You have heard it all. From your grandfather, your uncle and aunts all through your childhood every single time you request a story. And oh when you are all grown up a repeat of them several times a day especially when you don’t request them at all. Yeah I am talking about Mahabharata and the stories that take place just around it. Then came your television series that gave us an image or a face to connect to the epic that we have been hearing all along. Yet of late it is becoming too much of a disconnect from all those moral stories we have been hearing, thanks to new age corporate lives we are living in. Truth maybe harsh but I couldn’t possibly understand why and how a story about family feud, a gory war and especially that involves too many marital relationship could relate to my current life. Or so I thought, till I started reading the book ‘Corpokshetra: Mahabharata In The MBA Yug
‘ by ‘Deepak Kaul’. Read on to know what my skeptical brain thought about it.Book Name: Corpokshetra: Mahabharata In The MBA Yug
Author: Deepak Kaul
Genre: Fiction – humor
Characters: Mahabharata
The story-line is very simple and in fact the entire story is literally written on the blurb, which goes like this.
The Pandavas have returned home after 13 years of exile. And they are demanding their stake in Hastinapur Inc. But the Kauravas, led by the haughty Duryodhana, aren’t ready to give them a penny. The battle lines are drawn, only this war is in the present-day Kurukshetra – the corporate boardroom. As the Kauravas and the Pandavas don their sharpest suits, Krishna – the wily Consultant – strategies for peace. This is a humorous, modern take on the Mahabharata (with due apologies to Rishi Ved Vyas). An epic story retold for the MBA generation.
The attempt to try and relate an epic into the modern times that we live in is commendable. The naughty and witty Krishna as we read or heard from our ancestors has been appropriately dubbed to be a consultant. I was wondering how the book was going to explain Dhraupadi being married to five men at the same time in the modern world, thankfully the book didn’t attempt to. Better left untried than to fail miserably at it.
I wish the editorial had spent a little more time and effort to avoid glaring typos. The language and the style of the author’s writing is simple yet funny, hopefully it agrees more with the target audience than others. To summarize the whole Mahabharata into 120 pages is a feat and it is just at the correct length to behold the reader’s interest.
Bottom-line: Short, quirky breezy read.
Genre: Fiction – humor
Characters: Mahabharata
The story-line is very simple and in fact the entire story is literally written on the blurb, which goes like this.
The Pandavas have returned home after 13 years of exile. And they are demanding their stake in Hastinapur Inc. But the Kauravas, led by the haughty Duryodhana, aren’t ready to give them a penny. The battle lines are drawn, only this war is in the present-day Kurukshetra – the corporate boardroom. As the Kauravas and the Pandavas don their sharpest suits, Krishna – the wily Consultant – strategies for peace. This is a humorous, modern take on the Mahabharata (with due apologies to Rishi Ved Vyas). An epic story retold for the MBA generation.
The attempt to try and relate an epic into the modern times that we live in is commendable. The naughty and witty Krishna as we read or heard from our ancestors has been appropriately dubbed to be a consultant. I was wondering how the book was going to explain Dhraupadi being married to five men at the same time in the modern world, thankfully the book didn’t attempt to. Better left untried than to fail miserably at it.
The book had its own quirky moments like having to block gambling sites in Yudhishtra’s laptop or turning Sun God to Movie Star or the talks about Bloody Marys. And converting all the specialized battles to games like golf, cricket and even Arm wrestling.
I wish the editorial had spent a little more time and effort to avoid glaring typos. The language and the style of the author’s writing is simple yet funny, hopefully it agrees more with the target audience than others. To summarize the whole Mahabharata into 120 pages is a feat and it is just at the correct length to behold the reader’s interest.
Bottom-line: Short, quirky breezy read.
Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher free of cost in return for an honest review.
[…] of cost in return for an honest review. I am so excited about the world the book is set in. A world ruled by corporate, a world that sustains on a assessment of performance – sort of- a class system based on the […]