Dharamvir Bharati

गुनाहों का देवता

सूरज का सातवाँ घोड़ा

Andha Yug is one of the great Indian plays of the millennium, and in Alok Bhalla it has found an ideal translator. . . . A model in the fraught field of translation. —Girish Karnad, playwright, Padma Bhushan and Jnanpith Laureate "Bhalla’s fine translation is austere and rigorous, negotiating both the epic scale of the play and the Spartan simplicity of its poetry." —Keki N. Daruwalla, poet, Sahitya Akademi Laureate One of the most significant plays of post-Independence India, Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug takes place on the last day of the Great Mahabharata War. The once-beautiful city of Hastinapur is burning, the battlefield beyond the walls is piled with corpses, and the few survivors huddle together in grief and rage, blaming the destruction on their adversaries, divine capriciousness—anyone or anything except their own moral choices. Andha Yug explores our capacity for moral action, reconciliation, and goodness in times of atrocity and reveals what happens when individuals succumb to the cruelty and cynicism of a blind, dispirited age. Andha Yug is illustrated with paintings from a rare, single manuscript of the Razmnama (Book of War), dated to 1598–1599. Created during the reign (1556–1605) of the great Mughal emperor Akbar, the Razmnama is written in Persian, yet it is a translation of the Mahabharata, one of the great Indian epics of Hinduism. An essay by Yael Rice reveals the Indian, Persian, and European elements within the translations, as well as the diverse cultural character of the Mughal court of Akbar. color illus.

The Age of Darkness

Andha Yug

In the idyllic university town, young women daydreamed as they lay on the grass and gazed up at the clouds. Young men took morning walks at Alfred Park. Hot summer afternoons were for drinking sherbet and eating watermelons, and evenings were meant for reading poetry. It was also a time of stifling social mores, and love was an unattainable ideal seldom realized. Allahabad of the 1940s is the serene backdrop to the turbulence of Chander’s love for his professor’s daughter Sudha. Driven by his passionate belief in the transcending purity of their love, Chander persuades Sudha to marry another man, to devastating consequences. Unhinged by his separation from Sudha and consumed by a restless desire to make sense of love—Is it really about sex? Is the purity of love a lie?—Chander spirals into a destructive affair with the seductive Pammi. Immensely popular since its publication more half a century ago, Chander & Sudha continues to seduce readers with its potent mix of tender passion and heartbreaking tragedy.

Dharamvir Bharati

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