The One Where Duryodhana Takes Control
Source: A mantra and song from the Indian TV show Devon Ke Dev Mahadev. It is centered around Lord Shiva, who does not appear in this story, but I love the music. I also think it sounds suspenseful, so I thought it would be good to listen to while reading the story!
I'm strong, I'm valiant, I'm an excellent warrior, and I have studied my father's rule over Hastinapura for years. I'm fit to be king. I am Duryodhana, after all. But who does old Dhritarashtra pick to ascend to the throne? The useless, dumbfounded, and clumsy Yudhishthira, who is also unfortunately my cousin.
Ugh, I'm sorry. Where are my manners? Let me introduce myself and my family. I am Duryodhana, the eldest of the hundred sons of King Dhritarashtra. I am also the strongest and most intelligent of my brothers, but that's besides the point. My family goes by "the Kauravas." Now, my father's brother, Pandu, has a wife named Kunthi. She had five sons, all from different gods. Those five, called the Pandavas, are the worst, and you're about to see why. But first, some background information about my archenemies.
Yudhishthira is the oldest of the five, and everyone in the entire kingdom adores him like he's their son. Why, you ask? I DON'T KNOW. If you find out, let me know, because I've been trying to decipher that my whole life. Anyway, the next son is Bhima. He is the strongest of the five, and that's cool and everything, but like... how smart is he really? He can shake the ground so hard the weather changes, but that's one trait! Why everyone thinks he's the most amazing warrior, I will never know. Kunthi's third son is Arjuna. When he was born, he was normal. Suddenly, he got really good at throwing weapons around. But even then, our master Drona trained all of us, so we should have all been at the same level of weapon-throwing. But no. Of course Arjuna was Drona's favorite. Our master ended up gifting Arjuna with the brahmastra, a weapon capable of defeating any opponent if used with the right mantra. I could not believe it. Just because he's a Pandava? Ugh. The last two Pandavas are twins: Sahadeva and Nakula. Those two just follow the other three around and do whatever they say. Typical younger siblings doing typical childish things.
All five of them made my life growing up a living hell. They thought they were funny, pulling all those pranks. Even my own father thought they were funny and sided with his nephews rather than HIS OWN SON. I should have guessed they would be his favorite. I remember when they came to live in our palace and the moment he saw the five of them and what all they could accomplish together. He immediately fell in love with the new family. However, I soon realized that as long as Dhritarashtra could see, he wouldn't ever side with me. He would always appreciate the Pandavas more than the rest of us. So, I made a plan with my uncle Sakuni and some of my other brothers: we were going to make sure my father could never see again. Now, there are many ways we could have gone about this. We could have shot an arrow into both of his eyes, but that would be hard without Dhritarashtra seeing us as we were doing it. We could have stabbed him in the eye when he sleeps, but again, that would be hard when he is in bed with our mother Gandhari and she would be able to see us stabbing our own father. Plus, that would put our father in a lot of pain and I'm not sure we would be able to handle putting him through that. I may have a heart of ice, but I do have one. Anyway, we finally came to the conclusion that the only way we could make our father blind was to steal the brahmastra from Arjuna. The weapon has great powers, and will perform any command if the mantra is spoken correctly. Only one problem with that - none of us knew the mantra to make the weapon do what we wanted. So here's what we did:
We stalked Arjuna for weeks to try to find out what the mantra was, because we did know that in order to keep the brahmastra "alive" and intact, the owner has to say the incantation once a week. So, we hid behind bushes around his bedroom, pretended to bring him food or water at random times at night, put our ears to the wall separating his room with an adjacent room, everything. We. Tried. Everything. He would not ever practice the mantra! At one point, we thought maybe he had forgotten he even had it and hadn't practiced the mantra in years and allowed the weapon to die slowly. But then, one night, I saw a dark figure leaving Arjuna's room and heading towards the forest. I had my suspicions, so my brothers and I followed. We walked for about an hour until the figure finally stopped in the middle of the forest and pulled out something from his bag. It was the brahmastra! So this is where Arjuna practiced his mantra all the time, and we never even noticed him leaving the castle at night... Gotta admit, it was a clever hiding spot. But anyway, right after Arjuna recited the mantra, one of my brothers made a sound of a dying deer. We knew Arjuna was soft when it came to animals and hoped he would go tend to it. Our plan worked! Arjuna kept following the sound of the animal, not knowing my brothers were leading him far away from his brahmastra. When he realized it, we had already taken the weapon and were halfway back to the palace with the mantra replaying in our minds.
I creeped into our father's bedroom, where he was peacefully sleeping with our mother. I held the brahmastra in my hand and slowly and softly sang the mantra. I then imagined a blind King Dhritarashtra in my head, and then I saw a bright flash hitting my father's eyes. He didn't feel it.
...He also didn't see it. Ha.
Don't ever mess with the Kauravas.
Source: The brahmastra, which is seen as one of the most powerful weapons.
So, this is a new style I tried out where it's all in first person. I picked Duryodhana to tell the story because I wanted to give his actions a reason. Most of the story is facts from the Mahabharata, such as the information about the Pandava brothers. One thing I changed was not mentioning Karna at all (this story could go on forever if I added every character). For this reason, in my story the Brahmastra was given to Arjuna instead of Karna. I thought it be best to portray the hatred between the two sides of the family by having Duryodhana steal a valuable possession from his cousin and turn it around as a revenge scenario to his own father. In the original Mahabharata, Dhritarashtra was born blind and Gandhari covered her eyes just to match her husband; nobody specifically set out to blind them. I chose to make Duryodhana blind his own father because I wanted to make the story interesting and have him act on his hatred, rather than complain about it to his father like he does throughout the Mahabharata. I hope you all liked it, and I would love any suggestions since this is my first time doing a story like this :)