What we learnt from Chandragupta Maurya and other historical TV serials

(We live in grim times. The world seems to be tethering on the edge of disaster. As someone once said, those who refuse to learn from history are bound to repeat it. So we watched episodes of ChakravartinAshokaSamrat, Bharat Ka Veer Putra MaharanaPratap and Chandragupta Maurya to get some perspective. This is what we learned.)

Imagine you’re the king of a prosperous ancient province. You’ve fought many terrible battles to bring peace and stability to your kingdom. Suddenly, a situation is created by one of your enemies wherein the survival of your entire nation-state is threatened. Being a veteran of many wars, do you choose to lead the battle yourself? Do you choose one of your most trusted generals, a man known for his ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat to command your forces in this hour of peril? Do you choose your Prime Minister-a man who posses a deep understanding of the intricacies of warfare-to lead the charge?

Of course not! You choose your teenage son to fight the battle. Sure, he has no military training or battle experience whatsoever. But you saw him defeat a few mildly-talented classmates in a mock sword fight that one time, so you think he’s ready to face an enemy even seasoned soldiers are nervous to face. What could go wrong?

Ancient teenagers make their modern counterparts seem like garbage. Apparently, during ancient times, young men who hadn’t even hit puberty talked like a wise sage who has spent 400 years living in the Himalayas contemplating the meaning of life. They couldn’t take a ride on their city’s local roller coaster, but they could lecture you about how life is just a meaningless pursuit of temporary happiness.

In kingdoms of yore, nobody was more pathetic than the evil half-brother of the person who eventually became king. The dude history will remember as ‘the other one.’  They only had three expressions: sneering, contempt and jealousy. Every living moment of their life was consumed with plotting to usurp the throne. They had no other thoughts and they were not allowed to have a personality. Everything they did, from going to the bathroom to helping a blind woman cross the forest, was to aid them in fulfilling their ambition. They tried to kill their dear brother a thousand times and he always managed to foil their best-laid plans without breaking a sweat. This is why these half-brothers never got to be top dog. Because they couldn’t complete the one job the universe assigned them to do.

Every foreigner visiting our blessed land was part of a plot to conquer us. Nobody came over just to enjoy touring our wonderful monuments, or taste our fusion cuisine or sit down at our shack-less beaches and enjoy the waves. They just wanted our land, our money and our secret opium crops. Most of these invaders couldn’t stand us natives. Yet, they spoke our language to each other even when none of us were around. Many of their plans were thwarted because local busybodies overheard them discussing it in the area dialect. If only they had a language that they could communicate in that the locals wouldn’t understand!

Suppose you are an imposing Macedonian King who has conquered large tracts of land in Europe and Asia. You have innumerable cities named after you. You will be remembered for centuries for your conquests. Some of the strongest, most well trained men in the world would lay down their lives if you asked them to. And yet, on your first campaign inside the Indian sub-continent-a terrain you don’t know much about-you are accompanied by a handful of soldiers, none of whom even know how to lift a sword. Yet you still manage to defeat an army of thousands. Your opponents crash and burn faster than the 1990s era Indian cricket team playing a match without Sachin Tendulkar.

Besides their motherland, the only other thing men in ancient India would give their life for was their best friend. Bros before everything else! Especially if you were a prince. You couldn’t trust many people. You need that one person who would anchor you to the ground. The one person who you thought of every morning after waking up and the one person whose face you saw before going to bed. You often took him for long walks on the riverbank so that you could talk in peace and feed each other the scrumptious lunch your minions had packed. You also made him wear your clothes whenever you took him along on official business so that he wouldn’t feel any lesser among the rest of the royals. After all, he is the one person with whom you gel so well that you were able to communicate telepathically with each other. When he eventually died in battle saving your life, a part of you went with him to his grave.

Finally, we come to the least important priority of ancient India: women! If you were a woman in ancient times, you had it made. You didn’t have to take on any serious responsibilities. All you had to concern yourself with was constantly fighting with other women for the attention of the hirsute men you were surrounded by. The rest of the time you spent preparing to sacrifice yourself by jumping into a bale of fire in case the men folk responsible for your well being lost a war. No one really cared about your opinion! Even if you were the only one who realized that the battle plan had an obvious flaw, the men you were surrounded by would rather get slaughtered on the battlefield rather than concede the fact that sometimes women might have something intelligent to say. That’s right. So many lives were sacrificed just to protect the fragile male ego.

Thank god that so much has changed since then!

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