Part of the Sundays with Dr. Rajkumar series, which begins with the mythological Babhruvahana. Soon I hope to write a profile of Dr. Rajkumar but until then be satisfied with this and this.
Part 1
The first time Babhruvahana sees his parents side by side is in the battlefield, when his mother Chitrangada volunteers to be Arjuna’s charioteer. The battle itself is being fought, because Arjuna cast aspersions on Chitrangada’s character and Babhruvahana’s parentage. More on their quarrel later but now let us return to the battle scene.
Seeing his parents together, Babhruvahana, becoming emotional, folds his hands and exclaims: “This is a unique sight! My parents are in the same chariot. Once in the past, love and sexual desire brought them together and created this body. Now they are together again because of anger to destroy this same body. But to my eyes, they seem like Siva and Parvati who have come to bless their son. Having seen this sight, which I did not have the good fortune of witnessing before, I feel blessed.”
Let us now recreate the scene. Arjuna is in Manipura, protecting the Asvamedha horse and collecting tribute from all the kings of India. Babhruvahana, the young king of Manipura who had not been told by his mother about his father, restrains the horse, thus obstructing Dharmaraya’s Asvamedha sacrifice and seeking to battle with the great Pandava warrior. For the young king, this is a game, an opportunity to display his skills in a great battle with Arjuna and show his valor to the world.
Before the battle, however, upon learning from his mother that Arjuna was his father, he rushes to make amends. A proud and egotistical Arjuna, still angry at Babhruvahana’s audacity, rejects his son’s overtures for reconciliation. Having forgotten his marriage to Chitrangada thanks to Krishna’s machinations, he questions Babhruvahana’s bravery and doubts his birth, calling him the son of a prostitute (Jaariniya maga): “if you had been truly my son, you would not have released the horse but faced me in the battlefield with your bow. Since you have fallen at my feet like a shameful coward, you must be the son of a Jaarini.”
Nothing ever matches the fury of a son, when his mother’s character is questioned, even by his own father. Babhruvahana’s explosive and angry response is perhaps the highlight of the film: “O, son of a woman of loose character! O, son of a woman of loose character! (I can not tolerate this epithet)! I can resist a swollen river in full tide. I can supress wildfire by stepping on it with my foot. I can capture thunder in my fist. But, Arjuna, today you have awoken the goddess of death deliberately. By blackening the pativratya (faithfulness to her husband) of my mother, who is like a goddess, you have prepared your own funeral pyre. Even if the Three-eyed one (Siva) were to open his third eye or even if Krishna were to send his Sudarsana disc for your protection, if I do not respond appropriately to your arrogant diatribe, if I do not separate your head and body and play ball with them, then I am not Babhruvahana, son of Chitrangada.”
Note his emphatic statement as his mother’s son. Until this point, Babhruvahana was polite and proudly spoke of his relationship with Arjuna. But once Arjuna questioned Chitrangada’s character, then Babhruvahana would not remain deferential towards Arjuna. He questions Arjuna’s own accomplishments, by listing the trickery practiced by the Pandavas, especially during the Kuruksetra war. Without Krishna’s grace, Babhruvahana claims, Arjuna and his brothers would not have won anything and now that he is without Krishna, his end too is near. In fact, Krishna’s play (lila) is the framing idea for the story itself. We will return to this theme later.
Babhruvahana returns to his palace to prepare for the battle. His mother, he tells her, can only have one of the two things that are important for every woman: renown as a great wife or her mangalya, the symbol of her husband being alive. Chitrangada, who had lived a simple, virtuous and ascetic life in a temple ever since being abandoned by Arjuna, now has to permit her son to battle with her husband, inorder to break his ego and to remove the blot on her character. Yet, this does not stop Chitrangada from volunteering to drive her husband’s chariot, saying her dharma is to follow her husband, who is her god in reality (pratyaksa devata).
This leads us back to the scene with which I began this note. Babhruvahana, like Arjuna at the beginning of the Kurukshetra war, faces a moral dilemma. Can he risk harming his parents? While Chitarangada alerts Arjuna to shoot an arrow at their son and take advantage of Babhruvahana’s momentary lapse due to a sense of devotion towards them (as Arjuna did with Karna), Uluci (this should be Ulupi in fact, but in the film she is called Uluci, which I shall follow here), the Naga princess and yet another abandoned wife of Arjuna’s, reminds Babhruvahana of the teaching of the Kurukshetra battle that in the battlefield there is no space for feelings even towards parents. What Babhruvahana must do is to establish his mother’s good name and thereby his own character. The film ‘Babhruvahana’ captures this conflict spectacularly. The eerie parallels with the moral dilemmas of the great MBH battle aside, here all the familial relationships (in particular, strong mothers and dutiful sons) become exaggerated and demand our attention. But the key issue remains that of character.
In the second part of this review, I will continue with the theme of strong women and their character, in addition to other cinematic aspects that we should notice in this film.
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