The What-If’s of an innocent mind has an evil counterpart in a cynic’s refuse-dump of a brain. It comes out as “What the f#@$!”
In my childhood, the only channel I had access to was the national television network of India, namely Doordarshan. Nothing far fetched, just the Hindi term for television, though in more innocent times it meant farsightedness, as a positive feature, not as hypermetropia. Soon after my dad proudly purchased a television set for our home, Doordarshan showed a serialized version of the longest and probably the grandest epic of the world, the Mahabharata. The same is being re-telecast, so those in India may have it quite fresh in their memories.
As a kid, I was all believing and gullible, as kids are wont to be.
Still, I found the Technicolor feats of innocuous looking arrows a little hard to digest. And I really, really detested the characters Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna (Nakula and Sahadeva were too inconsequential for even my detestation!). Not that I liked Duryodhana and Dusshashana. Oh and Karna and Bhishma were two chaps I found close to likable.
I always found the perpetual grin lighting up the television Krishna’s face intriguing and/or likable, but slightly terrifying, as the neighborhood bully gang sometimes put on similar smiles before any misfortune occurred to Yours Truly. Sad stories. Don’t ask!
So, how come some of the good guys are obnoxious, while some the guys on the wrong side seemed like marginally better human beings (and actually were considered so even by all the “good guys”). And, the whole shekaboom was as hard to digest as the Vegetable Biryaanee I used to concoct back in Hyderabad?
Something was decidedly fishy! In the Mahabharata story, rather than my ill-fated culinary experiments. Those were more “cabbage-y”.
Hence, when I grew up in stature (mental mostly, as my physical frame stopped axial growth and started radial proliferation way too early… but that’s another story)…
Where was I? Yes… when I grew in my mental stature to reach heights of intelligence, astuteness, and knowledge, I decided that I shall work on this WHAT-IF. That one day the story of Mahabharata (or M-Story, as I started calling it), shall be retold (at least partially), to be closer to truth as it might have been. By me!
I have this niggling suspicion, that history is written by the winners. And they MAY (caps for emphasis) be tempted to forget a few details, and get all the greatness and virtue at their side of the bargain. Thus getting all the villainy and questionable conduct on the hapless losers’ side. The losers, in turn, can hardly protest, based on the fact of them being:
A. Dead
B. Dying
C. Hiding
D. All of the above
Still, it turns out the likability of the lead characters from the “good” side is kind-of iffy. In addition, at least two of the “bad” guys are sort-of likable.
What-If… the truth MAY have been, that the better-of-the-two sides MAY have lost. And posterity MAY have been tampered with by the winners and their sycophants. Come on, walking to heaven rather than dying? Seriously? Whom are you kidding? Note rhetorical questions, so answers to these in the comments shall be welcome… and re-questioned!
Since “truth” was tampered with once, it can be tampered with again. The tamper-proof seal there just for show, ala the “mineral water” available in a few places in the Indian sub-continent. But this time trying to balance it out…
Worth a try, eh! Hope the Editor-in-Mischief, @kyabakteho, lets this thing have a short life of its own! The idea is to upload fast, and before he realizes what I am up to! Then, maybe, he shall agree to collaborate? Hello, Fellow Conspirators!
I am not a good story teller, opting for the tortuous byways rather than the straight and fast highway, in my travel of narrative, as @kyabakteho tells me often enough. So kindly bear with me.
This being the Zero-Zero of the series, let us just touch upon the setting of our story. No heroes or villains, just characters here. And a lot of conjectures which MAY, and most probably are, incorrect. PLEASE DEFINITELY NOTE THIS!!!
For considerations of the type Please-don’t-lynch-me, let me please introduce you to the
METAVERSE: n. A multiverse populated by conjectures, meta-jokes and other self-referential crap. Wherein parts of our universe’s facts and fictions collide, and pull on gaudy costumes, they MAY or MAY NOT have donned before.
These stories took place / are taking place / will take place in this Metaverse. The initial setting is in the country called Intermediate Earth. Tolkien-heads, kindly adjust, and mark the fact, that I haven’t crossed any trademark lines! By far! Yet!
We start, somewhere near the start, with King Pacificus Atomus, overseer of the greatest kingdom in Intermediate Earth, called Elephantiston, as it was… ermm… huge.
Talking of huge, there will be gigantic gaps in narrative, and other deletions and/or mismatches, as can be expected from me, unless I get editorial guidance (don’t make me beg, my friend). And there will be unreliable narrators, personas that I shall don on whim.
I hereby christen this trial-of-convoluted-text as “Utterly Great Local Incidents of Intermediate Earth“. All posts with an aim to further this thread of narrative shall be prefixed by “UGLIE“.
And those amongst you, who are planning to report me to the powers-that-be, please consider the following:
- I am human. And I bleed!
- And this is a thought-experiment.
- And doesn’t become an insinuation to your “truth” unless you yourself doubt it.
- The fact, that a small part of me, always wanted to believe that, “Good Always Triumphs Over Evil”. And hopefully it did in our past. And will definitely do in our common futures. I am serious here. For once.
Here’s to furthering the cause of Adipose Storage in the abdominal area.
P.S. This is an old post, retouched and revised a little, and as the earlier post was mine as well, hence I am fully within my rights. After the old posts of UGLIE are revised and uploaded, we shall continue from where I left then. So those who had read them please bear, and others… please ignore the P.S. discussions I have with my earlier followers (if any). The other series (yes there MAY be others) by me or the different contributors (yes there MAY be others) shall be suitably tagged, as well, to avoid any confusion.
P.P.S. Oh, I forgot! The numbering for this post is double-digit-zero, as there MAY be double-digit posts in this series. You stand warned Pranay my friend in cynicism! YOU asked for it!
Random Mythoscopy 