Family Tree of Mahabharata Characters

Mahabharata Characters:

I know Mahabharata as the greatest epic of the world. I know few stories of it.

Day before yesterday, some topic came up and me and my friend started discussing about Parasurama and Karna. Then we started on some other character. By now this epic made it's mark on my mind and I wanted to go home as early as possible.

I searched in google and found many articles related to it. I went to library and issued "Jaya,Mahabharata" by Devdutt Pattanaiak.

So many characters, so many stories and story tellers, some of which, I feel what is the logic behind it and for some I feel how great those people were.

I created this family tree including all important characters. There are more characters left who are not included and I will keep adding those gradually. Till now what I have come across is this:

Two Way Arrow indicates couple and single pointing arrow depicts the child

Pay for Choices

My uncle did his graduation from one of the best colleges then gave TOEFL and received scholarship from London. My grandfather did not want him to go alone, so he made him marry a same caste girl and then my uncle and aunty went to London for their aspirations. They were excited and so was everyone because the son of their family was going abroad for higher studies. The scholarship gave opportunities and proudness both at the same time. My parents were simple, middle class and hard working people. Uncle went to London and then one by one he finished his degrees and then shifted to USA and settled there. They still come for yearly trips to India with their two kids and claim themselves to be Indians and talk about the culture and liberalization. But they don't want to come back and settle down here because now it is too late for them to come here and start a new life. They are used to the clean roads and big malls of USA and proudly introduce themselves as NRIs. They love India but can't stay here. Kids, although have Indian name  and Indian look, are foreigners only by their accent and lifestyle. 

I guess, this is not the case with only one person. Better jobs and lifestyle, salary in dollars have compelled many such people or rather Indian people, stayback in USA. But deepdown in their hearts they still miss the Indian touch. 

When my uncle went, they were very happy and once they settled there and visited us yearly, they would show off their money and NRI tag over and over again. They are born and brought up here in India but their kids are born there only so their attitude is entirely different. They lead a very much free life. What we consider as discipline, they consider it to be obstruction. What we feel to be unnatural, is very much natural and acceptable to them. Those kids just wait for being adults of 18 years and once they are 18, they don't care for anyone. If the parents don't allow them for certain things, they can go to any extent, sometimes even complaining to the police.

Here comes the irony, "An Indian man/woman will settle abroad, preferring to be NRIs but they never want their kids(who are born and brought up there) to marry foreigners, they want the kids to marry Indian man/woman." How can this be possible? A kid who has seen and adopted the foreign culture, by birth who has lived and is friends with the foreigners marry someone Indian and follow the Indian culture and customs. 

The kids over there, don't give that much importance to marital bonds, there make up and break ups are much faster than in India, they definitely will have boy friend and girl friend at quiet an early stage. When these kids grow up, they follow the same culture and not the Indian culture. There comes the unacceptibility by the NRI parents. They can't see their kids following the foreign culture. 

Whose mistake is that? Who is wrong and who is right? Is any culture wrong? 

It is definitely not the kid's mistake. He is following what he was asked to follow from his childhood. What he has seen since he was one month old, he is used to and adapted to that culture only and it is absolutely wrong if one day he is asked to follow some other culture. It is not the problem of culture also because each culture is distinct and has it's own grace. What is acceptable to one is not necessarily acceptable to all others.

Till some extent, it is the parent's fault. You made the choice of being NRIs at your younger age, ignoring everyone and you lead that lifestyle, then you should know that your kid will not be a NRI, he will be citizen(foreigner) or whatever you say. Your father made you marry an Indian girl before you went out of India but you can't make your kid marry an Indian forcefully because neither they are coming to India nor leaving foreign.

At this point the NRI feels that he had to pay heavily for the choice he made early at his life. Now my uncle tells my mom that you are so lucky, both your daughters have married same caste guys and are doing good and my daughter is in a live-in relationship with a foreigner and is going to settle in Canada with him without marriage.

Few Excerpts from “Conversations with God - Book 3” by Neale Donald Walsch:

Everything that has happened in your life has happened perfectly in order for you and all the souls involved with you, to grow in exactly the way you have needed and wanted to grow.

You teach what you have to learn. It is not necessary to have achieved perfection to speak of perfection. It is not necessary to have achieved mastery to speak of mastery Seek only to be genuine Strive to be sincere. If you wish to undo all the damage you imagine yourself to have done, demonstrate that in your actions. Do what you can do, then let it rest.

There is no such thing as wrong. There is only that which does not serve you; does not speak the truth about who you are and who you choose to be.

Guilt and Fear are the only enemies of man. Guilt is the feeling that keeps you stuck in who you are not. Guilt is the blight upon land-the poison that kills the plant. Awareness is what you seek. Awareness is not guilt and love is not fear. Be cautious, be conscious but do not be fearful.

BE, DO AND HAVE:

Most people believe, if they have a thing(more time, money, love whatever), then they can finally do a thing (take up a hobby), which will allow them to be a thing (happy , content, peaceful).

But in reality, they are reversing the be-do-have paradigm. It really is; havingness does not produce beingness.  First you be the thing called “happy” (or knowing or wise or compassionate), then you start doing things from this place of beingness and soon you discover that what you are doing winds up bringing you the things you have always wanted to “have”. Happiness is a state of mind.

GRIEF is a natural emotion but grief that is continually repressed becomes chronic depression which is unnatural.

ANGER is a natural emotion. It is the tool you have which allows you to say, “No, thanks”. It does not have to be abusive or damaging. Anger continually repressed becomes rage which is unnatural.

ENVY is natural; it makes you want to do it again, to try harder to continue surviving until you succeed. But envy continually repressed becomes jealousy.

FEAR is natural; the purpose of natural fear is to build a bit of caution to keep the body alive. But fear if repressed becomes panic.

LOVE is natural. Yet love which has been conditioned, limited, wrapped up rules and regulations, rituals and restrictions, controlled, manipulated and withheld becomes possessiveness which is unnatural.

Bay Decoration at Office

There is a saying that, "too many cooks spoil the broth". But what I felt in the last few days, was just the opposite. Bay decoration Competition taught me how simply and smoothly things can work out if we want to.

I asked my close friends, in turn they asked theirs and within half an hour we were a group of 13 people interested to participate in the event. We called up everyone and shared our views. Rohit had a theme already in his mind "Halloween". He showed the snaps in picassa. We did not have much time to plan out everything from scratch. So we all decided to go with halloween/scary house theme. We now had basic idea and the photographs helped to visualize the clear picture of what exactly we should do. The pointers, footsteps, dustbin bags usage was known to us and then started the real work.

So many people together at work; No need of assignments to anyone. One or two people themselves took the responsibility and started working on it. Resources allocated and project tasks were assigned module wise without any manager. First Day from 2 PM to 8 PM - Two people cutting, two people painting, two covering entire bay, two covering lights, two making web, one person cutting cellotape, two went for shopping; together with it decorating dustbins and packing dustbin bags, setting up black magic zone, downloading scary images from google, taking print outs and sticking them everywhere possible, drawing murder scene sketch and putting handprints on white boards. Ladies left but two guys stayed till 9:30 PM and prepared witch caps, desktop cover and horns and sticking footprints in roof.

Next day I reached office a bit early only to realize that our decorated haunted house was actually scary and I could not enter initially. Called up one by one and then I started cleaning up the place and by next half an hour people started coming. Next slot of tasks started, the final finishing tasks - sticking covers and horns to systems, downloading scary sounds and copying those to all laptops connected in the bay, setting up screensavers in the systems, setting up hanging ghost, spreading hay grass and stones, keeping  eagles, spiders and bats, creating crystal ball and masks using diwali lights, stuffing jackets for showing them as dead bodies, making the skeleton sit in chair and cleaning up the mess in all cubicles and finishing all tits and bits of last minute.

Final outcome was really worth watching, we really scared few people. Everyone gave comments like awesome, gr8, scary, excellent etc. We didn’t win 1^st prize but we won hearts, people came and saw our bay and then told their friends and like that from 1:30 till 5:30 PM we were busy in scaring people, there was a queue infact in front of our bay. People were coming twice, thrice just to take snaps with us and these comments and their responses was the true reward for us.

A team is a team only when each compliments the other’s ideas, recognizes the other’s energy and respects the other’s feelings. No one took the other’s credit; whenever someone asked, “whose idea for this?” we did not lie and that made everyone stick together as a team. There were no opinion differences, everyone listened and implemented everyone else’s idea and plan. No one commented or compared negatively and result was that all gave their 100 % and had an equal and significant share for the whole work.

Too many ideas and hands helped us enhance our imagination and creativity and make something spectacular and incredible.

Cheers!!!