Reading Notes: Mahabharata Part B

This week I'm catching up on the Mahabharata Part B. For this reading assignment I decided to try out the public domain version of the story. This had audio with it and it made it easy to listen and take notes.

There were two stories that really resonated with me and I could picture them in a different version to tell a story in my own words.

The first was The House of Fire. This version was found in Indian Heroes by C.A. Kincaid.

The queen and her children came to the palace of lac. The house was soaked in oil and ready to burn. Vidura warned them of this and begged them to dig an underground tunnel so that they may escape. When they dug the tunnel, Vidura returned to seek revenge on the guards. He burnt the guard shack, but little did he know that there was a woman and her children there to beg for food. The next morning when they village awoke to a smoldering palace, they assumed the bodies they found were Queen Kunti and her children and they wept for their loss. The evil price rejoiced in their destruction.

The idea that first came to mind to recreate this story would be a setting in Nazi Germany during WWII. The Queen and her children could be a prominent Jewish family that is hiding from German troops. Will have to work out some of the details, but this could be an interesting take. I love history, so could tie in some of that here.  

The second story that I like was Bhima and Hidimba. Found in Indian Myth and Legend by Donald A. Mackenzie. 

Bhima, son of Queen Kunti, took his family from the lac palace and took them to safety. They all rested under a tree except Bhima. Near by was Hidimba, a demon, who was hungry and smelled the humans. The demon’s brother was to lure them to her brother so he can eat them. When she saw Bhima, she fell instantly in love with him. She transformed herself into a human and talked to him. She questioned who they were and warned them about her brother. She asked the human to marry her. He said he can’t leave his family. So she said she would save his whole family. Bhima was boastful of his powers and said he could beat her brother. When the demon charged at his sister, the traitor, Bhima challenged him to a dual.

Could do a vampire versus human version of this story. The female falls in love with a human, but knows that she shouldn’t. Vampire brother finds out and it’s game on. I know this is kind of overdone and cheesy, but the way Hidimba was described sounded a lot like a vampire and would be easy to illustrate this. 

Image Source: Hibimba and Bhima