Reading Notes: Narayan's Mahabharata Part B

Part two has a lot of interesting topics for potential stories. The one that interests me the most takes place in chapters 22 Bhima and Hidimba and 23 Bhima and Hidimbi. The story is the Rakshasha Himdimi sending his sister to get Bhima for him to eat. Instead she fall deeply in love with him, transforms into a beautiful woman,  and warns him of his impending danger. When he first is informed of the danger he is not worried at all and basically says that he is the danger.Himdimi comes and Bhima fights him. Bhima beats him and is begrudgingly  forced into marrying the sister Hidimba. Despite this early animosity they go of into the wilderness together and make a child.  They go on to seem to really love each other. I think this is a really complex story and I love the parallels to the story of Rama and Ravana. Every detail between the two stories is switched backwards. The character I want to focus on is Bhima in these stories. He is clearly a very capable and powerful warrior like Rama if not even stronger than him.  He kills the Rakshasta Himdimi and then Baka with seemingly little effort. Their personality could not be more different. Bhima is much more confident and even cocky. In his originally treatment of his future wife we see that he is not nearly as kind and was willing to kill her as well before marrying her instead. I will write a story about a over confident and arrogant guy who completely backs up what he says. He is also a honorable man. For instance he didn't want to disturb his family or let them get hurt. He would rather fight a Rakshasha alone than wake them, which also speaks of his cocky attitude.





The Mahabharata, A Summary by John Mandeville Macfie (1921). Mahabharata

The Strong Bhima
Image Link of Bhima