To a modern reader, an epic like the Mahabharata can appear incredibly plotty. For the most part, there is no meeting, no event, no coincidence, that doesn’t fall neatly into the overall design. Unlike a modern novel, where the narrator often recesses with a character to explore his or her psychology, the concerns of an epic are the story and the material things that drive the story ahead. In short, a majority of the scenes and sequences are plot movements of consequence.
Thus it is always surprising to see a chapter that doesn’t seem to connect to the overall story. Bhima’s killing of the rakshasha Baka is one such. It occurs soon after Bhima has killed the rakshasha Hidimba and united with his sister (of the same name). The Hidimba episode, is of consequence, for it leads to the birth of Ghatotkacha, a character who shall have a role to play in Karna’s death in the war. But no such development arises from the killing of Baka. Bhima doesn’t get a boon or a child and, anonymous as they are at that point, the Pandavas get no fame out of saving a population from the rakshasha. The entire Baka-vadha parva could, be excised from the Mahabharata without much loss.
The importance of the Baka-vadha parva, however, can perhaps be surmised from a different point of view, one which sees it as the Pandavas’ first selfless action, one directed solely at the welfare of others, with no impulse of self-preservation or expectation of profit. It is interesting before Bhima goes out to kill Baka, Yudhishtira and Kunti have a little argument in which the eldest Pandava begins by scolding his mother for putting Bhima in a dangerous situation for little reason. Kunti is able to convince her son of the implicit good in the act. Though the Pandavas are never identified as the ones who freed the town of Baka, they nevertheless get to see how their strength could be used for the welfare of population. If one is willing to take this line of reasoning further, the Baka-vadha parva is the section where the Pandavas acquire the qualities of sovereigns.
After Baka’s killing, the Pandavas are visited by a Brahman who tells them of the swayamvara of Droupadi, daughter of the king of Panchala, Yajnasena. The Pandavas move towards Panchala thereafter, though with no intention to participate in the swayamvara themselves. Then they meet Veda Vyasa in the way, who tells them that Droupadi, in her previous life, had prayed to Lord Shiva for a suitable husband so ardently and repeatedly that Shiva had granted her the boon of five husbands in a future life. Vyasa encourages the Pandavas to wed Droupadi. Considering that this is the writer talking to his characters directly, there remains no doubt that he is directing them to one of the most crucial junctures in the story.
(The writer’s first novel ‘Neon Noon’ is now available)