The Mahabharata Retold

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In classical Indian dance, Mrinalini Sarabhai is internationally recognized as a dancer and choreographer whose reputation for innovation is unmatched. She began her training at an early age in forms of Bharata Natyam. She trained in Java and the United States, studying acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Sarabhai founded Darpana, an academy of dance, drama and music, in Ahmedabad in 1948. She has travelled extensively with her troupe, and has received many distinguished awards and citations in recognition of her artistic eminence. Sarabhai is a director as well as an author of scholarly books, novels and children’s books. Her extraordinary ability to fuse new ideas with traditional forms has been her great contribution to the world of dance.

About the Book

The Mahabharata is one of those literary works that belong to the whole world, within the fold of the five greatest epics ever written. A poem of immense complexity and length, it raises profound questions about the meaning of action, duty, power and love. All this is set against the backdrop of the great war in ancient India fought on the battle field of Kurukshetra between princely clans, the Pandavas and their cousins the Kauravas who will not give them their rightful inheritance. Stories mingle in a great tapestry as fortunes rise and fall, heroes win, lose or die. Unforgettable scenes such as the humiliation of Draupadi, disrobed in public, haunt the mind. And in the midst of all this, the epic poet offers the Gita, in which, as Arjuna ponders on the battlefield the havoc that war will bring, Krishna speaks to him about the meaning of life and action. It is this enormously significant epic, a veritable microcosm in itself, that Mrinalini Sarabhai has, with great feeling and elegance of economy, rendered into verse, offering the essence of a hundred thousand verses in this slim volume.