Devdutt Pattanaik narrates The Mahabharata as a six-hour audio tale

The author has once again traded his pen for his voice, creating a six-hour oral narration of the epic

“Oral storytelling is much, much better than writing,” Devdutt Pattanaik, a man with about a dozen fictional and non-fictional books to his credit, sees no irony in making that statement. As one of the leading names in Indian mythological fiction in English today, Pattanaik’s preference for the spoken word is not surprising, once you think about it. He has often spoken in favour of the “original” version of Indian epics, all of which are products of an oral tradition.

And then there is the fact that Pattanaik has partnered with Audible Suno, for a six-hour oral narration of The Mahabharata. “You see, when you are telling a story, you can explain things that you cannot while writing a book. Every medium brings something to the table: with Audible Suno, you can imagine the story as you hear it with your family, and take them on the journey with you, the way people did in the olden days when there would be bards telling stories. You have to cave to the tale,” says the author in a conversation over video call.

People think it is a big thing to compress the vast tale into a six-hour format, “But it’s really not,” he continues. “The Mahabharata is not a complicated story, but people make it complicated. I have always been surprised at how people consider it complicated; it is just long. The things I have left out are just minor details; the larger narrative is about a property dispute… We try to overshare the point, but really it is about families and their refusal to share wealth. I think it is a global story.”

Myriad takeaways over the years aside, Pattanaik says he is sticking to the version in the scriptures, for this particular project. His process also involves going back to the Upanishads, “to try and structure the story based on the historical period in which it was written. At that time, it had tried to portray ideas of kinship: that is what is important”. The author does not agree with the 'line of thinking' followed in versions of the epic available in the market today. “People say there are many interpretations of the story; there are not. It is about dharma sthapana: whether people with privilege and power share that privilege and power with those who don’t have it. That’s all. The only reason it seems complicated is because we don’t want to share and care with our poorer cousins. And therefore, like a lawyer who tries to twist his way out of an awkward situation, this is about people finding complicated ways of not doing the simple and right thing.”

Penmanship lessons

It is not only the ideas and ideals that Pattanaik finds worth noting; The Ramayana and The Mahabharata have a lot to teach today’s budding writers, about classical Indian narrative structures as well, particularly in terms of character arc.

“In Western storytelling, there is always a central character who goes through transformation. In The Mahabharata there is no one central character. This idea of central characters like Rama and Krishna not going through transformation is not there in Western storytelling at all. For them, it is the hero who transforms from Point A to Point B and the Gods who are troublemakers.”

In Indian stories, the peripheral characters are the ones who might transform, but not always. Most characters behave according to their personal characteristics that do not change. “Even Arjun, who goes through changes, does not experience any major transformation. He is not a noble person at the end of the story.” Pattanaik explains this with a contemporary example. “In a Rajinikanth film, Rajini would not go through any change; the people around him will. Similarly, Salman Khan, in the first and the last scene of his movies, is the same.”

Suno Mahabharata Devdutt Pattanaik ke Saath can be heard free of cost on the Audible Suno app on Android devices.