Fact / Fiction ?

You guys know I had been to Chitradurga recently. No no, this certainly is not a report of that, I’m certain you ain’t looking forward to it. There was this tourist guide there, who went on rambling about how the fort used to be, what the rock patterns meant, how the soldiers breached the fort, and blah blah! It made me think, how much of this History we know of, or hear of, is actually true?

Especially for a place like Chitradurga, facts in the form of, perhaps scriptures or in any form available are very little. ThaRaSu, the great Kannada story-writer is said to have written 700+ pages of the Chitradurga Saga from just a piece of paper. Of course, a lot of creativity and imagination went into it; but what if the same amount of creativity and imagination has crept into all those events which we believe actually happened.

At one end, there is this din on whether Ram and the Ram Sethu exist? NASA pictures have actually proved that a bridge does exist between India and SriLanka. The Pandavas have travelled all over India, and left their marks everywhere, or so it is believed. What if none of this is true? What if everything was just a plain old bed time story told to some little brat who refused to sleep? Of course, if this were true, you have to commend the imagination of that mother. Ramayana and Mahabharata are without doubt some of the greatest stories ever written.

But coming back to what I was talking about, I’m sure you can’t entirely dismiss the view that the History we believe in maybe just a figment of imagination. Ever read The DaVinci Code? It tells you some aspects of Christianity that you never dreamt of; I’m not saying it is true, I’m just saying it is possible. The tradition being followed from thousands of years may all end up in vain, if such a thing happens.

I remember this story we had in English literature. The scenario starts off at the time when every living being on earth is killed; the ice age has set in; and nothing is left on earth. Some beings from a distant planet happen to visit earth, and try to gather some evidence to understand how life was on earth. They happen to obtain a video-tape buried deep in snow. The aliens spend a lot of time in research to design a cassette player, and finally they succeed. They watch the video, and then announce their conclusions – “Living beings as we believe on earth, stand erect on their two legs. They are very fast creatures, and always run around in a hurry. They tend to fall from buildings, burn in fires, get hit by moving vehicles, yet nothing seems to happen to them”. As these conclusions are made, the video finally flashes “Walt Disney Corp”.

So, by seeing a 30-minute Mickey-Mouse show, the aliens came to a conclusion about how the earthlings were. What if our History is something like this? All the epics, all the stories we believe actually are true, might just be stories written by some talented writer, who just let his imagination flow. Quite possible, right?