The Difficulty of Being Good -- Gurcharan Das

I had been hearing rave reviews about the book. I had also a lot about Gurcharan Das's previous book -- India Unbound.

So when our resident editor discarded some of the books she received I picked this one up.

Perhaps Das is not the first person to use the plot and ideas of the Mahabharata to express his views. Nevertheless, Das does a decent job of making his book the next step towards a more philosophic understanding of the great Indian epic rather than the mere character based tale.

He uses this plot to tackle -- quite superficially, I felt -- some of the biggest problems human beings face today like the global economic crisis, the Iraq war, the Ambani brothers feud etc.

Eminently readable, The Difficulty of Being Good tries to understand the complexities of the major characters like Bheeshma, Karna, Krishna, Yudhishtira, Duryodhana and others to dissect the subtleties of human nature perpetually dilly-dallying between the good and bad.

Das shows how we all are a mix of good and evil and even this good an evil are very subjective in nature. He also shows how the entire epic, despite the presence of Krishna -- the godhead -- is actually very human in nature. Ultimately, it is about human nature and not about god.

What I didn't like was the fact that while his reading of the epic itself was quite sophisticated, Das oversimplified it when he superimposed the Mahabharata's lessons on to today's world -- very Mani Ratnam-ish I guess.

For instance, referring to the Ambani feud he plainly writes the younger sibling Anil is smitten by a Duryodhana like envy for his more talented elder brother Mukesh!

Also, the way he talks about his own father as someone who was closest to Dharma. While I am not against an autobiographical viewpoint, I think the subject is trivialised when one starts portraying one's own moral infallibility! Come on we all love our parents and think our father is the best. But not at his age. And certainly not enough to be quoted in a book that has pretentions of high thinking.

Nevertheless, overall a worthwhile book.