Just when a sizable chunk of Indians have suddenly felt less equal, here is an epic villain who can serve as the beacon of our times.
Duryodhana, the Kaurava who declared a 'suta putra' a king's equal, is the subject of Kerala-born British-based journalist, writer and academic Chindu Sreedharan's second work of fiction on Twitter, 'Autobiography of a Villain'.
Duryodhana's story was tweeted from November 25 to December 18, 2019, coinciding with the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAA).
Chindu tweets as Duryodhana. The villain's first words, his first tweet on November 25, give vent to a premonition, but are said so casually and fearlessly as only a saint can. I wake to the last afternoon of my life not knowing whether I want to live but certain I will die before nightfall.
Chindu's Duryodhana is no saint but is no despicable warmonger either. What fascinated Chindu was the Kaurava prince's sense of justice. "For most folks familiar with Indian mythology, Duryodhana is the epitome of villainy. Yet there is much good, much magnanimity, about him," he said.
Duryodhana and anti-CAA protests
"One need only look at the way he stood up for Karna, 'the son of the charioteer', during their coming-of-age weapons exhibition to see that. How many young princes would have the courage to tell their elders that the idea of barring someone from a competition based on birth is just plain wrong?," said Chindu, Principal Academic in Journalism and Communication, Bournemouth University, England.
In 'Autobiography', when Karna was called a 'suta putra' and barred from taking part in the weapons exhibition, a trembling Karna pushes forward and bellows: Since when have we started mocking the brave? Since when has parentage saved a warrior on the battlefield? Do we not all die the same in combat?
It is this justice, this fair play, that students out in the streets against the CAA are clamouring for. This mythic villain, Chindu hints, is the superhero we are searching for.
“Duryodhana is above casteism and religion. True there’s some anger at his cousins and elders, but he is a unifier - a king who brings together diverse rulers and flags on his side, and does what’s best for his people,” Chindu said.
Twitter's hero number one
Chindu's first experiment on Twitter was 'Epic Retold', Bhima's version of Mahabharata, which first appeared on Twitter in the middle of 2009 when micro-blogging was still looked upon with amusement, as though it was some kind of a benign extra-terrestrial. Epic Retold was also India's first novel in Twitter form.
Bhima's story was told in tweets spread over 1605 days, from July 27, 2009, to December 20, 2013. (Brought out in book form by Harper Collins in 2014, it has now been rechristened 'I Who Killed My Brothers' for a global audience.)
In comparison, 'Autobiography of a Villain' is modest. The tweets were packed in 18 episodes that were 'Twittercast' from November 25 to December 18, less than a month. Each day an episode was tweeted out in a particular time slot, much like a TV serial. Chindu called it "Twitter serial".
Supersize thoughts in smallsize form
As in any form of fiction, it is the imagination a writer primarily puts to test. "The challenge here was of turning the villain into the hero. It was fascinating to imagine the other side of the story we all know, and experiment with how a change in perspective would change the story," Chindu said.
In this case, the 'jail cell'-like crampiness Twitter imposes on writerly instincts was an additional challenge. While writing Epic Retold, he got over the inconvenience by tweeting on and on and on; almost eternally, for over four and half years.
This time he wanted the epic to be Twitter-like in spirit. If Epic Retold had over 50,000 words, 'Autobiography' has just about 13,000.
"This is much shorter than Epic Retold (I Who Killed My Brothers). Did every Mahabharata retelling needed to run into thousands and thousands of words? Will it make sense in a much shorter form, still maintaining the exciting aspects of the original? This is what I have tried to do," Chindu said.
It helped that Twitter is now not as severe as when he was tweeting 'Epic Retold'. Then only 140 characters were allowed in a tweet. Now it is double. "The 280 characters allowed more freedom, and I think it made the writing less terse. It didn't necessarily make it less challenging," he said.
How to fight with a mace
The lengths of his tweets ranged from a single word, like say "Yes." or "Stop." to "pretty much the whole of 280 characters at times". Despite the brevity, the detailing is rich.
The dice game where Yudhistira loses everything and the mace fight between Bhima and Duryodhana, it seems, are written for connoisseurs of these sports. When Duryodhana uses technical terms like 'Pratyaleeda' or 'Jataka' (various stances of a mace fighter), it sounds like a cricket buff using jargons like off-break and fine leg without being conscious.
Noisy Twitter, falling TRPs
It also looks like Twitter fiction had lost some of its curiosity value. The extraterrestrial has now been domesticated. Chindu said Epic Retold had more engagement from readers than Autobiography. The sustained tweets made Epic Retold a kind of sleeper hit. Even Time magazine had interviewed Chindu.
"People would stumble upon it and then start commenting. Autobiography was a shorter and more contained effort, happening at a time when Twitter is a lot more 'noisy' than before. There's too much happening on everyone's timeline. So most reader engagement was through ‘likes'. There was a core set of followers who commented. Mostly it was positive comments. This time there were a lot less criticisms," he said.
Forever twins
However, it was through Bhima's heart that Chindu entered Duryodhana. "My respect for Duryodhana grew when I began thinking of his duel with Bhima on the sidelines of the Kurukshetra battlefield," Chindu said. Incidentally, as a journalist who had covered Kashmir exhaustively during the late nineties, conflict reporting is Chindu's area of specialisation.
In Chindu's retelling, Duryodhana grows Krishna-like in death. The war has almost ended. The entire Kaurava clan, except for Duryodhana, has been killed. The Kaurava leader, badly wounded, is in a forest swamp. Death is just inches from him when Pandavas led by Yudhistira march towards him.
Here is how Chindu imagines Yudhistira's dumb pomposity and Duryodhana's lion heart. Yudhistira steps closer and calls out, "I will not take the kingdom without defeating you! Choose your weapon. Fight any one of us—if you win, you keep the kingdom!"
Duryodhana tweets. For a moment I toy with the idea of challenging Yudhistira. It would be child's play to cave in his skull—at least, Hastinapur would be rid of a man who should never be king. Such bouts of humour, in places where we expect them the least, are scattered all over.
Then he remembers the dead - his brothers, Karna - and then, the 'suta putra' taunts. The near-dead man chooses Bhima, the mightiest of them all.
In the last two tweets, a battered Duryodhana rises to meet his greatest enemy as serenely as he would walk out for a morning dip in the river. The villain is deified.
"Let's settle scores," I say.
Then, gripping my mace, I crawl out of the swamp for my final fight.
