Thread by @thekaipullai

Today's is a fairly known story about the Mahabharat. But is an important one about motives and the perception of a Good guy. And in a way, the conduct of God.

Gandhari was a princess of the Gandhar kingdom, daughter of King Subala.

She had many siblings. Unfortunately, Gandhari happens to be a Manglik, and you know that is a problem in India. Because, according to some Astrological mumbo jumbo, the first hudband of a Manglik girl, will die.

So to prevent that, Subala, marries her to a goat as a ritual.

to remove the curse. And then she marries Dhritarashtra, without revealing any of this to him.

Now, somehow Dhritarashtra, finds out about this and goes mad. He vows to elminate the whole Gandhara line to oblivion.

So he invites all the family members of Gandhari to Hastinapur, where he imprisons all of them. Not wanting to violate the Dharma of hospitality, feeds each of the family members, one grain of rice. So, the whole of the Gandhara family,

give all their grains of rice to the youngest member, a guy named Shakuni so that he can survive and aniihilate the kurus. This is the first recorded instance of an Avenger, in the history of humankind.

And to help Shakuni take revenge, Subala asks him to make dice out of his backbone/thighbone after his death. And this dice, will listen to Shakuni. And Shakuni uses it brutally. I think we all know what he did with that.

This story completely changes the arc of Mahabharat. Kauravas are personifications of evil, and if you look at it, it is Shakuni who does the most to destroy them. He realizes, the only way to wipe out the Kurus was to make them go to war with the Pandavas and Lord Krishna.

Now Yudhishtira on his own would have done absolutely nothing, and wouldn't have asked Lord Krishna to intervene. This would have let Kurus go scott free in their appetite for destruction. But Shakuni engineers events in such a way, that war is inevitable and Kurus are destroyed

And Shakuni does it, knowing that he too would be killed in the war.

This puts a completely new definition of who the hero of Mahabharata is. This also tells us, that in life, who we think our hero is, might actually be a villain.

And who we think our villain is, might actually be someone who is working for us. This teaches us that we should never be judgemental about anyone, without knowing the complete picture. It also, gives us a glimpse of how God works sometimes.

He might send us to a Vanvas for 13 years, an Agyat vaas, put us thru turmoil. But he is doing it for our greater good. And we might not even know what that is. If you are a good person, Good will happen to you.

It also underlines the importance of good Background verification.