#0 — Why Are We Still Talking About the Mahabharat? 🏹
A war that happened thousands of years ago
If I say Mahabharat, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
Krishna?
Arjuna?
The Pandavas and Kauravas?
Draupadi?
Kurukshetra?
Or maybe that old TV serial your parents or grandparents watched while you somehow knew the characters without ever actually watching the whole thing? 😭
For many of us in India, the Mahabharat has always been around.
We have heard the names.
We know there were five Pandavas and a hundred Kauravas. We have heard about Krishna and Arjuna. We know something happened with a game of dice. We know there was a massive war at Kurukshetra.
We know pieces of the story.
But if someone suddenly asks:
“Okay, but what actually happens in the Mahabharat?”
Things get complicated very quickly. 😂
Because knowing the famous moments of the Mahabharat and actually understanding the Mahabharat are two very different things.
And before we even try to understand it, there is a bigger question.
But first… what exactly is the Mahabharat?
Before we talk about why the Mahabharat still matters, maybe we should answer the most basic question first:
What exactly is the Mahabharat?
At its simplest, the Mahabharat is an ancient Indian epic traditionally attributed to Maharishi Vyasa.
And yes, it eventually leads to the famous Kurukshetra War between two branches of the same royal family — the Pandavas and the Kauravas.
But calling the Mahabharat just a story about a war would be like watching the last episode of a series and saying you understood the whole thing. 😭
The war is only the result.
The real story is everything that leads to it.
It is about a family.
A kingdom.
Who gets to rule it.
Promises made years before the people affected by them were even born.
Friendships that become stronger than morality.
Jealousy that slowly turns into hatred.
Parents trying to protect their children.
People choosing family over what they know is right.
People choosing duty over the people they love.
And hundreds of decisions that slowly push one family towards a war that will change almost everything.
That is the Mahabharat.
And why is it called “Mahabharat”?
The name itself tells us something.
“Maha” means great.
“Bharata” refers to the Bharata lineage — the royal dynasty at the centre of the story.
So Mahabharata can broadly be understood as “the great tale of the Bharatas.”
And that makes sense, because this isn’t simply the story of one hero.
There isn’t just one person whose journey we follow from beginning to end.
It is the story of generations.
One generation makes a promise.
Another inherits its consequences.
One person gives up something.
Someone born years later pays the price.
And eventually, all those relationships, ambitions, promises, rivalries, and decisions meet at one place:
Kurukshetra. 🏹
So yes, the Mahabharat contains one of the most famous wars in Indian tradition.
But before it becomes a war…
it is a story about people.
And that is exactly where our journey should begin.
Why should someone from our generation care?
Seriously.
The Mahabharat comes from a world thousands of years away from ours.
They had kingdoms.
We have countries.
They sent messengers.
We send a “?” when someone hasn’t replied for three hours. 😭
We have Instagram, corporate jobs, dating apps, college deadlines, family WhatsApp groups and a completely different way of living.
So why should a 20-something today care about the problems of an ancient royal family?
Because the world has changed enormously.
Human beings, however, are strangely familiar.
Think about the things we deal with today.
Jealousy.
Family expectations.
Friendship.
Competition.
Rejection.
Love.
Ego.
Ambition.
The need to prove ourselves.
The fear of losing what we have.
The pressure to live up to what others expect from us.
Have you ever been genuinely happy for a friend while also feeling slightly jealous of them?
Have you ever known that someone you love was wrong but still found yourself defending them?
Have you ever stayed silent because speaking up would make everything more complicated?
Have you ever wanted something badly and then watched someone else get it?
Or found yourself thinking:
“I know what the right thing is… but doing it isn’t that simple.”
These don’t sound like ancient problems.
And that is where the Mahabharat starts becoming interesting.
The Mahabharat isn’t a story filled with perfect people.
One of the easiest ways to understand the Mahabharat is:
Pandavas = good 😇
Kauravas = bad 😈
Krishna = God 🦚
Good defeats evil. The end.
It is also one of the easiest ways to miss what makes the Mahabharat so fascinating.
Because the people in this story are complicated.
People we admire make questionable decisions.
People who do terrible things sometimes have stories that help us understand where their anger came from.
Someone can be incredibly generous and still stand beside the wrong person.
Someone can make an enormous sacrifice and that sacrifice can still create terrible consequences.
Someone can follow the rules and still participate in something unfair.
And sometimes, people know something is wrong…
and still remain silent.
That is uncomfortable.
But it is also very human.
Because real people don’t fit neatly into boxes labeled GOOD and BAD either.
You can love someone and still hurt them.
You can be a wonderful friend and make a selfish decision.
You can have good intentions and create a terrible outcome.
You can know better and still choose badly.
The Mahabharat doesn’t always give us characters who are easy to judge.
And maybe that is exactly why they are worth understanding.
So what does it actually mean to “do the right thing”?
This is where things get really interesting. 👀
Imagine this.
Someone believed in you when nobody else did.
When others judged you, this person accepted you.
When nobody gave you an opportunity, they gave you one.
They treated you with dignity when the rest of the world didn’t.
Naturally, you become incredibly loyal to them.
But years later, you realise that the same person is doing something deeply wrong.
Now what?
Do you stand with the person who once stood with you?
Or do you stand against them because what they are doing is wrong?
Suddenly, loyalty isn’t such a simple virtue anymore.
Here’s another situation.
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Imagine you made a promise years ago.
It meant everything to you.
You built your entire identity around keeping that promise.
But one day, keeping your promise means watching something unfair happen.
What matters more?
Your word?
Or stopping the injustice?
Which choice makes you a better person?
The Mahabharat keeps putting people in situations like these.
And that’s important because real life rarely asks us to choose between an obvious right and an obvious wrong.
Those choices are easy.
The difficult ones are:
Loyalty vs justice.
Family vs fairness.
A promise vs its consequences.
Duty vs emotion.
Ambition vs relationships.
What you want vs what everyone expects from you.
Sometimes there isn’t a perfect answer.
Sometimes every available choice costs something.
And please, don’t worry about remembering 500 names. 😭
Another reason people avoid the Mahabharat is because it can feel intimidating.
You start reading and suddenly someone says:
“Shantanu married Ganga, and then there was Devavrata, who later became Bhishma, and then Satyavati entered the story, followed by…”
STOP. 😭
Who are these people?
And why does everyone have three different names?
So we’re not going to do that.
You don’t need to memorise a giant family tree before starting this series.
You don’t need to know Sanskrit.
You don’t need to have watched any Mahabharat series before.
And I’m not going to assume that you already know who everyone’s father, mother, brother, cousin, teacher and great-grandfather is.
When someone important enters the story, we’ll meet them properly.
Who are they?
What do they want?
What are they afraid of?
What choices do they make?
And most importantly —
why will those choices matter later?
Because that is another fascinating thing about the Mahabharat.
A decision rarely ends with the person who makes it.
Sometimes one person’s choice affects an entire family.
Sometimes it affects the next generation.
And sometimes a decision made years ago quietly becomes the reason something terrible happens much later.
Which, if you think about it, isn’t very different from real families either.
You don’t have to approach the Mahabharat in only one way.
For millions of people, the Mahabharat holds enormous religious and spiritual importance.
That deserves respect.
But spirituality isn’t the only lens through which this story can be explored.
You can read the Mahabharat because you are interested in philosophy.
Or psychology.
Or relationships.
Or politics.
Or leadership.
Or family dynamics.
Or power.
Or simply because you enjoy a ridiculously complicated story filled with fascinating characters. 😂
Maybe one part will feel deeply spiritual to you.
Another might make you think about your friendships.
Another might make you question something you always believed was right.
You might completely dislike a character.
And then, ten chapters later, understand them a little better.
You might strongly support someone’s decision.
Until you see what that decision eventually causes.
And sometimes you might stop and think:
“Wait… what would I have done?”
That’s the question I want us to keep coming back to.
Because judging people is easy when you already know the ending.
We know how the story ends.
The people inside it didn’t.
They were making decisions while living through everything.
Just like us.
None of us gets a narrator following us around saying:
“Careful. This decision will create a huge problem three years from now.” 😭
We choose based on what we know at that moment.
Our emotions.
Our relationships.
Our fears.
Our responsibilities.
Our ego.
Our past.
And then we live with whatever follows.
So while going through the Mahabharat, instead of constantly asking:
“Was this person good or bad?”
I want us to ask something different.
“Why did this person make this choice?”
And then perhaps an even more uncomfortable question:
“If I were in the same situation, would I really have done something different?”
So… here’s what we’re going to do. 🏹
We’re going back to the beginning.
Not directly to Kurukshetra.
Not directly to Krishna and Arjuna.
Not directly to the Bhagavad Gita.
The actual beginning.
We’re going to meet the people whose decisions slowly created the world in which the famous Mahabharat war eventually became possible.
And we’re going to take our time.
No complicated explanations just for the sake of sounding intelligent.
No turning every chapter into “10 Life Lessons From the Mahabharat.”
No pretending that every character fits perfectly into a hero or villain box.
We’ll tell the story.
We’ll understand the characters.
We’ll question their decisions.
We’ll look at situations from different sides.
Sometimes we’ll agree with them.
Sometimes we’ll be frustrated with them. 😭
Sometimes we’ll wonder how someone could possibly make that decision.
And sometimes, after judging them for five minutes, we might realise…
we probably would have done the same thing.
That is what I want Mahabharat With Me to be.
Not a lecture.
Not a textbook.
And definitely not an exam where you need to remember everyone’s family tree. 😂
Just us, going through one of the greatest stories ever told, one character and one decision at a time.
Because maybe that is why, after thousands of years, we’re still talking about the Mahabharat.
The world around us has changed.
But some of the questions we struggle with haven’t.
So if you’ve always wanted to understand the Mahabharat but never knew where to begin…
Begin here. ❤️
This is #0.
Next, we start the story.
Welcome to Mahabharat With Me. 🦚🏹
