Mahabharata goes 'X-Rated' in new graphic novel

If there is one overarching message in the Mahabharata, it is this -- war doesn't work when peace is an option. What it also says is to eschew moralistic binaries such as black or white, good or bad, and masculine or feminine. It raises lots of questions, but never leaves proper answers. So say Sibaji Bandopadhyay and Sankha Banerjee, the writer and illustrator of the newest interpretation of the epic -- a graphic novel called Vyasa: The Beginning.

It's a radical take on the Mahabharata to say the least. The text employs words like 'sl't' and the art doesn't shy away from upper-body nudity. The language, in fact, is so contemporary that when the sage Sanatkumara urges the animalistic Pururava to mend his ways, the latter tells him, "Cool it, man." This makes the book easily accessible in our era, in which, says Bandopadhyay, the Mahabharata is more relevant than ever.

Sibaji Bandopadhyay

"The world is about to end. We have arrived at that moment," he says of the 21st century. "It seems that there is no way to stop this absolute destruction unless we think about the praxis of peace. What does it mean to be peaceful? How does one be peaceful? Will the human instinct even allow it? In that sense, the dangerous times we live in are cut out for the Mahabharata to stage a return," adds the professor at Jadavpur University.

When we speak to him over the phone from Kolkata, Banerjee agrees. "When you open the newspapers every day, there's black sarcasm, humour, tragedy, comedy -- it's a different kind of post-modern world. You are in the media, you should understand this," he tells us.

This foreshadowing of doom marks the starting panels of Vyasa: The Beginning (Penguin Random House India), the first part in a planned series. One particularly dark page has Vyasa -- who authored the Mahabharata -- warning the blind king Dhritarashtra, "The world is turning into a weird zoo."

It moves on to a graphic recital of the epic using Sauti, a professional story-teller, as a narrative device. Sauti keeps jumping between different generations while recounting the story, much to the annoyance of the hermits who are his captive audience. But Bandopadhyay points out, "Unlike the Ramayana, the Mahabharata does not follow a linear structure. It allows for digressions."

He also says, "What makes the Mahabharata a miraculous text is that it's a compendium of puzzles that are moral and ethical in nature. And it drives you to impossible impasses. As a result, the Mahabharata becomes a book of problems, and of questions, but it leaves the questions unresolved. And all questions refer back to why war, why not peace?"

Sankha Banerjee

That, then, is a crucial theme that the writer and artist plan to explore in the series, which -- going by what we see in the first book, and borrowing from the explicit language used in it -- will be a bada's take on the complete epic.

Parental guidance is advisory.