Folks,
At the end of last night's episode, Maharaj Purushottam was standing tall, hands locked behind his back, looking at the departing Alexander, with a fuming Acharya Chanakya, looking as if he was going to get an apoplectic fit, in the background.
He had just finished countering Alexander's parting challenge: Zeus ka beta hoon main, saare Bharat ko jala daalonga!, with a cool Agar tumhare paas aag hai, to hamaare pas Maa Jhelum ka aashirwaad hai . Uske pavitra jal se tumhari aag bhi bujh jaayegi, aur raakh ka tarpan bhi ho jaayega!
I doubt if Alexander understood this tarpan business, but it was a truly 🤣 moment, and I was in stitches. If it has been a tennis match over these last three episodes, it would have been the last game, the last set and the match to Porus.
I don't want to overstrain either your patience or my fingers, so I shall try to be as brief as I possibly can. Which will be tough, as there were wonderful passages in all three episodes, but I will do my best.
Most of my space will be devoted to last night's one, which I quite frankly loved. And it is very rare for me to love an episode with large chunks of Porus 😉 holding forth, as he usually does, on matters moral that distinguish the Bharatiyas as a race from the lesser mortals!
This time I loved it because he made short statements, statements that fitted neatly into, and flowed naturally from the structure of his argument with Chanakya, he was unfailingly logical and to the point, and he did NOT make a speech.
If this had been the annual debate in the Oxford Union, and the proposition was: It is perfectly all right to trap the enemy of your country through deceit and kill him, Porus , speaking against the proposition, would have won hands down. 👏👏👏
Three sets, three winners
Episode 156: Set 1: Chanakya: In the Monday episode, the winner was clearly Chanakya. He came back from a losing postion - when Alexander turned the invitation to visit Paurav Rashtra, which Chanakya had faked so meticulously, down flat - to win hands down. He achieved this by identifying and exploiting Alexander's one weakness, his love for his mother, and using it to trap Alexander in the web he has spun with such care.
Alexander's lines are usually very good, but here they were excellent.
Alexander kisi mauke ka mohtaj nahin, Aalim. Maine sari duniya apne sharton par jeeti hai, aur Bharat bhi main apni sharton par jeetoonga... .Aur sher ke liye jangal apna ho ya kisi aur ka, wo jangal ke doosre janwaron ke saamne dosti ka haath nahin badhaata.
And then, at the end of the passage, as Olympias, her fear writ large on the face, forbids him from going to Paurav Rashtra: Aapka khauff main samajh raha hoon, Maa. Par wo Shah hi kya jo khudh duniya jeete aur uski maa khauff se haar jai? Alexander is not a touchy feely person, and he rarely hugs even Olympias, but here protective tenderness drips from every word of his.
Yes, and the nazar utarna scene. It was so sweet and touching, the way in which the otherwise hard as nails Olympias invokes the gods to protect her son, and the way in which Alexander laps up all this coddling, eyes closed in sheer pleasure. And Roxanne was not there either, a big plus for me!😉
If Olympias is really leaving, I think that Alexander won't tell her about Porus being alive after all, for that would throw her into a blue funk, and she will stay put !😆
I no longer question scripting bloomers like Chanakya quoting the Delphic prophecy as warning against a king who would be Jhelum paar.The junior Priestess never says anything about the Jhelum, or about Alexander having had Philip assassinated either, but Chanakya incorporates the first in his spiel that flummoxes Olympias, and mentions the second in his retort after Alexander accuses him of dhoka. Chalo chodo!
Chanakya is superb in the whole of this passage, as in fact in the earlier, though unsuccessful one in Ambhiraj's state room. His face is a study in innocence and would be helpfulness, and he even asserts, with a perfectly straight face, that he has nothing against Alexander gaining dominion over the whole of Bharat. And even in the moments when no one is looking at him, he remains in character, so to speak, instead of smirking for the benefit of the audience, as most of our TV actors are made to do. Small mercies!
Sony Chanakya: In all that follows, I am of course discussing only the actions of the Sony Chanakya and the reactions thereto. The real one would never have committed such a colossal error of judgment as keeping Porus in the dark all along, and then expecting him, when the matter is sprung on him without warning, to kill Alexander, under the prevailing circumstances, in cold blood.
Episode 157: Set 2: Alexander: Now this was a real treat for students and practitioners of diplomacy. We saw Alexander, facing almost sure death, talk his way out of the steel jawed trap that Chanakya had sprung on him.
The end result was that the most astute, devious and ruthless political tactician of that age in Bharatvarsh, and most likely the whole world, has the tables smoothly turned on him by an even shrewder Macedonian.
I confess that I did not expect this twist. I thought that Puru would not be able to kill an unarmed man, and would thus stop in the very last moment. Which is of course what he does, Chanakya's desperate command to him notwithstanding.
What I did not expect was that Alexander would, with his back to the wall, pull off a verbal coup that stops Porus in his tracks, checkmates Chanakya, and also dismays the assemblage of kings.
Superb tactics: He betrays not the least fear or even agitation. Instead, he is unruffled and effortlessly articulate. His words drip searing contempt and cut deep into Porus' psyche:
Sone ki chidiya hai yeh sunkar aaya tha, par yeh nahin jaanta tha ki yahan ke baashinde giddhon ki tarah shaatir nikalenge (the latest addition to the Porus menagerie; siyaar aur abhi giddh, or vulture!😆) Mehmaan banakar nyota denge par dushman banakar kaath denge...
He claps derisively, and then moves to address the assemblage. ...Suna tha dosti ki khatir seene par kataar jhel lete hain Bharatiya.. Par yahan to dost banakar peeth par chura bhonka jaa raha hai..
His lines were perfectly tailored to put Porus on the defensive. They were also splendidly worded.
Khair, qubool hai! Par kam se kam duniya ki taareeq yeh to maanegi ki Sikandar ne apne junoon aur dushmani mein duniya fateh ki, par uski shikast huyi to dosti ke bulaawe par! Bade fakr se kehte the, taaqat se maarenge, dhoke se nahin, par yahan to talwar ki dhaar dhoke ki aag (?) mein paini ki gayi hai.
Theek hai, Porus, aage badho! Sikandar tumhare saamne nihatta khada hai!
The nihatta angle was a most telling one, but I could not for the life of me understand how Alexander, who sleeps with his sword next to him, would have gone into enemy territory, even on a friendly invitation, without his sword at his side for all eventualities.
The arms akimbo pose was perfect too. One expected him to be unafraid, but the bright-eyed sarcasm in his face was amazing, and exactly calculated to hit Puru where he is the most sensitive, his sense of personal honour.
And Alexander meant what he said, for just as he knows how to conquer, he also knows how to die with his head held high.
Chanakya's ploy fails: By the way, since when has Chanakya become Puru's Acharya? That was a neat ploy to compel Puru's obedience in something he would otherwise not want to do, but unfortunately it does not work.
It does not work because Alexander is an expert psychologist, and he plays on Puru's sense of self esteem, of honour, of moral uprightness. All the virtues, in short, about which Puru has been boasting in front of Alexander as being quintessentially Bharatiya. Which is an assertion that can be easily disproved by citing Ambhiraj, Shivdutt. Kanishka, Dhananand - the list is a long one. But that is not the point.
The point is that Puru believes in and is committed to these virtues. So he cannot flout them in the blatant manner that Chanakya demands of him, and still live with himself.
So Chanakya's grand scheme fails, for its intended victim, Alexander, understands Porus better than his self-appointed Acharya does.
There is no point in reciprocal attacks on Alexander's misdeeds and Porus' failings. The key element here is that Alexander does not claim to be mahaan or in any way virtuous. Porus does, constantly. So he has to be a priori held to a higher standard than Alexander is.
Porus might not have invited Alexander, but the fact remains that the invitation was in the name of the Paurav Rashtra, and as the king now, he has to honour it. And to kill someone who has been invited to your home as a guest would go against all that Porus is committed to, and Alexander does not let him forget that.
Again, there is no point in accusing Alexander of hypocrisy. He is, in fact, exactly like Chanakya. He will use any weapon at hand to win, and right now, his weapons, and very successful ones, were his tongue, and his grasp of the psychology of his opponent. Using them to excellent effect, he turns disaster into victory.
Episode 158: Set 3: Porus: He laughs best who laughs the last. And last night, that one was Porus.
Till the moment when Alexander brandished the invitation before his eyes, Porus was perfectly ready to finish off the enemy who he assumed had invaded his domain, not even pausing to realise that Alexander was unarmed. But from that instant, everything changed for him.
Yes, Alexander's mocking accusations did get through to him and made him all the more conscious of what he had been about to do. But even without them, Porus, the purushottam, would still have behaved exactly the way he did. He would not, could not have killed an unarmed enemy who had come to his palace as an invited guest, no matter what aadesh his current mentor dinned into his ears, no matter that the Acharya, who had saved his father's life and had been his unwavering support in his recent travails, was now seriously displeased with him.
For he could not help who he was. Nor could he do something his conscience would not allow.
Lucid,rational eloquence: I loved it that Porus refuted Chanakya's increasingly shrill demands not only on grounds of abstract morality, but also because of solidly practical concerns as a king. A king who can forsee the highly negative impact his following such kootneethi now, for instant victory, would surely have down the line on the character and behaviour of his praja.
I loved it that he spiked the master of sophistry at his own game, quoting his own Arthashastra to remind him of what he had preached: that a people are only as good as their king, and the king is only as good as his country, so that if the people are brasht, the fault is that of the king, and if the king turns adharmi, the fault would be seen as that of the whole country.
Aaj main koyi anarth nahin kar sakta Acharya, nahin to laanchan mere poore desh par aayega, aur wo mujhse sahan nahin hoga. Jahan chal hota hai, wahan bal ghat jaata hai, Acharya...And in a blunt response to Chanakya's warning that excessive emotionalism would destroy his vivek, Main sajj hoon aise vivek ko naash karne ke liye jo mere desh ke samman ko maarta ho..
NB: It is another matter altogether that the Arthashastra, as far as I am aware, was written during the 14 years after the coronation of Chandragupta Maurya, when Chanakya had retired to his ashram after handing over the reins of the prime ministership to Amatya Katyayan aka Amatya Rakshas. How then could Puru have got hold of it this early? Par hamare CVs se aise sawaal poochna vyarth hai!
Porus is so sure of his ground that he is unaffected by Chanakya's grim warning: Ho sakta hai ki agla avasar tumhare paksh mein na ho. Even were he to lose his next battle, he is confident (in a strange echo of Alexander's similar conviction about his own reputation ) that itihaas yaad rakhega ki Bharat ke is laal ne apni mathrubhoomi ki laaj ke saath nahin khela.
Duel of convictions: The most gripping of all was the duel of convictions between Porus and Chanakya that comes when the Acharya crowds the younger man aggressively, trying to bulldoze him into falling in line and killing Alexander.
To Chanakya's apocalyptic warning that he was committing a bahut badi bhool, Porus responds, in a gentle put down, that bhool bhulaye jaate hain, apradh itihaas ban jaate hain.. For Porus, to have it said that humne ek shatru ko mitra ke bahane bulaya, aur phir apni hi dharti par uska sar kaat diya, would be intolerable.
When Chanakya cites the use of saam, daan, dand, bhed to get rid of the enemy as rajaneeti, Porus counters that rashtra ke gaurav ki raksha karna rajadharma hai.
When challenged with the dictum that rashtra ki raksha sabe se bada rajadharm hai, Porus' counter is a classic that stops Chanakya in his tracks with a simple question: Aur kya hai rashtra, Acharya?
For him, a rashtra is not just the land he rules over, it is the sanskaar, parampara, sanskriti , that is to say the traditions, the culture, that define the people. And so he asserts once more, with ironclad conviction: Chal karna Bharat ke sanskar nahin. Gher ke aakraman karna to siyaaron ki parampara hai, Acharya, Bharat ke sheron ki nahin!
And this one time, I did not feel exasperated by this endless praise of Bharatiyata, whereas the truth is that it is Porus' own convictions and his personal morality that dictate his unshakeable code of honour. It was necessary, at this juncture, to bring in Bharat, and what Porus sees as owed to the honour of the land, in order to silence the aggressive, infuriated Chanakya.
Deadly putdown: But Chanakya, unused to such opposition, will not back off, and now accuses Porus of having become too big for his boots because he is now a king, and of forgetting whose orders he was flouting, and in whose presence he stood. It is then that Porus crosses the Rubicon, so to speak, and brings home to the Acharya, whom he has revered thus far, that he is being untrue to his own convictions.
His Nahin samajh paa raha hoon ki aap kaun hain, aur aapki pehchaan kya hai, is the most deadly putdown of anyone of that stature that I have come across for ages.
When he ends by wondering Ya phir aap wo kootneetignya Kautilya hain, jo apne hi desh ke maathe par chal ka daag lagana chahte hain?, Chanakya's face is livid and ashen with barely suppressed fury. He knows that it is he who has pushed Porus too far, but that is of no comfort to him.
Then comes the Arthashastra sequence that has already been discussed, and which writes Finis to this duel of convictions, especially when Porus' parents, and the assemblage, cheer him unreservedly. And Chanakya is left tearing his shikha, and lamenting that this temporary shishya of his is nowhere near as obedient as Chandragupta Maurya.😉
I know that there would be those who feel that Porus went too far, that he crossed the limits of maryada in the way in which he countered Chanakya. I am not of this mind. I don't think he said anything inappropriate, except that one line where he says that the kutilneetigya Kautilya had wanted to put a black mark on the forehead of Bharat.
That was too much, and I can see why Surbhi is upset. But for the rest, seeing that Chanakya had pushed Porus into the kind of position where, if he did what the Acharya wanted, he would no longer be able to live with himself, I do not feel that he said anything that was unnecessary or arrogant.
Come down for Chanakya: But one thing is for sure. The Porus CVs, who are usually busy putting Alexander down, have now done a hatchet job on Chanakya himself. I doubt if this will go down well with most viewers, though I did not mind it. For the average Indian TV viewer, Acharya devo bhava, and when the Acharya happens to be Chanakya, doubly so. They won't like seeing Chanakya lowered in order to elevate Porus who is, all said and done, only a vaguely known personality for most of them.
Porus and Alexander: The air crackled with electricity at the very end,as Alexander finally departed. It was not just the spat about who was the lion of which jungle, but even the exchange of rings, and the way in which each held the other's hand while doing so, became a subtle game of one upmanship.
Earlier, Alexander seemed to have no problem with literally looking up to Porus, and he stood in a graceful relaxed pose, hands crossed behind his back. And yes, he did punctiliously address Porus as the Shah-e-Paurav. Neat touch, that!
Unexpected realization: I was looking for some clear evidence of a change, however oblique, of mindset in Alexander, but I could not find it. Perhaps it is too early for that.
It must have come as a shock to him to realise that Porus, whom he had till now seen as spouting a lot of hot air about what Bharatiyata meant, was actually living by those selfsame convictions, to the point of giving up an assured victory over a world conqueror, and peace for his people, because it did not fit in with his code of honour and the traditions of his land as he perceived them.
It will take Alexander a while to digest all this, and a bit more to formulate his reaction to it. But till then, this unexpected realization will haunt him, nagging away at the edges of his mind, and forcing him , perhaps, to reconsider what Porus had been to him, and what he could be.
For there has to be some substantial evolution in this relationship for the two to have become not just friends but, as our President said the other day, allies after the battle of the Hydaspes.
Right now, as for Alexander identifying with things that Porus said, I felt rather that he identified with many of the explanations for the rajyabhishek ceremony given by Chanakya. He was nodding his head in agreement time and again, and his eyes showed both keen interest and admiration.
Coming to what Porus said, one could take chal to mean not just deceit but also betrayal, and Porus' strong disapproval of chal should have struck a responsive chord in Alexander, whose hatred of deceit is violent.
There was nothing stated about friendship per se, except for that one reference to being as sweet in friendship as a mango (Laksh needs to work on his Sanskrit diction. I could hardly make anything out there!😉 ). Porus states that Alexander came there as a friend. Alexander says that he was invited in dosti, and that is also what Porus assumes after being shown the invitation.
But if this is what the CVs wanted to convey, they should not have made Alexander babble earlier about the kata hua sar of the Paurav king. They don't seem to be in the least bothered about continuity or coherence😡.
Finally, though no one here seems to have remarked on it as yet, we already had the immortal line Wohi jo ek raja ko ek raja ke saath karna chahiya. So the end game is clear, and Porus will, it now seems - by coupling this with Chanakya's warning that the next time might not be favourable for him - repeat the same line to Alexander very soon.
It looks like the battle of the Hydaspes, and the end game, are both near at hand.
Questions galore!:
- I could not understand what Alexander said about his now acknowledging that his muqaddar would not being complete till he had defeated Porus, and how that jelled with what he said earlier in the same passage about having always contradicted his mother and asserted that main apna muqaddar khudh likhta hoon. I presume it was about Olympias believing the High Priestess about Porus changing his muqaddar.
- Nor could I understand what Porus said about having had several opportunities to kill Alexander between Persia and the explosion on the bridge. One could perhaps count two: the time he held a sword to his throat, and then when he was atop the elephant and Alexander was on the ground, when he could have trampled him afoot. But how do two opportunities add up to several? Note that he does not include the present one.
As he was making these assertions, Alexander's eyes, and the corner of his mouth, were crinkled in what looked almost like amusement.
-Then I could not understand from where, and when, Alexander got hold of the scroll of invitation. It was Chanakya who collected it from the admissions guard at the entry point, and Alexander was not shown asking for it after that, but he produced it with all the aplomb of a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat,😉 just in the nick of time! And he had nothing in his hands all this while.
-But what I could not understand at all was
a) how Chanakya made all the military deployments to keep Alexander in check, including the by now standard issue archers, bows bent and at the ready, without either Bamni or Puru knowing anything about it, and
b) what on earth Hephaestion and Cleitus were doing standing there like lamp posts when Alexander was facing imminent death.😡 They did try to draw their swords when Chanakya accuses Alexander of killing his father to get to the throne, but later they seemed to have been affected by a whole body paralysis. One would have expected them to rush to shield him, and to fight and die at his side, the Paurav archers notwithstanding. Very strange!
Phew! Well, I did try to keep it short, and it is not my fault that there was so much material! 😆 Those who have made it to this point, if you are so inclined, please do press the Like button.
Shyamala Aunty/Di
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