Skip to main content

Yudhishthira turns his back on heaven

Illustration by Gemini AI


Yudhishthira hesitated at the threshold of heaven.

They had won the war. But what did they really achieve?

Behold this field teeming with kinsmen and friends, Yudhishthira had lamented looking at the mutilated corpses on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Vultures and jackals had started feeding on the bodies of people he knew, he loved, he never wished to kill. What glory lies in a kingdom won at such a cost?

His brothers looked at one another. They had no answer to their eldest brother’s, the new King’s, question. The immoral Kauravas had been routed. Duryodhana’s arrogance and egotism lay crushed in Kurukshetra’s dust. Even the mighty Karna, with his nobility that had deserved acknowledgement and appreciation, was decimated. Immorally.

A lot of adharma was perpetrated by the Pandavas in the name of Dharma! Even Krishna couldn’t win it without some adharma. Much adharma! Yudhishthira bowed his head in shame. What did our victory mean? He knew that it wasn’t a victory of dharma at all.

War is not the solution for evil. War is another evil. You can’t defeat evil with more evil.

Yudhishthira hesitated at the threshold of heaven.

He was alone, save the dog that joined him somewhere on the way. All his brothers and his wife fell on the way, succumbing to their own personal flaws. Draupadi was felled by her partiality for Arjuna. Pride on his wisdom brought Sahadeva down. Personal vanity undid Nakula. Even Arjuna and Bhima, with all their might and greatness, fell. The war didn’t mean ultimate victory.

What did the war achieve?

Disillusionment.

The Pandavas didn’t even want their kingdom now. Political power looked hollow in the face of all the loss that the war had brought. Loss of people, more than anything else. Loss of relationships. Loss of love.

What is life without love and relationships? Yudhishthira hesitated at the threshold of heaven.

Even Krishna perished. His entire clan did too. Dwarka sank into the sea.

Kurukshetra was not a victory. Kurukshetra was wicked, more wicked than Dhritarashtra’s Hastinapura.

I seek not heaven tainted by injustice. Yudhishthira hesitated at the threshold of heaven.

If my brothers and wife are not here, let me rather dwell in hell with them.

Heaven means nothing without the presence of people you love. Without relationships.

Yudhishthira turned his back at the threshold of heaven. Kurukshetra was a huge blunder.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanMay 9, 2025 at 1:11 PM

    Hari OM
    A true eternal parable... but do those who hear/read it take its lesson?

    On a side note; initial view is that I like the arrival of Leo fourteen... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 9, 2025 at 2:54 PM

      Those who should take the lesson don't read!

      I too think Leo XIV is going to be another blessing for the world.

      Delete
  2. Liz A.May 10, 2025 at 8:36 AM

    I guess each generation needs to learn this lesson. Sadly, so many people have to die each time it's taught.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 10, 2025 at 9:06 AM

      Right now India and Pakistan need this lesson. Neither learns anyway.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...
11 comments
Read more

Hindutva’s Contradictions

The book I’m reading now is Whose Rama? [in Malayalam] by Sanskrit scholar and professor T S Syamkumar. I had mentioned this book in an earlier post . The basic premise of the book, as I understand from the initial pages, is that Hindutva is a Brahminical ideology that keeps the lower caste people outside its terrain. Non-Aryans are portrayed as monsters in ancient Hindu literature. The Shudras, the lowest caste, and the casteless others, are not even granted the status of humans.  Whose Rama? The August issue of The Caravan carries an article related to the inhuman treatment that the Brahmins of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh meted out to a Yadav “preacher” in the last week of June 2025. “Yadavs are traditionally ranked as a Shudra community,” says the article. They are not supposed to recite the holy texts. Mukut Mani Singh Yadav was reciting verses from the Bhagavad Gita. That was his crime. The Brahmins of the locality got the man’s head tonsured, forced him to rub his nose at t...
14 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more