Description
Reliance Publishing House Damyanti Women Of Substance by Subash C Narula
The rudiments of the tale is an anecdote of history in the sense that, this great poet maharshi Vedavyas describes it with the term itihas and appositely cites it, and such other tales, in the course of the narrative of his epic. Their relevance to the situation and character is unimpeachable. Whereas in its original appearance in the course of narrative this history is characterized by brevity for the immediacy and intensity of effect, the author has chosen it for the scope of the drama in the situation and the probability of evolution of characters in the perspective of the milieu in which they are placed. The ancient tale of King Nal and Princess Damyanti was told to the Pandav prince Yudhishthir during the Pandavas’ exile stay in the forest, Kamyakvan, to take the edge off his mental anguish and overwhelming sense of guilt, by the revered itinerant Maharshi Brihadashwa. It runs into a few paragraphs. Narula takes the bare, basic story with its few original characters and movement of the plot. In my retelling and trans-creating though, it develops into a longer complex narrative that becomes something of a novella.