Story: The Lacquer Palace

The Lacquer Palace

            The Pandavas had been invited to stay in The Lac Palace, but expecting an evil plot, Vidura, half-brother of Pandu, father of the Pandavas, warned Prince Yudhishthira of what was to come.
"I fear you are in great danger," he said. "Make sure to move with caution as you proceed."
Prince Yudhishthira thanked Vidura and went on his way, worried about what was to come.

            When the Pandavas and Queen Kunti reached the palace, they marveled at the beauty of it, but Prince Yudhishthira saw that all the great tapestries and beautiful ornate rugs and furniture with wondrous scrollwork were all soaked heavily in something thick and black which reeked of strong alcohol and oil and thus he grew fearful. He warned his brothers and mother, Queen Kunti of what was happening around them and they too feared for their lives but no one knew how to escape for the palace was being watched and guarded.

            Now Prince Vidura still worried about the Pandavas and he had sent a worker of his to infiltrate the stores of oil and alcohol which were to have been used to soak the furniture and walls of the palace and to replace them with a watery tar that could easily be mistaken for oil but would neutralize the flammable liquids already in place. But the worker had made a mistake and instead of replacing the oil and alcohol with tar, he replaced it with a strong brown liquor that was foul to smell. The barrels of liquor had been a gift from a country far away called Ireland but all those who tried it had deemed it unpleasant to taste and instead many people had begun to use it for fuel for it burned quite well. It was also used as glue as it became thick like molasses if left to sit in the sun and it was completely inedible to all human beings except for those who made it.

            When the worker returned to Vidura and saw that the barrels of tar with which he was to replace the oil and alcohol were still there, he panicked and realized what he had just done. Vidura, immediately scolded the worker and sent him to save the Pandavas in another way. The worker dressed up as a woman and tried to seduce the leader of the guards, Purochana and his men who were watching the palace and waiting for a chance to burn it down, but he could not sway them and thus he was forced to try to come up with other methods in order to save the Pandavas. He was unable to come up with a bribe large enough to sway them as well and thus he grew desperate. He finally started digging and digging and digging, trying desperately to dig a tunnel into the palace. But he did not know where he was going when he was underground and he dug for many days, praying that the palace would not burn before he got there, but through a stroke of luck, he managed to reach the palace and accidentally knock free a group of tiles in the center of the palace where Prince Yudhishthira was sitting.

            That very night, the Pandavas snuck out through the tunnel that the worker had built and they went safely into the forest. As they fled, the palace was lit ablaze by the guards that had been watching it and it burned to the ground taking with it a beggar woman and her children who had slept there for the night. The air reeked of molasses as the thick tar-like alcohol burned the building down. When the fires ceased and the bodies were found, it was assumed that these were the bodies of the Pandavas and they were able to slip safely into the forests where they would stay for some time.

Author's note: I think I've done an okay job of making this piece more comic. I just decided to leave the comedy light in this one. The main change obviously is that the worker becomes the main protagonist of the story and through his blundering failures, only barely manages to accidentally save the Pandavas and Queen Kunti. I wanted to take on this story from a less historical-style point and also add some humor to it. Though it isn't an extremely comical piece still, it still has some comic elements which I think are the highlight of it. When I went back to edit this, I didn't end up making a ton of changes and I'm still not happy with this one. Well I just don't think I'm ever going to be particularly happy with this one. I could never really decide where to take it so I left the strange disconnected form as it is. It's not great but I just want to be done with it to move on to other pieces now.

Bibliography: Public Domain Mahabharata, link

(Draupadi s presented to a pachisi game, link)

Reading Notes: Public Domain Mahabharata Reading Part B

I’m not sure why but the reading this time around seems much harder to follow. Like it’s either denser or maybe it’s just that we’re being constantly introduced to new characters very quickly and there’s a high amount of changeover with each new scene. It’s leading me to certainly have to read and re-read the pieces in order to get the full jist of the material and I keep having to check the Wikipedia links again and again to stay on task with who is who and why people/things are important. It’s gotten a bit dense. From just a pure writing perspective, it’s good from a more objective stylistic point of view but to a modern reader, it’s almost too historical. I definitely think I’ll take a more narrative tone and style during this week’s storytelling. While the historical style can appeal to some because it feels truer to the piece, I feel like I’ll want to take a more modern stylistic approach and that would be more in line with my writings already anyway.

Thematically, I’ve been drawn to the sort of ambivalent and more random nature that life plays with people. It comes up time and time again that the characters in these tales befall misfortune beyond their control. The beggars at the lac palace are burned to death while sleeping. It’s definitely something I want to try to emulate. I want my story this week to really play up the unpredictability of life (and this is even in a world with gods that directly interact with it). If I choose to use gods in my stories, I want to make sure that even they can fall victim to mistakes and chance. I find it very interesting how the story often portrays the gods as distinctly human in their faults. It’s very interesting.

Bibliography: PDE Mahabharata Link

(Escape of Pandavas from Fire accident, Wikimedia commons)

Reading notes: Public Domain Mahabharata Part A

Just as when I read the Ramayana for the first time, I’m finding myself having to make ample use of the Wikipedia links that give explanations about various character, people, gods, things, etc to get a full understanding of what’s going on. We again see plenty of fantastical elements. Almost immediately we get that some sperm spilled into a river and a fish ate it, resulting in two children. It’s interesting to look into that line of thought because it would seem to imply a belief that children were purely the result of the male sexual organs. I don’t know enough about historical Indian cultural belief to really tell if this is a really belief or not. It is interesting still though.

I do find it very interesting how the god’s in these stories can often be swayed by both good and evil characters so long as they perform certain actions which are looked at in a positive light by the gods. It’s a very interesting aspect to these stories because so often in western culture, we view the idea of a god or gods as being a noble thing generally seeking good. It reminds me of the older western gods like the Roman or Greek ones where the gods themselves are somewhat more fallible and human in nature. They can be tricked and fall victim to many of the same woes as humans. It’s interesting how the gods themselves are often tricking one another and squabbling or battling over things just as humans in the stories might.

Seeing the sorts of major cultural distinctions different from the ones I know is pretty fascinating. It’s very interesting watching the wives of Pandu debate over which one of them will be able to throw themselves on the funeral pyre. It seems almost ridiculous to an outsider like me but I can see that there is a strong cultural meaning behind it.

Bibliography: Public Domain Mahabharata, link

(Gandhari reprimands Duryodhana, Wikimedia Commons)