The agonizing despair-laden wails of newly-widowed women and orphaned children covered the battlefield at Kurukshetra like a thick, suffocating, nauseating blanket. Yudhishthira , the eldest Pandava, was so deeply anguished with the sorrow he witnessed all around him that he wanted to throw up. But, how can a king show himself to be weak? So, he steeled himself looking down at the corpse of his dead cousin, Duryodhana, the eldest Kaurava, his thighs torn asunder by Bheema, the second Pandava. Yudhishthira thought to himself, “I should be celebrating. I have won the great Mahabharata War. I am the undisputed emperor. All the injustices my family had suffered are corrected. The Pandavas have emerged victorious. And yet, why does my heart feel heavy? Why can’t I be happy?” And then, the event he dreaded the most came by. His Aunt Gandhari, the mother of the Kauravas, the faithful wife who chose to blindfold herself to live life like her blind husband, Dhridharashtra, came to mourn th...
Telling tales, stories, myths, and legends to try to make sense of the world around me