Source : cuts and pastes from google
search and my bad English.
Disclaimer: Texts in italics are my emotive expressions which
you can ignore at your peril. For all mistakes/omissions and commissions in the
narrative, I am not responsible but my poor capacity to comprehend reasoning. But, for those who take pains (only pains) to
read my version of this story, there is a boon at the end of the story I am
granting.
First, the story with my
narration. Here, it goes:
The oldest known version of the
story of Satyavan Savitri (S-S) is found in "Aranya Parvam" of the
Mahabharata. When
Yudhisthira asks Markandeya whether there has ever been a woman whose devotion
matched Draupadi’s, Markandeya replies with this story.
Asvapati, father of Savitri, was the king of the Madra kingdom. The king
was very fond of his daughter. When the
time came to marry her, the king left the choice to Savitri. So he asked her to
go and select a prince who would be worthy of her.
In
this respect, I will say and most of you will concur too that the king Asvapati
was a very forward looking man and lived well
ahead of his time. He did what even many daddies/ fathers of daughters of 21st
Century do not dare to do. How many of us would give such permission to our
daughters to choose their life partners? Ask yourself. We are still looking into the kundalinis/
horoscopes in choosing their partners for lives full of unexpected turns more often loaded against the girl.
So, brave Savitri leaves in search of her future dream man /
prospective husband. She finds one Satyavan, son of Dyumatsena,
a blind
King in exile in a forest who is living on the doles of his son. She falls in
love with Satyavan, now very poor as a wood
cutter and selling woods for his daily livelihood.
Perhaps,
this S-S
story would have been the
inspiration for most of story writers for the movies in Kollywood/Tollywood/Bollywood
where a girl from a wealthy family
loving and marrying his hero who is
generally from a very poor family doing odd jobs like a rickshaw puller,
factory worker, low paid clerk etc.
Her father, Avaspathi, the King,
a pioneer in breaking traditions, happily agreed to the proposal of his
daughter though the would be son-in-law is a penniless poor wood-cutter living in a
forest. He proceeds with elaborate arrangements
for their wedding.
Here
comes the twist; typical of any our movies.
Narada steps in and tells a
secret to Savitri’s dad, King Asvapathi. He shows
him a ‘WhatsApp’ message received from his mole in the kingdom of Death. It
mentions that Sathyavan is cursed to die at the end of the
first year of his marriage. Savitri
overhears this secret conversation, though she is in her room as she has kept a
CCTV monitor in her room to follow all the
happenings in the palace.
Now,
the soliloquy- ‘to be to not to be..’ type of Shakespeare fame is one example.
You may find hundreds of them in all his dramas. Here, Savitri is having a soliloquy
(it is my version and do not look for it in Aranya Purvam).
“
If I marry Satyavan, then his life will be curtailed as he will die at the end
of the first year of the marriage. If I do not marry Satyavan, I will not
survive as I will not marry any other guy as I love him with all my heart and
there is no place in my heart for anyone else. I will rather commit
suicide. So, why not I make him suffer
less by making him live less number of years and save him from the misery of
poverty by marrying him. Meanwhile, I can also plan suitable strategies to save
him.” (May be a suitable lyric can be written
by Gana Bala and sung by him with background music from any one as any can
compose it). Savitri, a very intelligent girl, indeed.
But,
her father is a worried man on hearing Narada’s secret leak of the details of
the death certificate of Satyavan almost one year before the event. A big Godly
leak which would shame wikileaks or our espionage leaks giving high TRPs for
all the media channels.
Her father relents as Savitri is
determined to marry Satyavan and none other. And the marriage takes place.
Savitri retires to the forest with his beloved husband. She gives all her love
and affection to her husband and the blind father-in-law who is penniless. She
doubles up as an obedient wife and daughter-in-law by doing all the domestic chores (picking
fruits and nuts and cereals and pulses from the nearby field and garden and
making food) and also accompanying her
husband to the forest and helping him in cutting trees. This is again typical of the lives of most of the married women in the
present day, a practice that prevailed
even during Mahabharata days.
As the first year of the marriage
S-S was fast approaching, instead of
preparing for a big celebration of the great day as any normal married couple
would be doing (of course, we have numerous versions of marriage anniversaries
among us to narrate) she was seriously considering options of saving her husband from the noose of Dharma, the Lord of Death. She goes on a dharna / fast (called vrat in
those days) and waiting for the Lord of Death to come. The D-Day comes.
Sathyavan while cutting a tree, feels sick (may be he did not take his morning
breakfast to his stomach full or the LD tricked him) and lies down on the
ground with his head on the lap of Savitri.
Now,
the climax.
The
Lord of Death suddenly arrives at the scene and takes Satyavan with him,
telling Savitri to go back home. Savitri, a very intelligent woman starts
giving her discourses waxing eloquence on the glory of righteousness, on
law, justice and mercy of the LD and appealed to him as the embodiment of all these.
Again, a typical climax scene from
most of the movies we have witnessed where
the villain when having all the
advantages of winning against the hero
(usually, by stabbing, firing a shot from a gun, thrashing the head of the hero
with a stone etc), he would allow the hero to give a speech which would make
the villain to lose his balance and lose the fight also.
Mesmerised
by the excellent communicative skills of Savitri, the LD starts giving boon after boon. The first one
was restoration of eye-sight of her father-in-law. ‘Granted’, said the LD. The
second one was restoration of her FIL’s kingdom. ‘Granted’, said the LD. (for this, the LD, of course, had to kill the enemy king which he did by
deputing his deputy as he cannot be present in all the places of death. Moreover, Savitri’s
FIL’s enemy might ask some relief and LD may not be able to refuse). The
third one was that her father Asvapathi to get 100 sons. ‘Granted’, repeated
the LD. The fourth one was that she
should beget at least 100 children. ‘Granted’, thundered the LD. But, suddenly,
he bit his tongue as he realized his blunder and knew that he was trapped by
Savitri. So, he told Savitri that she can ask the final boon except the life of
her husband. She smiled and replied, ‘Lord, I thank you for your fourth boon
and if I were to beget 100 children, I need my husband to be with me. It is for
you to honour or dishonor your own boon.’ The LD was helpless and accepted his defeat
and returned Satyavan to Savitri giving him a fresh lease of life with 400
years of additional living together on this great earth. So, S-S was the
happiest as they lived and celebrated 400 marriage anniversaries and begot
hundreds of children for the benefit of this country. I
wished that Sanjay Gandhi was born
during Mahabharata days which would have saved the country from the huge
population explosion!
As a return gift, Savitri showed
her culinary skills and prepared ‘vella and kara adais with butter’ to apply on
both sides and offered to LD. She was a great lady who knew how to apply butter
on both the sides of the cake. The LD enjoyed her hospitality and left
quickly fearing that he will make a fool of himself once again in her presence by granting one more boon to
her.
A last word:
The story of S-S has all the elements of typical plots used in many a
movies.
Motive for this narrative was
from my beloved wife who got up almost around 02-30 hrs on 15 March, 2015 and started preparing
herself in right earnest for the event.
Morning around 07 00 hrs when I got up, I found her clad in her nine
yards and she was reverentially waiting for me to take the adais prepared for
our break-fast. She had just recovered
from a bout of dysantry and so, I advised her to drink a cup of butter-milk instead of her favourite coffee. She
bowled a googly saying that on this S-S nombu day, ladies should not take
butter milk. They should eat only adais for break-fast, lunch and dinner. I was
put out by her very strict compliance to the godly order ( I do not know who
and where it is written that no butter milk should be drunk by ladies on the S-S
nombu day). So, I did my research to find the link between the S-S story and
the kara and vella addai and butter only food and no butter- milk for ladies who observe the
vrat on this day. But, I could not find any link. So, the end
narration was my own version reflecting our (my, if none want to accept) flight of imagination
about the way we feast our guests with creative dishes (all will agree that
these dishes are made only once in a year and on this day only and not on any
other days as we would be cursed by Gods!).
Moral of the story:
We, more often, end up in preparing specified dishes for each of the occasions
without knowing why we are celebrating/ performing such functions/events/ festivals.
Understanding the rationale behind it will make us wiser in managing our lives
better.
A Kadi observation:
Even during Mahabharata days,
people had known that butter-milk was a by-product of milk. So, we can claim that Indians were the first
to introduce this great nourishing digestive stuff called ‘butter-milk’ to this
great world. Those interested in doing PhD,
it will be a good theme.
P.S:
All ladies may reflect on these questions.
How many ladies would know the story of S-S correctly and why
they eat these dishes only on this day and not other dishes? Why should we not eat
these dishes on other days? With a large number of married women working on
night shifts / con-calls at such hours, how will they manage to perform these
events? Why should a woman do this when she knows that no man does similar
things for her woman? Is the story a
male-chuvinistic portraying a woman as a
slave of her man when man does not reciprocate similar feelings for her woman?
We hear and come across true stories/ events where the woman demanding level playing field of her life with her man? Against this
background, how far this S-S story is relevant in today’s context?
Boon for the readers:
Saved in future from reading such awful narration of twisted stories.
