Storytelling Post: Jealousy. week 9

Cards from wikimedia commons

 

There was a large housewarming party for five brothers that had just built a home to live together in. At the party were friends, neighbors, and family that brought countless gifts and warm wishes. Everyone had a great time at this event, all except one man. The eldest cousin of the brothers, son of their uncle Dhrit, was Dury. Dury sat outside on a bench and had sulking thoughts to himself.

“My cousins are useless, why do they get all these awesome gifts? I did not get gifts as awesome as these at my party…ahhh and this house, it is so glorious I can’t help but to love it and adore the open spaces and grand construction of it all! They have delicious food served to them every day and my cooks at our house are not as great as theirs. I am pretty sure my television is smaller as well, either that or the picture on it has less pixels…something about their tv makes me loathe my own. WHY do they get all they would ever want and I get things that are less than what is theirs? We come from the same family and our fathers are brothers. Why do I get stuck with a blind king for a father and theirs is dead? I love my dad but he does not understand the agony I am put through by these brothers’ existence! Maybe it is perhaps he cannot literally see the difference of our two worlds, since they feel the same to him he does not side with me on this. I must do something to bring shame or embarrassment to them so people will look at me and think more highly of me and I will be favored with the greater gifts and adoration! But what can I do?? I could challenge them to a game I know I can win. I will make them gamble everything away to me. Of the brothers Yud, Arju, Bhim, Nak & Saha the weakest would have to be Yud since he was horrible at games growing up, he would always lose. Aha! I must go make this game of poker happen right now in front of everyone here.”

Then Dury told his friend that was there of his plan and asked him to use his best tricks to win everything from Yud in the poker game, since he himself was not the best. Of course he agreed since he was just as jealous of the brothers as Dury was. The grand poker game was arranged and all surrounded to watch. Yud was engulfed in arrogance and thought he could win so he kept gambling away his belongings. Pretty soon, everything he owned or loved was gambled away to Dury’s sit in player and the last thing was his wife’s most precious wedding ring. Since the rules stated that anything under the house of Dury or Yud could be gambled, it was fair game. Sad story. The end.

Author’s note: I chose to retell a spin-off of the story with Duryodhana and challenging Yudhistira in a game of gambling. This is taking place in modern times and at a house warming party instead of after the celebration of the Pandava brothers for their city. I shortened Duryodhana’s name as well as the rest of the character’s mentioned here from the book. I wanted to emphasize his crazy feelings of jealousy toward the brothers and not focus so much on the actual game that made Yudhistira lose all his stuff. It’s a bit different than the book but the core concept of family ties and jealousy is here which is what I wanted to keep the same. I could’ve went into more detail but am feeling sick and lacking creativity unfortunately :\

Bibliography: Narayan, R. K. (1978). The Mahabharata