The battle grounds, of what was later to become famous as Kurukshetra, was once a fallow wheat field. Right around the time when the epic was to unfold, all of the wheat heads were harvested, the earths below were dried and dusted, and the grounds were ready. As it turned out, at a certain propitious hour, a group of Haryanvi men who lived off selling buffalo milk got into a great fight with each other.
On either sides of this abandoned field, there now stood fifteen or twenty ‘bhaiyyas’—’brothers’—in an ultimate stare-down. The Kaurava, the Pandava. Since they weren’t exactly sticklers for pronouncing names in accordance with the conventions of high literary culture, they called each other Kauron and Pandon.
It wasn’t that they didn’t know Malayalam either, but they preferred to swear at each other in Hindi.
Saale Behnchod!
Among them was a rather sensitive bhaiyya called Arjun, who was a bit vexed about the whole situation.
Aren’t these my neighbors and relatives, he thought.
How can I abuse them? How can I ‘eff ’em up?
No, can’t do, brother — he told himself.
Seeing this reluctance build up, another milkman called Kishan (Malayalis later on decided to call this fellow as ‘Krishnan’, ‘Guruvayurappan’ and so on) said a few choice words which eventually inspired and ultimately instilled courage in Arjun.
Maaro Saaloko — Kishan then duly advised.
This stunningly lucid advise was later rewritten in a meter called Anushtubh, it was sung and stretched into a song, and ultimately, even turned into a book by entrepreneurial publishers.
And they also duly turned this battle, among those buffalo soldiers, into something called the Mahabharata War.
[Original in Malayalam by O. V. Vijayan titled: ‘Mahabharata Yuddhavum Athu Sambandhichu Oru Granthavum’
Translated by Keerthik Sasidharan]