Sunil Iyengar is the editor of The Colosseum Book of Contemporary Narrative Verse (Franciscan University Press) and the author of a chapbook of poems, A Call from the Shallows. Samples of his published poems, book reviews, and essays may be found at www.suniliyengar.com.
Poet’s Note
My poem alludes to scenes from the Mahabharata, one of the two ancient Sanskrit epics. The anachronistic title, “Anger Management,” refers to the central conundrum of the epic’s main villain, Duryodhana.
Like many Indians or the descendants of Indians, I don’t read Sanskrit, so have relied instead on numerous translations, oral retellings, Indian comic books, and an Indian TV serial. Another decisive influence has been Peter Brook’s 1989 film adaptation.
The poet, critic, and translator Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982), friend to the Beats, complained about the inadequacy of most English translations of the Mahabharata. Yet he observed:
The faults are not all in the English. Hindu literature by our standards is decadent from its prime foundations. Overspecialization, proliferation, gigantism—like Hindu sculpture, Indian poetry and prose have a jungle profusion that sparer cultures can never assimilate.
While I would severely qualify Rexroth’s claims, I share his frustration with the epic poem’s resistance to periphrasis and, it may be, to translation in general.
For readers unfamiliar with the source text, therefore, what follows is not a summary of the Mahabharata, but a prose distillation of key elements from the epic as they pertain to my poem.
Duryodhana is the oldest son of the blind king Dhritarashtra and his wife, Gandhari. As a bride-to-be, she had chosen to wear a permanent blindfold, the better to identify with her assigned husband.
The prince and his 100 brothers (!), the Kauravas, are sworn enemies of the Pandavas, five brothers born of gods. The Kauravas and Pandavas are cousins and grew up together.
In an archery contest, Arjun—the most famous Pandava because of his later role in The Bhagavad-Gita—spurns a challenger, Karna, the adopted son of a charioteer. Duryodhana instantly befriends Karna, crowning him king of Anga.
Jealous of the Pandavas’ brilliance, Duryodhana tries to dispose of his cousins by lodging them in a wax palace and setting it ablaze. He also arranges two dice games with the oldest son of the Pandavas and cheats them of their possessions.
At the end of the first dice game, his brother Dushasana drags the Pandava princess, Draupadi, by the hair and attempts to disrobe her. Bhima, another Pandava, vows to break Duryodhana’s thigh. Much later, this fantasy is realized when Bhima lures Duryodhana from a lake where he had been hiding—the ability to stay under water for long periods of time being a special power of the Kaurava prince—and lands the fatal blow.
At the end of the second dice game, the Pandavas are exiled for 13 years. Upon their return, Duryodhana refuses to give back even a pinprick of their land, despite Lord Krishna (originally a cowherd) negotiating on their behalf. The great war of the epic begins.
Photo by Nathalie SPEHNER on Unsplash.
