Devdutt Pattanaik, the author who is known to have made mythology available to the new era, said he was once much involved that we're raising our kids silly. "What is the point in teaching them that in the end, the good always wins over evil? It is just a stupid thing to do. In that sense, I feel the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are more true to life," Pattanaik elaborated at the Times Litfest Delhi . "I have a huge problem with the Harry Potter series due to this. It's too clean a world. Everything is in black or white," he said.
The writer mirrored on the truth that although mythology was once all blood and gore, figuring out about it hasn't ever scarred anyone for life. "Children enjoy violence. Period. And I have never seen anyone who is damaged because his mother told him the story of how Lord Ganesha had his head cut off!" he said.
Stating that it's impossible to have only one perfect version of our epics, Pattanaik went on to explain during the analogy of affection birds. "Did you recognize that much of the Ramayana deals with the karuna ras (empathy and pathos), which runs like a commonplace thread in our epics? In the Ramayana, the fowl trapped in the cage is the Maryada Purushottam (Ram), who's law-abiding and can not break out to be along with his beloved.
Krishna's tale is somewhat different because, in his case, Radha is the one in the cage and Krishna has to bend all laws to come back to her," he said.
Asked why young minds should be 'polluted' with radical knowledge and topics equivalent to the ones dealing with the third gender (one of his books is on Shikhandi), Pattanaik said his books are mere conversation-starters, or modern day Upanishads. "If our forefathers had no problem talking about transgenders, why do we care if our children know about them?" he requested.
He was once of the view that one should by no means need to control the world or wait for the entirety to be perfect. "What I can do is to write a book. Beyond that nothing is in my control. I don't want to change the world... acche din jab ayenge, toh ayenge."
The writer mirrored on the truth that although mythology was once all blood and gore, figuring out about it hasn't ever scarred anyone for life. "Children enjoy violence. Period. And I have never seen anyone who is damaged because his mother told him the story of how Lord Ganesha had his head cut off!" he said.
Stating that it's impossible to have only one perfect version of our epics, Pattanaik went on to explain during the analogy of affection birds. "Did you recognize that much of the Ramayana deals with the karuna ras (empathy and pathos), which runs like a commonplace thread in our epics? In the Ramayana, the fowl trapped in the cage is the Maryada Purushottam (Ram), who's law-abiding and can not break out to be along with his beloved.
Krishna's tale is somewhat different because, in his case, Radha is the one in the cage and Krishna has to bend all laws to come back to her," he said.
Asked why young minds should be 'polluted' with radical knowledge and topics equivalent to the ones dealing with the third gender (one of his books is on Shikhandi), Pattanaik said his books are mere conversation-starters, or modern day Upanishads. "If our forefathers had no problem talking about transgenders, why do we care if our children know about them?" he requested.
He was once of the view that one should by no means need to control the world or wait for the entirety to be perfect. "What I can do is to write a book. Beyond that nothing is in my control. I don't want to change the world... acche din jab ayenge, toh ayenge."
'Let's not teach our kids stupidity'
!['Let's not teach our kids stupidity']()
Reviewed by Kailash
on
November 27, 2017
Rating:
