Mahabharata has always appeared to me as the mother of all literature – any story that can ever exist has already been done in Mahabharata. Revenge, love, envy, friendship, lust, greed, valour, cowardice, conflict, conspiracy, family dispute, friends, lovers, illicit lovers, brothers, brother-sister, mother-son, father-daughter, non-romantic boy-girl friendship (long before Mohnish Behl): everything. Only, there isn’t a single father-son bonding story.
True, there are fathers and sons. We have Yayati, who exchanges his old age with his son Puru’s youth. (His other son, Yadu who refuses to the exchange gets cursed – by dad, who else?). We have Shantanu who allows Ganga to drown his seven sons so as not to annoy her. And the eighth son who he rescues (a curious sudden bursting forth of fatherly love), he manipulates him into vowing lifelong celibacy so that daddy dearest could walk home with the next hottie by the riverside, Satyavati. We have Bhim who fathers Ghatotkach on his trips to the jungle and then uses him to neutralise the Vasavi Shakti (that Indra gave Karna), with, of course, his life.
Sons in general have been good. Dhrishtadyumna kills Drona to avenge dad Drupad’s humiliation. Oh, and that brings us to the first ‘good dad’ story – Drona at least decides to be killed once he learns son Ashwatthama is dead. Not much by the way of love or bonding but at least a dad who isn’t an asshole. Dhritarashtra – Duryodhana: we see a powerless dad more than any great love or bonding between them. Another good dad is Vasudev who drops his new born Krishna to Gokul – but here again, there is no dad-son bonding, more like an instinct to save a new born. See, the bar for a good dad is so pathetically low!
Same with Ramayana – you won’t find a single warm, strong, rich, dad-son story. Come to history and you will find dad-sons fighting each other for kingdoms.
Why is dad-son bond so less explored in literature? Tough to believe it just slipped off the minds of the great story tellers across thousands of years across the globe.
(Pic courtesy: unspalsh.com)
