Wars are kinder to men, for they are given a chance, in the battlefield, to showcase their prowess at weapons and strategy-making – either to emerge victorious or to die valorously. The very act of fighting a battle washes them off their earthly sins, securing their position in the heavens. But what about the women? Burning silently inside, anxious and afraid, guilty and grieved, passive and powerless, they remain silent spectators of events so momentous that turn their lives upside down. These women lose battles without fighting them. And then they keep burning inside, long after the pyres of the vanquished and the flambeaux of the victorious have fizzled out….. What if Gandhari didn’t blindfold herself just out of devotion for her future husband but at her powerlessness to prevent herself from a fate similar to Amba’s? Did Kunti ever overcome her guilt over Karn? Did Draupadi learn to sympathize with the maidservants and the prostitutes she was compared to in the open court or did she only think about herself? Did Subhadra learn to live with her guilt of having slept off mid-way during Arjun’s explanation of the Chakravyuh? Did the cold-shouldered Hidimba forgive the Pandavas? What must have been going on in the mind of Duhshala, the only princess of Hastinapur, when she had to support her infant grandson while reigning over the empire of Sindhu alone? What about Bhanumati, that unfortunate widow of Duryodhan? Could Uttara the child-widow ever learn to see Abhimayu’s reflection in Parikshit? A story of the unexplored thoughts of these powerful women, who lost inner battles bigger than Mahabharat and struggled in silence to endure with more strength each time life knocked them down!

Light from the fire burning afar mingled with the moonlight in Kurukshetra to create a terrible twilight. Scattered corpses ... broken chariots ... sporadic death cries ... prowling scavengers ... the battlefield stretched endlessly.The victorious Pāndava camps burst into deafening cheers amidst burning funeral pyres. The Great War was finally over. But soon enough, when everyone learns the truth about the hated enemy, Karna, that towering figure with the golden glow, another battle starts. Everyone stands stunned, forgetting to even cry. Torn by the guilt of fratricide, Yudhishtira becomes a recluse. Draupadi becomes restless: her tryst with reality begins. What seemed a justifiable end to an ignominious character completely overturns. Her pride for her husbands’ valour erodes. Life as she had understood slowly begins to lose meaning. This Malayalam classic centres on Karna, the most criticized yet admired character of the Mahabharata, treacherously killed by his half-brother Arjuna. His life story unfolds through the eyes of Draupadi, in flashbacks and tales she hears from those around her in the aftermath of the battle of Kurukshetra.

Shadows of Empire explores Javanese shadow theater as a staging area for negotiations between colonial power and indigenous traditions. Charting the shifting boundaries between myth and history in Javanese Mahabharata and Ramayana tales, Laurie J. Sears reveals what happens when these stories move from village performances and palace manuscripts into colonial texts and nationalist journals and, most recently, comic books and novels. Historical, anthropological, and literary in its method and insight, this work offers a dramatic reassessment of both Javanese literary/theatrical production and Dutch scholarship on Southeast Asia. Though Javanese shadow theater (wayang) has existed for hundreds of years, our knowledge of its history, performance practice, and role in Javanese society only begins with Dutch documentation and interpretation in the nineteenth century. Analyzing the Mahabharata and Ramayana tales in relation to court poetry, Islamic faith, Dutch scholarship, and nationalist journals, Sears shows how the shadow theater as we know it today must be understood as a hybrid of Javanese and Dutch ideas and interests, inseparable from a particular colonial moment. In doing so, she contributes to a re-envisioning of European histories that acknowledges the influence of Asian, African, and New World cultures on European thought--and to a rewriting of colonial and postcolonial Javanese histories that questions the boundaries and content of history and story, myth and allegory, colonialism and culture. Shadows of Empire will appeal not only to specialists in Javanese culture and historians of Indonesia, but also to a wide range of scholars in the areas of performance and literature, anthropology, Southeast Asian studies, and postcolonial studies.

This novel, SHADOWS ARE ASSASSINS is a psychological journey. The more the Novel progresses it becomes from a socio political journey of a man to the discovery of his own psychic reality. The first 42 chapters deal with our epistemological limitations as we suffer in our language, in our relations and in our day to day political aspects of life. But the next 40 chapters actually become a spiritual quest in it's own adventure of romance and love. It is violent also in the sense of mutilation of every kind of self suppressions to reach out to the reality of our desire for the Other. And the remaining 33 chapters actually become a surreal description of transcendence of every border line which human beings fear to cross. Indeed if our deeper and therefore unknown desires emerge from within and truly stand before us, it becomes exactly perceptible how a mysterious battleground of hate and love, love and death seek to destroy us and rebuild us. In the novel SHADOWS ARE ASSASSINS Shyamal Bhattacharjee, the author, makes his readers witness this perilous journey inside the mysterious battlefield human mind. Among the characters presented in the novel, some have their desired childhood and adolescence, some woman with repressed sexual desire, some woman her dead son, some man his dead father, some persons with their repressed homosexuality, some with their homicidal and suicidal tendencies. It is a dangerous shadow fight when different shadows of oneself become opponents in different lights It will not be wrong to mention that the the novel is written with a wonderful poetic language from the beginning to the end. So far it is one of the 7th unpublished novels written by Shyamal Bhattacharjee. The whole novel SHADOWS ARE ASSASSINS is framed with small chapters with a headline that captures the central idea of the next 500 to 600 words. Chapters are kept small keeping in view to its poetic and intellectual intensity. Each chapter can be regarde

The book reveals the heard of cultural and spiritual heritage of Haryana: the history of its existence to prehistoric times and its role in the subsequent stages of the visual civilization, Indus valley civilization and the vedic civilization of the Aryans that flourished around Haryana sacred river Saraswati Haryana is protected as the place pf Mahabharata, Purans and Smritis etc. worth reacting.

From the vibrant tapestry of Indian mythology emerges a tale unlike any other—Arjuna: Blade of the Gods—an epic saga of celestial weapons, ancient prophecies, and the indomitable spirit of a warrior destined to shape the fate of a kingdom. Arjuna, the chosen one, is plucked from the deceptive tranquility of Hastinapur's grand celebrations, where whispers of an encroaching darkness lie hidden beneath the surface. Called upon by the gods themselves, he embarks on a perilous quest to gather fragments of forgotten power, celestial weapons scattered among realms infused with their own dangers and trials. With each step, Arjuna's power grows, but so does his awareness of the terrible toll these weapons demand. Agni, the fire god, tests his mettle in a volcanic inferno. The elusive Vayu challenges him to an aerial duel through ever-shifting skyways. In a haunting temple of illusions, Citrangada, the warrior princess, forces him to discern truth from falsehood. The shadow of an ancient power begins to take shape – Varuna, an Asura rising from the depths, driven by a thirst for revenge and dominion. Yet, this growing threat is not the only enemy Arjuna must face. Temptations linger on his path, promising false peace and an escape from the heavy mantle of responsibility. Internal battles must be fought alongside external ones, testing the limits of his spirit and questioning the very righteousness he seeks to uphold. In a world teetering on the brink of chaos, Arjuna is both a savior and a potential force of ruin. The path he carves is fraught with choices that will echo throughout time and leave an enduring mark on the realm. Friendships will be tested, lives will be lost, and sacrifices will be demanded, all leading toward a decisive battle where the destiny of Hastinapur will hang in the balance. Arjuna: Blade of the Gods is not simply a tale of a warrior claiming power, it's an exploration of the price that power exacts – on the warrior, on his loved ones, and on the world he fights for. It invites the reader to walk beside Arjuna and ponder the age-old questions – how do we define heroism? Is unshakeable duty its own kind of sacrifice? And where does the line between hero and tyrant blur?

The Train That Had Wings presents modern life in Kerala in terms of a shared but tragically compromised humanity. Mukundan dares to look beneath the routines and facades of everyday life in order to probe depth of sin, greed, and hypocrisy but also to rediscover what brings joy and hope. Sixteen short story translations and a critical introduction, offering examples of Mukundan's realistic, existentialist, psychedelic, and parabolic stories, show his range and talent for the very short story. If Hawthorne wrote “twice told tales,” Mukundan writes half-told tales, stories that jump in the middle, stomp around for just a minute, and leap away almost before the reader can settle in. Half-told, but a powerful and infectious half.