Mythology is a fascinating thing. Things from the long past, traces of which no longer exist, are bound to leave some sort of an imprint in the myths of the region from where they originated.
Reading about and imagining the adventures of a sassy heroine on the vast seas, or being lulled to sleep by some story of a fated romance, in your grandma’s sweet voice – these form some of the best treasured memories of your life. So, when you happen across a badly executed retelling of your favourite myths on the national telly network, they tend to leave a wicked scar on your heart. And then some (like me) spent the rest of their lives avoiding any and all shows with mythical themes with the fervor of a mad man, even though they happen to be myth-otakus.
That is, until you chance upon a show like “Devo ke Dev…Mahadev”. It’s an Indian spiritual, mythological drama that began airing on Life OK, prime-time IST, on weekdays, way back in December 2011.
This drama is so many things that its predecessors and a lot of contemporaries are not. Much has already been said about its gorgeous sets, brilliant use of computer graphics, beautiful period costumes and dialogs, lilting Indian classical music, clever casting, extremely talented actors and the skillful execution of the whole thing. However strong the baseline myth’s story may be, you need a really powerful script to be able to get away with extending it into a multi-hundred-episodes long drama. This drama does well even in that department – after all, it has a well renowned mythologist, Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik, on board.
But, if you ask me what really, really sets this one drama apart from the hoard, I’ll say it’s the freshness of the treatment of its mythological characters, especially when the said characters happen to have a back-story drawn from a particular religion. Whether the other dramas of the same genre attempt political correctness by showing such characters in an over glorified, uni-dimensional light, or they try to appeal to the masses of people with the same religious inclinations – somehow, somewhere, such shows tend to go horribly boring. But here, this show focuses simply on telling a beautiful story with wonderful characters well, and comes out with flying colours.
So, even if the God in question is omnipotent and has known, since eternity began, about His/Her spouse getting gravely injured in some battle for the greater good, the Gods of this show shed real tears, and emote with their eyes for heck’s sake, before seeing off Their spouses at the time of the actual battle – instead of simply smiling a kind, benevolent smile. For me, this makes the characters more relate-able – I actually feel their hurt, instead of only having the narrator declare to me, “and thusly it was”.
Take Sati’s arc for example. For me, Sati’s story was always a pitiful one (this incarnation of Adi Shakti, the better half of the God of Gods, Mahadev, was human and hence unable to be with Him; it took another reincarnation in the form of Parvati before Mahadev and Adi Shakti could be together forever). I felt that no one ever gave Sati much due, in any retelling of the story. But, here, for the first time, Sati as a character came alive for me. She was no longer a pitiful side character – she became a real, beautiful, elegant, kind and sassy human princess – all thanks to the attention paid by the makers of the drama to subtle nuances. Her arc was the one arc that made me laugh and cry more than any other arc in the drama.
Overall, this one’s a great show, despite its length and the fact that it does not seem to be ending anytime soon in the near future. I do think that the present arcs of the story aren’t as great as ones at the beginning of the story, but that’s just a personal opinion. It’s worth watching at least once in your life, for the sake of its nearly authentic retelling of history and myth, and its sheer brilliant execution.
wherein1800s 