision today did everything to dampen my excitement.

As I peeled the potatoes from muscle memory, my lips curled into a smile thinking back to the time my father told me that this dish would not be possible without the Persian, the Japanese and the Chinese. 

Dismissing his comments as the ranting of a madman, I concentrated on stocking the refrigerator with the vegetables. Seeing my lack of interest yet unperturbed by it, he asked, “Have you never wondered why the English call it potato and the Gujaratis call it batata but we call it aloo?”

“Why ?”

“Well most of the world calls it that – the Spanish, the English, the South Americans. The French have a extravagant name for it but that’s the French- always jazzing up the language. Anyway, the original Caribbean word was ‘batata’ which became ‘potato’ in English and ‘patata’ in Spain and through the Portuguese and Spanish traders who frequented the west coast of India, ‘batata’ and its various spellings and pronunciations became popular. What’s weird is that why do some North Indians and Bengalis call it ‘aloo’? It’s a misnomer that has stuck proving that sometimes mistakes do live forever. ‘Alu’ is the Farsi word for plums and the usage can be seen even today in ‘Alu Bukhara’ (the common plum) and ‘Zard-alu’ (apricot). In the 1800s a British ambassador to Iran, Sir John Malcolm presented the Nadir with potatoes recently discovered from the European’s expeditions of the far west. The Iranians misunderstood the offering to be a variety of plum and called it ‘Melkom alu’, an abomination further perpetrated through Asia Minor right up to Kandahar and along the Gangetic Plain till the river empties itself into the Bay of Bengal. The Afghanis still call it ‘kach-alu’ and we of course prefer to call it just ‘aloo’”

“What about the Iranians? Do they still remember Malcolm every-time they eat a potato?”

“Well funny story there is that the good thing that the Iranians have done is to move on from the misnomer. The bad thing is they use a calque”

“A calque?”

“A linguistic carbon-copy if you will. From the French nonetheless. An Iranian ‘Sheb-zamin-i’ to counter the French ‘pomme de terre’ literally meaning ‘apple of the earth’”

Both of us burst into hysterical laughter, almost falling over in our attempts to gather a semblance of balance and sanity. I gathered myself and sighed a couple of times to flush out the laughter before asking, “We covered everyone from the Caribbean to the Iranian but I don’t understand how the Japanese fit into this.”

“Without the Japanese there wouldn’t be a rickshaw to take me to the market. They invented the rickshaw in the 1800s you see and that’s why today I can go to the market and return with a week’s worth of vegetables. In fact, even the word ‘rickshaw’ is rooted in Japanese.”

“I can’t believe this. This connection is way too far-fetched”

“It’s the truth son.”

“Well, what about the Chinese then? How are they connected to all this?”

“Well who do you think introduced the rickshaw to Calcutta? It was the migrant Chinese workers in the Kidderpore dock who were the first pullers of the rickshaw. They came here to start tea businesses but worked at the docks to earn enough seed money for the business and in the process, gave Calcutta not only a vibrant Chinatown but also rickshaws”

As I washed the peeled potatoes and drained the brownish water, I wondered back to the summers which were much simpler than this one – when stories were made and stories were told. Lighting the gas, I placed the bowl of rice on one burner and the wok on the other burner. Lining the walls well with mustard oil, I let it collect in a pool in the trough and happy with the quantity, allowed it to heat up. I placed two peeled potatoes inside the rice bowl and taking out an egg from the refrigerator, dropped it into the water too. Returning to the remaining potato, I starting to chop it very finely and once done, soaked it in salted water for a couple of minutes. By this time the bubbles on the surface of the mustard oil had subsided and I drained the chopped potatoes and drying them with a napkin, released them slowly down the side of the wok into the heated oil. As the aluminium bowl bubbled away to its heart’s content on my left, the mustard oil hissed and fizzed before letting out a wisp of smoke. Quickly taking a ladle, I turned over the potato pieces to ensure they brown evenly all over. Slowly but steadily all the pieces were fried, strained and plated just in time for the rice to boil down to its last few puddles of water. Scooping up the egg and the potatoes, I plunged the egg in a bowl of ice-cold water and mashed the potatoes with the back of my spoon. Content with the cooked rice, I turned off the gas lest the rice starts to become sticky.

Years ago, a 16-year old had scoffed at the simplicity of a plate of steaming hot rice, with dollops of Jharna ghee , a pinch of salt, some mashed potatoes, a solitary boiled egg, some salt, a green chilly and a bunch of crispy fried potato sticks but as the 16-year old devoured perhaps the simplest of all culinary delights from the Bengali’s cookbook, sitting beside his mother and father , chatting away about history and linguistics and the city he had perhaps realised that even the simplest of dishes can have a beautiful story and for sure, can make an astounding one. 10 years later a 26-year old realises that in the toughest of times, in the darkest of days a plate of piping hot rice eaten with equally hot mashed potatoes and a boiled egg, topped with spoonful of Jharna ghee, a sprinkle of salt and a solitary green chilly and finally garnished with crunchy rice stick can really warm the heart and make it feel like home even five hundred miles from it.

This story was first published by Birdhouse Poetrywatch in August 2020 and can be found here :  https://birdhousepoetrywatch.wordpress.com/2020/08/12/apple-of-the-earth/

The Starting Line

Aastha Sheikh was the only 9-year old in her class never to have seen Ellis Bridge. All her friends talked about the wonderful view from atop their fathers’ shoulders, staring down in awe at the serpentine river weaving its way through the heart of the city and up in amazement at the wonderfully illuminated bridge. They would speak of families walking along the pedestrian paths on the edges, laughing and smiling with kids on laps, kids on shoulders and kids on their backs slurping on an ice-cream or struggling with a fluffy candy floss. They would giggle and suddenly dive into hushed tones and burst out laughing, reminiscing about young couples walking hand in hand, engrossed in the view- some of each other and some of the manmade wonder above the natural one. They would speak wide-eyed about the groups of friends cutting birthday cakes on the famous bridge overlooking the Sabarmati and wistfully hope that someday soon they would be able to convince their parents to give them the same freedoms. Aastha listened mute to all these stories and true to her name, believed that one day she would see this great miracle too.

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As her father brought the vehicle around, Aastha’s face lit up with an unadulterated joy that only a kid can show. She nearly jumped out of the arms of her mother, who for some reason did not seem happy at all. Perhaps she did not take too kindly to being woken up at 4 am in the morning but young Aastha who had been put to sleep early last night, had no sleep and only hope in her eyes as she finally managed to wrestle her way out of the reluctant arms of her mother and made a beeline for the vehicle. Her father got out of the driver’s seat and waited as Aastha’s little feet made the fifteen feet journey an arduous one. He knelt down and with a smile greeted his only daughter and then lifting her up in his arms stood up facing his wife. As Aastha looked at the vehicle in awe- a vehicle which she knew her father drove but had never seen, her parents carried out a hurried conversation in hushed tones. She realised from the tone of her mother’s voice that she was not happy about something but too happy to care about what, she let it slide away from her mind.

Minutes later, young Aastha could not believe that she was in a car, at 4 am in the morning, wide awake and with permission. As she let the cool October morning breeze hit her face and ruffle her hair , she felt something she rarely felt – a feeling that she couldn’t quite define but a feeling that had sporadically engulfed her when her father had taken her to Sarkhej Roza the first time. It was only a few minutes from their house but the sheer size of the lush green hills, the old and enticing remains of gates and palaces and her father’s encouraging look telling her to run as much as she wanted to made wave after wave of the feeling lash over her, making her feel as if she was miles away from dirty little Sarkhej. She had ran about to her heart’s content that day, her father barely managing to keep up. As they climbed down the outer wall that evening Aastha peacefully sleeping on her father’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around his neck and her drool all over his shirt, her father knew that his daughter was not one to be tied down.

As memories of that wonderful day came flooding back into her mind, Aastha looked towards her father driving the car and then back out at the empty streets and flickering streetlamps casting temporary shadows on the strays that looked up sleepily at the vehicle that rushed past . She suddenly felt very brave and special, sure that none of her classmates had ever seen Ahmedabad at 4am. As the vehicle took a turn and continued along a beautiful road , Aastha saw to her amazement that on her side of the road there was no longer buildings and concrete but instead a huge chasm , across which was visible a skyline silhouetted against the early morning sky of Ahmedabad. At the gradually lightening sky with a deft stroke of orange here and a slight dash of yellow there against a canvas of a purplish-black shaped by fluffy and bulbous silver-lined clouds stretching across the vast expanse, Aastha stared and stared unable to contain her excitement on seeing a sky that changed colour so quickly . Her father smiled as he changed the gear, perhaps for the first time during this time of the day although every day at this time he had been exactly here for the past 12 years. He looked at his watch and hoped that he would be on time.

Five minutes later Aastha did not know where to look- at the huge structure in front of her that stretched across the river below, the reflection of which in the still waters presented a beautiful scene of illumination against the dark reflection of sky , at the water itself, guarded by high stepped walls on either side and protected by the many sentinels hung over it at generous distances bridging the gap that it created or at her father who escorted her down a flight of steps and lifted her atop a raised platform , smiled at her and urged her to stay put and did what any clueless 9-year old would- sit and stare.  She looked at his retreating back up the flight of steps, knowing fully well where he was going- back to the vehicle.

Aastha looked on in awe at the troika of a dark canvas gradually sprouting lighter shades, with a sudden leak of reddish hues and silhouetted skyline of a vibrant multi-cultural city still cloaked in the black of the night, a still, silent, powerful, ever-moving serpent, weaving its way across the city and the illuminated man-made engineering marvels slung across the lifeline connecting the city and completing the canvas. She was so engrossed in the scene that she almost missed what her father had brought her there for. She would have missed it had it not been for her father waving frantically from down below with a huge bucket in one hand and a broom in the other, pointing excitedly at the skyline behind him and quite extraordinarly following the line of vision of his outstretched broom Aastha saw a chrome ball rising above the minarets,kalasas ,amalakas and highrises. As the Sun rose above the city it gradually threw off the dark shroud the city had wrapped itself in and the canvas changed from a purplish-black to a soothing light blue bordered by white cumulonimbus. Aastha watched in wonder as the Sun illuminated the city and the artificial illumination on Ellis Bridge paled in comparison.

Having cleaned the stretch designated to him, as he had done for the past 12 years Ahmed Sheikh returned to where he had left his daughter. Not seeing her there, he kept the bucket and broom there and ran down the steps looking left and right as he covered two steps at a time. His heart racing, thinking now about his wife’s reprimanding, Ahmed rushed along the river not knowing where to look. He knew shouting was futile and huffing and puffing, just about to collapse Ahmed, saw to his amazement a 9-year old girl running on the platform above his head towards Ellis Bridge. Taken aback but still thankful that he had spotted her, he rushed along trying to find the next flight of stairs. By the time he found it, Aastha had reached the bridge. Climbing two steps at a time and knowing full well that his body might collapse any moment, Ahmed continued spurred on only by his love for his daughter. Finally having caught up with her, he fell down to his knees, famished and ashen-faced, his shirt soaking wet on an October morning and his face grimy already. He looked up at his daughter who excitedly pointed to the reason why her father had run so much. Still trying to gather breath, he looked up at a sight which even in that state, he had to behold.

Through the caged structure that was Ellis Bridge, the sun played hide-and-seek as it ascended the limitless sky, its light skidding off the metal and disseminating into multiple rays in all directions. As he looked on in wonder, the sun continued to rise up and while doing so, bathed the bridge in a warm haze of October sunshine and as the sound of crows crowing and dogs barking aggregated with the gradually increasing sounds of horns honking, gears clunking and the occasional train whistle in the distance, Ahmed realised why his daughter had run- to take in the true essence of an urban sunrise.

Aastha Sheikh was the only 28-year old among the competitors to have seen the sun rise through Ellis Bridge. Being mute since birth, she however could not tell anyone how beautiful it was but the daughter of the municipal garbage collector remembered how she had run that day to watch the scene in time. As she looked up at the track in front of her in New Delhi, Aastha Sheikh knew what awaited her at the end of a hundred metres, just like she knew that October day, 19 years ago. As the gun was fired and all the athletes took off, Ahmed Sheikh, municipal garbage collector of Ahmedabad City, standing in the stands knew that just like that day in October, 19 years ago, Aastha had again left everything in her wake.

The Living City

“The end justifies the means”, they say but if there is one entity that wakes up every day to prove them wrong and goes to sleep knowing it has succeeded, it has to be Kolkata. Unlike your other corporate cities, Kolkata sleeps and goes to bed early too and definitely on Sunday afternoons. By 10 pm the roads bear a deserted look and transportation is hard to get and yet it is perhaps only in this city that you can still walk home safely- for this is precisely what this city embodies and personifies – the journey more than the destination.

You may be wondering why I called the city an entity. Anyone who has stayed in this city will be able to tell you that Kolkata or Calcutta (as some of us still prefer) is nothing less than an emotional living organism. Much like your average Bengali girl, the city is moody – sometimes the rains cheerfully cascading off the lush green foliage and old buildings and sometimes lashing gloomily against the concrete jungle and black umbrellas. The rapidly expanding city sometimes burns under the ferocious glare of the enraged sun and yet it is the same sun which smiles down mildly on Sunday mornings, touching the feet of the lazy citizen devouring the newspaper. There exists within this macrocosm a city which exists for everyone – for the bibliophile who believes in the journey of discovering the book more than actually finding it , there can be nothing more satisfying and more romantic than walking through the cobbled roads of College Street , popping in and out of every shop, feeling century old second-hand yellowing books in their own hands, perhaps enjoying an enriching conversation with the old shopkeepers over a steaming cup of cutting chai or a cooling gulp of Paramount sherbet. That is not to say that the city does not have the Starmarks and the Oxfords and Crosswords – it does and they too have embedded themselves into the rich versatility and diversity that this city is. At the end of the day, no matter whatever complains you have about the city, you cannot say that it is not accepting for Kolkata will not suck you in instantly into a vortex of revelry and celebration, nor will it ignore you and let you be but the city will slowly entice you and seduce you into discovering it, into delving into the city and in doing so it will compel you to listen to your heart and discover yourself.

Kolkata is like every Bengali girl, an amalgam of opposites. For every narrow, winding, heavily branched North Calcutta bylane you have a 4 or 6-lane avenue or overpass. For every Dacres Lane, MNM Row or Camac Street serving thousands every day with the best in street food, locally reinvented global favourites from Chinese delicacies to Maharashtrian and Gujarati favourites, from Lebanese rolls to kathi rolls, from Mughal influences to South Indian strongholds, from Punjabi dhabas to pice hotels there are fine dining experiences and multi-star restaurants that are not so pocket friendly. For every slow and unreliable, yet soothing and romantic tram ride there is a metro that rushes beneath the city every 5 minutes. For every sleepy Sunday afternoon there is a city wide awake, decked up and crowded during Durga Puja. For every report that lambasts the squalor and dirt of the city that has seen famines and floods, wars and embargoes there are citizens and tourists who can’t stop raving about the City of Joy. For every Nandan, Navina, Star and Mitra there is an Inox and a Cinemax. For every Rabindrasangeet and Nazrulgeeti function in makeshift temporary constructions under poorly lighted shamianas, there is the heady dash of jazz in Trincas and rock and roll in Someplace Else. For every connoisseur of everything fine and coarse in life, there is something in Kolkata. The city will never leave you disappointed. If versatility and diversity could be a city , I have no doubts that it would be Calcutta for few or no other cities can boast of having a Turkish settlement, a vibrant Parsi community, an Armenian church, a Bangal-Ghoti rivalry, the largest cricket stadium and the second largest football stadium in the world, the house of the Bard and a market selling just lard,  British era museums and art galleries, hand-pulled rickshaws and an underground metro, a Gujarati business community and a Marwari real estate one, a Punjabi locality having dhabas and gurudwaras, Protestant churches and mazhars, masjids and Catholic churches, a tremendously Calcuttan Chinese area in Tangra and an Anglo-Indian one in Bow Barracks, one of Asia’s largest artisan communities in Kumortuli, one of the country’s largest goldsmith communities in Bowbazaar and one of the subcontinent’s largest red light area too. Kolkata is the home to one of the oldest footballing rivalries and the newest football champions. It is the one place where even test cricket brings alive the stadium. Having said what I have, I must however also present the disclaimer that Kolkata is an acquired taste. It is not for the fast-paced, in-and-out personalities, nor is it for the précis loving character who reads only the reviews but doesn’t watch the movies, who reads just the summary and not the book. Kolkata is not for you if you are not in sync with your senses, it is not for the unemotional robot who refuses to feel for Kolkata is not merely a city to visit, not merely a metro to live in but it is a feeling, a sensation to be felt, to be inhaled and to be submerged in.

Having lived in the city for 23 years, I obviously feel strongly about this city and what it has given me and most importantly, what it has taken away. I do not believe that a city, any city, is simply the brick and mortar buildings or the metalled roads, the beautiful parks and the majestic monuments. They may comprise the body of the city but the heart of any city lies in the gastronomical delights that it has to offer and the soul of the city lies in the people that make the city what it is- alive. If this is true, then the huge heart that Kolkata has stretches from the alur chop and beguni shacks of North Kolkata to the vada pavs and pau bhajis of Camac Street, from the puchka stalls of across the city to the biriyani outlets competing for space and profits, from the liver and brain kathi rolls of Zeeshan to the dumplings and momos of Tiretta Bazaar, from the halim and nihari of Zakaria Street to the ice-cream on hot brownie of Bon Appetit, from the authentic Ghoti cuisine of 6 Ballygunge Place and Bhojohori Manna to the lip-smacking Dhakai cuisine of Kasturi, from the kasa mangsho of Golbari to the cutlets and kabirajis of Anadi Cabin , from the steak and beer of Olypub to the microbrewery of Beer Republic, from the Fairlawns to the Wise Owls, the Bachchan and Azad Hind Dhabas to the Chillis- Kolkata has place for everyone , be it a global giant or a local David . As far as the soul of the city goes, you can ask any random stranger on the street for directions, chances are that you will be shown eight different routes to your destination and if you’re lucky you may even be informed about what’s best about each route. The city where even a rickshawallah can quote a Nobel laureate, a street food vendor can effectively talk politics and a Taxi driver can hum any song and mouth any dialogue from any film, that city is Kolkata. The city where love letters are still hidden under pillows, where hands are still held on streets, where boat rides and tram rides are romantic and not tedious, where poetry is an everyday truth and every corner, every nook and cranny is brimming over with stories, that city is Kolkata.

Kolkata is not a city that will hit you in your face with its extravagance , neither is it the city which will bowl you over with its grandeur but it is the city which will slowly make you fall in love with it , the old kind of love , the one that lasts. You can travel from the north to the south in under an hour, taking the underground metro and perhaps soon from east to west, under the river, in half an hour too but it is only by walking on the roads of this erstwhile capital of the British Empire that you will realise the enigma that is Kolkata. It is on the most disappointing day of your life , on the saddest day of your life when nothing seems to be going your way , when your famished feet land on the royal roads, when your broken body gives in to the cool breeze, when your spent senses breathe in the green freshness of the foliage , take in the aroma of the street food that wafts in slowly through your walls that your fatigued form will be reinvigorated by the indomitable spirit, the contagious energy of the city that will heal you. Kolkata is an emotion meant to be felt not only analysed, a food meant to be devoured not only digested, a song meant to be memorised to the extent that it flows through your veins, not merely listened to, an enigma that must be enjoyed not decoded.

Kolkata is as sweet as the sweetmeats and cottage cheese delights it is famous for and as tart as the tamarind water, without which it cannot imagine its puchkas. It can give you a high as high as the Shahid Minar or make you feel as low as the underground metro tunnels but rest assured Kolkata will bring you back. The city is as shy as a newlywed bride peeking from behind the betel leaves and as outspoken as the local uncle criticising your haircut. The city is as free as the Maidan and as claustrophobic as New Market, as spontaneous as the Ganga and as difficult as Park Circus 7-point. The city is everything and yet nothing, it is hilarious and serious, it is contented and disheartened – all depending on which pair of perspectives you choose to put on. The city of Feluda, Byomkesh, Kiriti and many more prove that Calcutta is like the mother that welcomes her sons, prodigal or otherwise, with open arms. The city has for centuries welcomed foreigners onto her shores and in her railway stations , embracing the Portuguese and the French, the British and the Chinese, the Marwaris and the Biharis, the Gujaratis and the Tamilians, the Punjabis and the Malyalis, the Parsis and the tourists and making them an integral part of the history and story of the city. The legacy of the great city lies not only in its rich Bangla heritage but in its pan-Indian and global appeal. Kolkata exists in the sounds of the dhaaks that fills up the minds of the Calcuttan living abroad when autumn comes knocking, in the smell of freshly made sweets which waft in through the senses of the Calcuttan living abroad, in the memories and fantasies of Calcuttans across the globe because, my dear , don’t you know that a city like her cannot be caged by brick and mortar, by cement and stone ? 

The Mahabharata- Decoded.

The Mahabharata , dictated by Ved Vyas and written by the elephant-headed Hindu God Ganesha is widely regarded and generally accepted as the story of Bharata and his descendants , which again is believed to be an euphemism for India and India's children.  Note that till the Oscar nominated Mother India changed perceptions,  India or Bharata was considered to be a man but then again considering that India is a land of duality where every truth is an exception to an existing truth , the term India emanates from the river Indus which is again considered to be a woman.

Keeping in mind this existence of inherent duality and closely going through the epic, one realises that the 18-day War of Kurukshetra that the Pandavas and the Kauravas fought was in reality a fallacy. Considering that this battle is held up in Indian history and mythology (the two freely interchangeable of course in India) as the ultimate Dharmayudh , the conclusion of which symbolises the victory of Dharma and not necessarily good over evil (according to conventional definitions) , my assertion that the very war was a fallacy tends to ruffle a few feathers,  if not more and anger a few Bhakts, if not all. Before you break down my house and burn my effigy let me at least justify my statement.  The Kurukshetra War was basically a battle between brothers for control over Hastinapur and by default the entire Kuru empire but if we transcend the basics, it was much more.  Sticking to the basics for now,  like I said,  the Kurukshetra War was a battle between brothers for control of an empire to which both believed they had complete stake but the truth was that neither the Pandavas nor the Kauravas had the slightest right to the throne of Hastinapur.  To understand this we must crawl back a few generations to the birth of the very teller of this story,  Ved Vyas.  Ved Vyas,  also known as Dwaipayana was born on an island, as his name suggests,  out of wedlock,  to Satyabati (who would go on to marry Shantanu later and mother the Kuru empire)  and a travelling ascetic Parashar. So herein lies that great duality of India again,  in a country which looks down on children born out of wedlock,  the most revered text was elocuted by an illegitimate child.

The matter gets murkier when the same Satyabati marries Shantanu,  great-grandfather of the Pandavas and the Kauravas and the marriage of the king and the fisherman's daughter not only mocks today's Khap panchayats for labelling intercaste marriages as unIndian and unnatural but also becomes the inter-caste fountain from which the Kuru dynasty flows. The marriage of Satyabati and Shantanu would however not have been possible without the sacrifice of Debabrata, Shantanu's only living son from his ill-fated marriage with Ganga and the only pure-blood Kuru son of Shantanu.  Debabrata, as we all know , vowed never to marry or father a child and always protect the occupant of Hastinapur's throne.  He earned the sobriquet Bhisma and the power to die when be wanted by his immutable vow. In due time Satyabati gave birth to two sons - Chitrangada and Vichitraveerja.  Chintrangada,  the elder son,  died young and the last remaining pure-blood Kuru who could contribute to the progression of his progeny without breaking a terrible oath,  Vichitraveerja, in a terrible anti-climax turned out to be impotent.  It is here that the story of Mahabharata would have ended had it not been for the guile of Bhisma,  who picked up two princesses from their Swayamvara and bought them to Hastinapur as his step-brother's wives. However Vichitraveerja could not stand up to the occasion and the throne of Hastinapur lived in constant fear of loneliness till Satyabati thought of her illegitimate son Ved Vyas and like a true-blue twelfth man Ved Vyas entered the arena in place of the unsuccessful  Vichitraveerja and fathered Dhrithrarashtra and Pandu with Amba and Ambalika, the two wives of Vichitraveerja. The progeny luckily continued but at what cost?

The cost of blood. The bloodline of Bharata was lost forever in this scheme to hide the king's disability from the public eye.  Consider this, neither Pandu nor Dhritrarashtra had an ounce of royal Kuru blood in them and hence neither did their children.  The only true descendant of Bharata remained Bhisma but blinded by his devotion to his past he forgot to look into the future.  Bhisma defended the throne of Hastinapur in the battle of Kurukshetra but not the son of Hastinapur because indeed Duryodhana,  the king in power at Hastinapur during the war was as much a foreigner as Yudhisthira, the attacker or for that matter also Shishupala. So this brings us back to the statement which I was defending for so long.  The Kurukshetra War was a fallacy because the war which was supposedly about brothers fighting to stake their rightful claim to the throne of Hastinapur involved neither brothers,  in the truest sense of the term,  nor any rightful stakeholders to the royal throne of Hastinapur.  Considering that the Kauravas were conceived in earthen pots of Dhritrarashtra and Gandhari and the Pandavas conceived by Kunti and Madri without Pandu's involvement,  neither were the Pandavas and Kauravas related from their fathers' side nor from their mothers' hence debunking the accepted theory that they were brothers, I rest my case that the war was a fallacy.

Having said that, let us consider for a tiny moment the fact that if anyone,  at all,  knew or could have worked out all of this,  it would have had to be Bhishma.  Having known that the Kurukshetra war was a lie,  a fallacy,  why did the educated and wise Bhisma allow such a bloody massacre culminating in the death of family and friends and almost the Kuru dynasty? The duality of India is such that,  to uphold a promise made to his blood father, Bhisma had to protect a foreigner on the throne of Hastinapur.  He made a conscious choice to honour his promise more than his hubris,  to honour his word more than his blood.

The battle of Kurukshetra might have been a fallacy but by no means are the lessons learnt from it anything but absolutely essential. The concept of honouring words above blood is observed even today in Indian culture when fathers honour childhood promises and marry off their reluctant daughters to the sons of their childhood friends. It is observed when different members of the same family contest elections representing different political parties.  It is observed when mothers and mother-in-laws support brutal rape of daughters and wives by moneylenders in exchange for the money lent. The battle of Kurukshetra might have been a fallacy but it's legacy lives on in every micropore of Indian society. Such is the duality of India and hence it's story,  that if the battle of Kurukshetra was indeed a Dharmayudh then whose Dharma was it that won or lost?  Was Yudhishthira's Dharma the better Dharma ? That Dharma which convinced him to kill his teacher with his words? That Dharma which convinced him to gamble away his family?  That Dharma which taught him to be a silent audience to his wife's public humiliation?  Or was Bhisma's Dharma the better Dharma? That Dharma which convinced him to be a silent bystander to an avoidable war? That Dharma which did not touch the righteous soul when a lady was being disrobed in his presence?  That Dharma which accepted Satyabati but not Karna ? Or was it Duryodhana's Dharma that won the Dharmayudh?  That Dharma which caused him to order the public rape of Draupadi?  That Dharma which convinced a young boy to poison his brother? That Dharma which allowed him to trick , trap and kill a teenager? Considering the duality of India,  it might just be possible that no-one's Dharma won the Dharmayudh.

The truth is that in a system so complicated that perhaps only we Indians can comprehend it, the concept of 'always' does not exist.  No one is always right or always wrong,  nothing is forever and truth in itself is relative.  The theory of Relativity may have been propounded centuries later but the concept was very much prevalent in both the Mahabharata and the Bhagavada Gita. The Dharma that won the Dharmayudh is not any individual's Dharma but the Dharma of relativity - everyone's Dharma and at the same time no one's. The very fact that a war that was a fallacy provides lessons that shape Indian society and culture even today,  is a recognition of the  duality of India.

Here is something to blow your mind even further. Years and years after the Kurukshetra War, which led to widespread annihilation and which was fought to justify the Dharma of Bhishma by brothers for an undeserved seat of power, another war ravaged the same subcontinent- a war which left the subcontinent gasping for breath out of trains sent across the border packed with dead bodies and raped bodies,  a war which was fought due to the 'moral' silence of a Mahatma by brothers for an undeserved seat of power.  The duality of Bharat was established again in 1947 - the duality of two brothers fighting for their own Dharmas - India and Pakistan.