For thousands of years before the story was written down, it was passed from generation to generation orally, and so, there are as many Mahabharatas as there are storytellers. Assembling this version has been an enormous task of compilation. In compiling Mahabharata , we turned to many sutradhaars, which translates from Sanskrit to ‘the person that weaves the threads’. We want to express gratitude to a few key storytellers who have held up lanterns to help us see in the sometimes dark forest. Our love and respect to Sharada Eswar, Devdutt Pattanaik, Rustom Bharucha, Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière, Rabindranath Tagore, B.R. Chopra, Amar Chitra Katha, and our deepest thanks to Carole Satyamurti, whose poetry and imagination has anchored our journey. The revelation of the Mahabharata is to learn not to become distracted by the forest or concerned with the wind, but to immerse oneself ever deeper into the earth, travelling deep into the labyrinth of its roots.
A note from the playwrights
Mahabharata was once described to us as a dense forest of stories that one needs to carve one’s own path through. That act of carving, ploughing and weeding, feels true to the journey we undertook to create this work over eight years. Which trees to start from? Which branches to trim so that others can enjoy the light? Do we take the most direct path through, or the winding scenic route? At times, adapting this epic has felt equivalent to wrestling the wind. In one moment the story is unbelievably powerful and clear in its intentions. In the next moment its intentions slip through your fingers, impossible to grasp. It is vast and complex, constantly surprising you and contradicting itself. One of the greatest respites during our journey has been spending time with past tellers of the epic.
Ravi Jain & Miriam Fernandes
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