Greek bards and Indian battles

Christopher Nolans "The Odyssey" has crossed $1.3 billion worldwide and over ?200 crore in India, making it the biggest hit of Nolans career, ahead of even "The Dark Knight Rises." The real author of that success, though, is a poet who never saw a rupee of it: Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey were composed nearly 2,700 years ago and still anchor the costliest film epics money can buy. The Iliad tells of the ten-year Trojan War sparked by Helens abduction; the Odyssey follows its heros twenty-year, monster-strewn voyage home to reclaim his wife and throne from her suitors.

Whats eerie is how much of this weve heard before, in Sanskrit. Odysseus strings his old bow to prove his identity, as Rama strings Shivas bow to win Sita. Achilles, invincible but for his heel, dies to an arrow, exactly as Krishna does, shot in the foot by the hunter Jara. The wooden horse that breaches Troy has its twin in Yudhishthiras murmured lie about "Ashwatthama," the elephant, which breaks Dronas will to fight. Both wars ignite over a humiliated woman: Helens abduction, Draupadis disrobing. Achilles and Karna are both invincible but for one weak spot, both reluctant warriors - one fighting to avenge a friends death, the other to repay a debt of loyalty rather than conviction. Patroclus and Abhimanyu both die young, entering battles meant for greater men in their absence. Even the dogs rhyme: Argos waits twenty years to die at Odysseuss returning feet; Yudhishthiras companion walks with him all the way to heavens gate.

No credible contact existed between Greece and India before Alexanders invasion of 326 BC, centuries after both epics took shape. So this is either coincidence, or evidence that every culture reaches for the same stories to make sense of duty, loyalty and grief. What survives intact in both is an unfashionable moral: glory isnt the point. Rama, the Pandavas and Odysseus all end their stories by turning away from the spoils of victory, choosing home over conquest. Thats the real inheritance: not the wars these epics describe so unforgettably, but the walking away from them.

The writer is Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Varanasi