The sudarshan chakra/UFO adeptly locates north India, floats down, takes a quick left turn from the main palace, reaches the scene of the action and hovers above the heads of the characters as they look up in astonishment. This raises intriguing possibilities: what if Krishna got his coordinates wrong, ended up in the heart of the African continent and was captured by hungry tribesmen who didn’t give a tapir's ass about his claims that he was an Indian deity? (Given that it was so difficult to travel from one part of the globe to another in those days, surely even Gods must have had restraining orders.)Īnyway, there were no such concerns in this episode. The zoom-in from outer space towards the topography of India on the rotating globe suggests that when Gods wanted to come down to earth to answer individual prayers in the ancient days, they used Google Earth to find their way. The most impressive bit in the episode by far was when Draupadi calls out to Krishna for help and he heeds her call by sending forth a gigantic sudarshan chakra that resembles a flying saucer. (Karna, of course, would probably need to get himself tattooed from head to toe, in font size 8.) Yudhisthira’s son: “Mera baap juwari hai” (“My father is a gambler”)īhima’s son: “Mera baap gadha-dhari hai” (“My father wields donkeys”)īheeshma: “Meri maa nadi hai” (“My mother is a river” )ĭrona: “Meri maa katori hai” (“My mother is a bowl”)Ĭomparing tattoos would be therapeutic for the people concerned, a bit like attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meet and discovering that others are much more screwed up than you are. Suggestions for tattoos for other characters: Remember Amitabh in Deewaar brooding about the line “Mera baap chor hai” (“My father is a thief”) tattooed on his arm? Well, given the dubious origins of many of the characters in the Mahabharata, there are richer possibilities here. Closer inspection reveals these to be writing of some sort. They had tattoos in the Dwapara Yuga! The pretty-boy actor playing Yudhisthira has an elaborate one on his right shoulder and, not sure about this, but I think Draupadi has one on her neck.
(Even worse is "gadha-daadi Bhima", which simply means "mighty Bhima who resembles the beard of a donkey".) Also, the Mahabharata war would look very ludicrous if Bhima spent all his time on the battle-field time brandishing donkeys by their hind legs. This has the effect of further diminishing the dignity of a character who doesn’t have a huge amount of it in the first place. The former means “mighty Bhima, wielder of maces”, which sounds very grand, but the latter translates into the much less impressive “mighty Bhima, carrier of donkeys”. For instance, someone should quickly inform the actor playing Duryodhana that it’s “gadaa-dhaari Bhima”, not “gadha-dhaari Bhima”. Most of the script is in shudh Hindi (compared to the more ornate language used in B R Chopra’s production of the epic) but pronunciation definitely needs to be worked on. Do these guys even know what “B.C.” means? They need to be careful about offending the saffron brigade by acknowledging the existence of another religion.
The opening dateline, written in Hindi, says “Dwapara Yuga, approximately 2000 B.C.” This is a bit like saying "Indraprastha, located approximately 8,000 miles east of New York". After this, a long cosmic zoom-out reveals that our solar system is but a speck in the waggling ear of the elephant-headed Lord Ganesha as Vyasa prepares to compose his great poem with Ganesha as his transcriber, we may expect that the story will be narrated chronologically from episode 2 onwards. At the end of the episode, the actress playing Draupadi turns to the camera and shrieks something to the effect that whenever a woman is insulted or dishonoured, a great war will take place and the world will be changed (which leads me to wonder if Ekta and her scriptwriters follow the daily news at all).
Most of the Pandavas are shown in silhouette (possibly because the casting hadn’t been finalised when this episode was shot), Shakuni giggles continually and resembles Dr Evil in the Austin Powers films, Duryodhana has impressive breasts and there is unintentional phallic imagery in the worm’s eye shots of Bhima’s mace limping impotently between his legs. In the first of many inventive twists, the kahaani begins not at the beginning but with the game of dice and the attempted disrobing of Draupadi – which, we are told, is the single most important incident in the epic. The first episode was telecast last night and though it didn’t feature the Tushhar Kapoor item number I had been hoping for, there was lots else to relish. When I wrote this post about Ekta Kapoor’s Kahaani Hamaaray Mahabharata Ki, I had no idea how summarily the actual show would outstrip my expectations. Once again, real life makes satire seem feeble.
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