Kurukshetra

“One deeply moving moment comes when Pi, a Hindu who has studied the Muslim and Christian faiths, catches a fish, kills it, weeps for having killed it and says, through his tears, "Thank you, Lord Vishnu, thank you for coming in the form of a fish and saving our lives." – Life of Pi movie review

My friend Anu sent me this quote and the link to the Wall Street Journal review, soon after I told her or poured over my anguish about a profound moment in the movie when the theatre erupted in laughter as if it was some Vadivelu comedy. I am not belittling Vadivelu comedy, a fan of several of his scenes and there are profound moments even there.

Anu had not seen the movie then and I didn’t describe the scene to her. When I read the review I was shocked at the way the reviewer from a foreign land reacted to it, and how we who I would presume more deeply rooted in spirituality reacted to the same scene.

I kept thinking for several days, as to why we reacted differently to it. Did it mean killing is fun, or repenting for killing is fun or the scene was made badly that it turned into a comedy. Cast away, what kind of a psychological mood the boy was in to have said a thanks to the fish, or the past story he remembers of Vishnu as Matsyavatara. Don’t we in our lives, even while going through smaller troubles in comparison to being tossed out, sailing alone, drifting away without direction felt or gone through similar moments of introspection?

Why I am going back to this old story is, the moment repeated again today while watching Peter Brook production “Battlefield” a small excerpt from his larger Mahabharata. I wasn’t too impressed with the play actually - it was a bit patchy and definitely unremarkable especially for those who may not know the story of Mahabharata well.

The story of Shibi Chakravarty came up briefly basically as part of the dharmic teachings Bhishma gives Yudhishtira from his death bed, bed of arrows. Shibi’s story is retold as an extraordinary act of upholding dharma, the dharma a king wanted to uphold to save a bird in his territory. Weighing his flesh against that of pigeon is an act of sacrifice with few parallels. The crowed laughed when the weighing scale kept going down and not up - what was so funny about it my fellow citizens?

Just before the weighing scale enactment was the “funny” comment of the raptor asking for nothing but the pigeon refusing beef and pork as it can’t eat them as they were against his dharma - laugh you must at it...what dharma BS that would prevent one from eating anything.

Maybe the accent, the dialogue delivery of an alien race resulted in such comedy one doesn’t know. It is difficult unless one knows the mind of fellow audience.

But, was everyone in the audience so cool that they could laugh at “death” - again in the context of Bhishma telling a story to Yudhishtira to convince him not to grieve for killing many millions including his own kith and kin was the story of a lady who wanted a snake that killed her son to be forgiven. There is a complex scene of conversation with Yama - he says I am the “Kaala” but even I cannot delay or deny death, it is not in my hands. Tell me if it is normal to find some humour in this? The audience burst laughing when Yama was discussing “Kaala” and “destiny”. Am I missing something? Is there a disconnect between me and the world and how we relate to philosophy, spirituality or whatever it is?

I would love to know what the actors, producers thought of the audience reaction. I remember asking my professor in college about the enactment of ‘Waiting for Godot’ first for prisoners who she told us reacted so profoundly to it and how the play was a great success at the first staging itself. I kept asking her, tell me how did the prisoners understand, connect to something that is so abstract, without a beginning, middle and end. She tried to convince me then, a 20-year old, indeed it was an instant success.

Peter Brook’s ‘Mahabharata’ might have been a different play for different set of people - but it seems to get some of the aspects of the inevitability of the war, death right. It can definitely inspire one to enquire more into how the story is all destiny in a knot. How was the Indian response today different from anywhere else? How different is the response today from say what it was in the 80s or 90s?