Hari Om Parents,
Hope you all had a wonderful week!
We returned to our Mahabharata story. After fifteen peaceful years in the forest, tragedy struck: one beautiful spring day, with Kunti away at a nearby ashram with the five boys, Pandu was alone with Madri — and overcome by the fragrant spring air, he forgot himself for just a moment. The sage's curse took him instantly. Both Kunti and Madri were so heartbroken that they wanted to end their own lives too, but the forest sages insisted they stay to raise the five children. Madri felt it was her fault, and asked Kunti to raise all five boys as her own, including her twins Nakula and Sahadeva. She told the children, “Kunti is now your mother, and Yudhishthira, listen to him as you would your father,” and then chose to join Pandu. Everyone agreed: the five young princes must return to Hastinapura.
News reached the city, and Bhishma, Dhritarashtra, Vidura, and the whole royal family rushed out to receive them. The five princes were introduced by name for the first time: Yudhishthira (now fifteen), Bhima, Arjuna, and the twins Nakula and Sahadeva. The sages performed Pandu's funeral rites in the city — their long duty finally complete — and Kunti and her five sons were welcomed to live in Hastinapura.
The Pandavas and the 100 Kaurava sons now began growing up together in the palace. Bhima, incredibly strong even as a boy, loved teasing his cousins in their games, and Duryodhana — used to being the center of attention — burned with jealousy and resentment. His uncle Sakuni fanned the flames of this hatred, becoming Duryodhana's closest advisor.
That jealousy soon turned dangerous. Duryodhana mixed poison into Bhima's food, then pushed his sleeping body into the Ganga. Bhima sank all the way down to the kingdom of the Nagas, the serpent people — and remarkably, their bites actually helped flush the poison out of him! Their king, Vasuki, recognized him as Kunti's son and rewarded him with a magical strength-giving elixir, each bowl worth the strength of ten elephants. Bhima drank eight whole bowls! Eight days later, he returned home alive and even stronger than before — and Kunti made sure to keep the secret from the Kauravas.
We paused the story here to see what our next saint, Auvaiyar, would make of Duryodhana's plan backfiring so completely. At just four years old, she composed a verse that stumped the wisest elders in the court: “If you do a good deed, when will it give its results?” Her own answer became famous: “Don't doubt — the result will come, just like water poured at a coconut tree's roots, rising all the way up through its head.” As a young woman, wanting a life of devotion rather than marriage, she prayed to Lord Ganesha to turn her into an old woman right away — and he granted her wish! Later, when two kings, Thondaiman and Adhiyaman, were about to go to war, Auvaiyar cleverly praised Thondaiman's clean, unused weapons as a gentle warning not to fight the battle-hardened Adhiyaman — and helped prevent the war entirely. Her values: be positive, be steadfast, do good, and keep harmony. Her lesson — that our actions always bring results, often not the ones we expect — was the perfect way to make sense of what had just happened to Duryodhana's plan.
Then came a new arrival. One day, the princes' ball and a ring fell into a deep well while they were playing. A mysterious stranger offered to get both back in exchange for a meal — he strung blades of grass together like a chain, shooting them one by one with his arrows to fish out the ball, then used the same trick for the ring. Amazed, Yudhishthira asked who he was, but the stranger simply told them to go describe what they'd seen to their grandfather Bhishma. The moment they did, Bhishma instantly recognized the trick: it had to be Drona, a master of every weapon — and he appointed him royal teacher for all the princes, Pandavas and Kauravas alike.
We'll pick up right from there next class with Drona's own story — why a master of every weapon came to Hastinapura, and what he secretly wants from the princes in return for training them.
We also played the Geetha Chanting Primer video and chanted along as a class to get familiar with the pronunciation, to help us recite Bhagavad Gita Chapter 6.
Next session: Sunday, October 25, 2026. Happy Navratri and Dussehra to all!
Please reach out to us anytime with questions.
Regards,
Sai and Raji
