On My Plate
Shiva, the brand God who never fails
Saturday September 28, 2013, 06:20 AM
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Every major Indian band has a song that celebrates him, qualifying him as a bonafide rock hero. And why not? He was into hallucinogens and danced the universe to its destruction (ahead of its subsequent rebirth), dreadlocks and all.
Then there's the snake draped around the neck. He's the subject of a hip new popular TV serial, besides being the basis for the central figure in a best-selling series of books. He's like, seriously cool.
"Shiva is the outsider," says writer and expert on mythology Devdutt Pattanaik, explaining the enduring fascination with the god. Pattanaik, who advised on the TV serial, says he's one divine figure who's easy to form a connect with. "The story is a personal one that people relate to directly."
The Mahabharata is a spectacle, to be enjoyed in full, but it's hard to focus on individual characters and stories. The Ramayana offers a single focus, but Lord Ram is too perfect and divine for people to identify with directly " and even his apparent flaws, like the abandonment of Sita, don't make him a sympathetic character.
Krishna's stories are personal and likeable, but there is a basic divergence between two very different Krishnas, the lover of the Geeta-Govinda and the shrewd strategist of the Mahabharata, that complicates the narratives.
By contrast, Shiva's story offers simple parallels to people's lives.
"His conflict with Daksha is classic son-in-law versus father-in-law, the sort of story that TV tells all the time," says Pattanaik. All gods in Indian mythology have families, but Shiva is one of the few whose family story is so central to his legends: conflicts with his wife, problems with his sons, the basic themes are familiar, even if the central character has supernatural powers and wears a snake around his neck. "He is the alpha male who is on your side," he says. "He allowed us to make a mythological serial in a different way," Pattanaik adds.
Writer Amish Tripathi's works build on this outsider appeal of Shiva. He has written the hugely best-selling Shiva trilogy of novels, which offer an imaginative retelling of Indian mythology centering on a Shiva-like character, a Tibetan tribal warrior who becomes both saviour and destroyer of the ancient civilisation of Meluha, a possible stand-in for the Indus Valley Civilisation. Tripathi explains that there are two types of heroic archetypes " those who build and maintain society and those who live outside society, but come in to rescue it at times of peril.
Shiva is the second kind of hero. Tripathi is careful to emphasise that all gods and choices of those who worship them should be respected, but the youth connect with the heroic outsider is easy to understand. Being young is all about questioning and even attacking social norms as you figure out your place in society and "Shivji is the god of rebels," he says.
"He is the god with matted hair, the god who takes drugs, he is the god who is a brilliant dancer and musician.
He is said to have invented the rudra-veena."
These physical symbols count, and it is not surprising that Shiva shows up on so many tattoos.
It isn't all rebellion though. Tripathi points out that Shiva embodies many modern virtues. Unlike other gods who are shown in more traditionally patriarchal terms, Shiva treats his wife as an equal. "Many traditional images show them seated side by side, on the same level," says Tripathi. "And Shivji will have his children on his lap." He also points out that Shiva doesn't differentiate among his devotees, who include both devas and asuras, like Ravana: "There is a saying that Shivji apne bhakton ka bhakt hai'," and this humility emerges as another attractive aspect today.
All these factors helped the channel Life OK fix on Mahadev as the defining serial and hero of the channel.
"He appealed to young and old, to men and to women," says Ajit Thakur, general manager of Life OK. But they knew they had to be careful to craft the primary appeal to young people, and that emphatically meant avoiding old-style TV mythological treatment (which included one major past serial based on Shiva, Dheeraj Kumar's Om Namah Shivay, that first aired in 1997). "Our first big decision was not to build a set," says Thakur. "Other mythologicals have always built this elaborate set, with gold pillars and all that, and then everything has to take place on it.
We wanted to break away from this." Casting the character was obviously critical.
Mohit Raina, who plays Mahadev, has been the huge hit of the series, and a large part of the reason for his success.
Thakur says they needed someone who had classic good looks and a great body, but who also seemed grounded, and not offputting or arrogant.
"Mohit was the perfect choice. He comes across as a very rooted person, humble despite his looks and success."
They also realised, as the serial developed, how the stories of Shiva matched modern themes. "For example, when we did the track about Shiva getting Ganga to flow on earth, we have him warning that people will not respect her and this misuse will lead to environmental problems and water wars. We included all this, but it isn't new " the Shiva Purana is full of lesser known aspects like this."
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