Next ME is on 2nd June

There is a lot that many of the protagonists – Shukracharya, Narada, Lakshmi and even Mahadev – could have done to prevent Jalandhar from turning to this self-destructive path, and threatening to take everyone and everything down with him. But none of them did anything. Instead, each of them seems to have made matters much worse.

Jalandhar is a basically a tragic figure, as vulnerable emotionally as he is invulnerable on the battlefield. Right now, he is being eaten up from inside by, as you have pointed out correctly, insecurity. But not insecurity vis a vis himself, for he is fearless, as Mahadev himself notes. Rather insecurity vis a vis his loved ones, his mother and now Vrinda.

Plus he has a sense of having been profoundly humiliated in front of his subjects by Mahadev, when he announces that Jalandhar is his ansh, and thus inferior to him (or so Jalandhar sees it, not without reason). It is this which drives him now to declare war on the Tridev, with the aim of regaining the respect of his subjects.And the disaster of his first encounter with Mahadev only makes things worse.

Now much of this could have been prevented, in the first place, by Shukracharya. A guru has the duty to guide and protect his shishya even when he is misguided. Shukracharya should have told Jalandhar all that he finally told him last week a long time ago, and simultaneously assured him that he cared for him like a son and so would stop him from going on the wrong path. Then things could have been very different.

The trust deficit produced in Jalandhar by the sudden revelation that his guru is a Mahadev bhakt is like a child suddenly learning that it has been adopted. There is a double anger and fear that surface then - anger at what he sees as abandonment by the birth parents, and fear that the adoptive ones do not love him as much as if he had been their own child.Jalandhar now feels betrayed by the guru he had totally trusted all his life, and this pushes him to even worse follies. The blame for this is as much Shukaracharya's as Jalandhar's.

Even when things are going from bad to worse and Jalandhar approaches him, Shukracharya doe s not tell him that he will come to the court provided Jalandhar with respect his advice and follow it. That just might have worked. Instead, he turns his back on Jalandhar at the moment when he is needed the most ,and when he could have exerted a moderating influence. Shukracharya was treated with total contempt by most of the asuras earlier, but now when he had the shishya he had waited for all his life, it is he who fails him.

Vrinda alone feels for her beloved husband and tries her best to calm him down by gentle and reassuring persuasion. She does manage to some extent, but as he will not turn to her for advice on strategy or tactics, he is left without any worthwhile support at the most crucial juncture.

Nor is Mahadev free of blame for what Jalandhar has become. Having let Indra off for the cold blooded murder of Trishira, an ascetic engaged in tapas, it is Mahadev who gives birth to Jalandhar, so to speak. Why then does he not take any responsibility for his offspring? Why does he not punish Indra for murdering Jalandhar's mother? What does he mean when he declares that he will be responsible for all of Jalandhar's actions, good or bad? One does not see him doing anything to demonstrate this sense of responsibility.

Why does Devi Lakshmi not announce her kinship with Jalandhar to him as soon as she stops Narayan from using the sudharshan chakra on him, as requested by Indra? If she had done that, it would have made a huge difference to his blind hatred of the devas.

Why does Narada go to Jalandhar's coronation as King of the Asuras and provoke him with barbed remarks?

Instead of doing anything to give Jalandhar a sense of emotional security and proper guidance, all of these personages seem to be waiting for an excuse to justify killing him. It was not his fault that Mahadev accepted for Brahaspati's fraudulent arguments in favour of his charge, Indra, and did not annihilate him for the murder of Trishira. If Mahadev had not done that, there would have been no Jalandhar, and none of the present crisis.

And if the Vrinda story is going to develop as in the puranas, Narayan's deceit would be the worst of all. It is no use excusing it saying that he was defending dharma. Mahatma Gandhi would have been categoric on this; one cannot defend dharma thru adharmic actions, and what Vishnu is said to have done with Vrinda is inexcusable.

In the end, after Vrinda has been deceived and Jalandhar satisfactorily disposed of, the Tridev will of course reinstate the sleazy Indra, with the blood of two innocents on his hands, as if that did not matter at all. And when he commits his next crime, Brahaspati will plead again on his behalf, and Mahadev will let him off again, after another lecture on the role of a guru that Indra will not even have been listening to. Guru?? I have never before seen as weak and as contemptible a character as Brahaspati.

No wonder the asuras harbour such a deepseated resentment against this favouritism shown towards the devas by the Tridev.

I dare say many of you might not agree with much of the above, but I hope you will at at least find a contrary take of some interest.

Finally, it is amazing how much time is being given to this track, much, much more than even for the Samudramanthan track. And I love it.

Shyamala B.Cowsik

Originally posted by: .Vrish.

I wonder what they will show the next 3 days, b/w Vrinda's death & the final showdown b/w Jalandhar & Mahadev?