Ashwathama – Among the immortals

Since the last few days, I have been trying to build upon a fantasy, which I could begin to write. There was a basic plot that was zooming in my mind, but I still had a lot of information to collect before I could even begin to set up the general story structure. In one particular instance, I wanted to find out a person in our history who was an immortal, so that I could base my one character upon it. The reason behind looking for an actual tale was that while writing I wanted to have some facts as the backbone.

I talked to my mother about this and she, having quite the knowledge of our mythological history, suggested me the name of ‘Ashwathama’. She told me that he is one of the eight immortals and that he was the beloved son of Guru Dronacharya (teacher of the Pandavas and Kauravas of Mahabharata). I had known a bit about Ashawathama, of course as the part of stories that we had enjoyed in childhood. I had also heard from one of my uncles that, he still is on earth and there is an old fort somewhere on the top of which is Lord Shiva’s temple, where Ashwathama, being an avid worshipper, daily offers flowers. About the exact things such as why he is an immortal and what happened other than that, I had no idea. So ‘Lakh dukho ki ek dawa’, I went on to Google and on to wikipedia from there. Ashwathama’s story had me amazed. And it’s tragic too. Just like Karna’s, but both of them had been on the wrong side, so how could they be helped? The whole story could be read on wikipedia.

I wonder, is there any possibility that these mythological things can be real? Even if some part of them is real then that too makes a lot of difference in the world we think we live in. Ashwathama still lives on among us according to the beliefs. Revisiting this story made me realize how rich our mythological history is.