How often do we think of the burly muscleman of Mahabharata? One of the trio (alongside Hanuman and Balarama) from our epics that wannabe pahalwans - young boys aspire to become when they grow up, after watching TV episodes of Ramayana and Mahabharata?
Day 1
While on an unhurried visit to Gorakhnath temple, Gorakhpur, I noticed an isolated room, housing a huge statue of a slumbering giant. With no English notes around, a stranger explained the Hindi placard that mentioned that Mahabali Bhim who came to visit Mahayogi Gorakhnath fell asleep while waiting for his host, who was in deep meditation. When he woke up after days(?) the ground beneath him had sunk by some depth due to his heft! The statue was placed in the same depression and honours the famous hulk.
Day 2
I got curious about this story and wanted to learn more, so was reading some sources online about Bhima. One of them spoke about how he pissed off Duryodhana so much with his effortless strength and toyed with him and his brothers, that Prince D decided to get rid of him by poisoning his meal during a feast and rolling him off into a river.
Our big man consumed it all and suffered - let's safely say a bout of mild food-poisoning and felt drowsy and was soon pushed into a river. His presence in the river-bottom disturbed the tranquil of water snakes who in terms bit the intruder multiple times. As luck would have it, the venom became anti-venom for the poison and neutralised it like an acid-base reaction! Soon our Bulk-Hogan woke up and went back to do greater stunts and muscle-inflicted mayhem in future wars.
Day 3
Had decided to visit the prolific publisher, Gita Press of Gorakhpur without a clue of what to expect other than shelves of religious text books. To my utter surprise, I was guided to a quiet gallery consisting of hundreds of high quality hand-drawn artworks depicting various religious and spiritual themes, including Ram Leela, Krishna Leela, Avatars of Vishnu, Siva puranam, etc some of them 300 years old coming from artists all over India.
I only knew the significance of few works, but without English titles, I could only second guess or appreciate the art - till I found this work which would make sense if you have read everything so far -
