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Reading Notes: Narayan's Mahabarta, Part A

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I read R.K. Narayan's version of the Mahabharata for this week’s reading. I really enjoyed reading his version of the Ramayana and thought it would be fun to continue to use his work for this and next week’s reading. Jumping into reading the stories it was like seeing an old friend. The style felt familiar and it made it easy to get back into it. The story starts out with the tale of a king who has no wife. He meets a woman by a river and immediately falls in love with her. This woman turns out to be Ganga, the earth goddess. They have eight children together, of which she drowns seven for crimes they committed in a past life. The eighth is allowed to live, and Ganga leaves. The king, now without a wife, happened upon a beautiful girl in the forest. He wanted to wed her, but her father demanded that he make their son the heir. The son of the king visited the fisherman and made a promise to be celibate. The king was thus allowed to marry the daughter of the fisher man. The k...
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Week Two Story: The Monkey and the Alligator

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Mr. monkey liked to eat. Often, he would climb trees and feast on the fruit.  He had tried many different types of fruit, and found it was not the type of fruit that mattered but the location of the tree.  Mr. monkey lived in land with widely varying terrain.  Some soil would be mostly clay, some would contain large amounts of sand, but some soil was quite loamy.  The best example of this soil sat on an island surrounded by marshland.  Mr. monkey used the fallen trees to make his way through the bog and across the water onto the island filled with fruit bearing trees.  This body of water was not uninhabited. In it lived an alligator who would watch the monkey pass to and from the island. He noticed that the monkey always walked across the trees which had fallen into the water.  Most of these trees barely resembled trees now and resembled logs with rough bark.  The alligator got an idea in his head to catch this monkey.  He often had b...
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Reading Notes: Narayan's Mahabarta, Part B

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Part B of the reading starts with a conversation between Duryodhana and his father. They are discussing the Pandavas, who have just married Draupadi, the daughter of Drupada. Duryodhana, who thought that the Pandavas had been killed when their house was set on fire, is quite mad when he learns that they are still alive. He and his father disagree as to how to handle the situation. Dhritarashtra does not hate the Pandavas and wants to bring them back, so he gives them land in his kingdom. This difference between Duryodhana and his father is a major focal point. Duryodhana wants to crush the Pandavas, so he tries to circumvent his father. Duryodhana is made fun of by the Pandavas when he is in their palace and is tricked by the optical illusions that they have placed there. This only fuels his anger for them more and he schemes to destroy them. He and Shakuni plot to use gambling to destroy the Pandavas. They challenge Yudishthira to a game of dice, and he accepts because for some reas...
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