Nicholas Nickleby and Mahabharath

This is a 2002  movie adaptation of Charles Dicken’s third novel. Dickens is able to bring out the stark black and white images of ‘good” and “bad” in his novels. The Victorian idiom enables these “passion play” imagery.

Ralph Nickleby is the personification of evil or to use its Indian equivalent “adharma”. Nicholas Nickleby the honorable nephew is “good” or “dharma”. The story is essentially a tale of the triumph of good over evil.

As I was watching the movie, I could not help but speculate on the parallels between Nicholas Nickleby and the Mahabharath! Both are tales that describe the travils of dharma as it is put down continuously by evil. The pandavas are personified in Nicholas and Kate. The insults thsat Kate undergoes in Ralph’s house from his evil friends are similar to the famous scene where Draupadhi is dishonored in public in Duryodhana’;s court. Just as we have Vikarna and Vidhur who try to counsel evil, we have a friend of Ralph’s who not only advises Ralph and hios cronies to desist but also feels guilty for not having spoken up! We even have a “pair of Krishna equivalents” in the Cheerybyl brothers.

The comparison rose up naturally in my mind and there is no contrivance here. I think this only proves the essential fact that the fight between good and evil, the initial victory of the latter and the eventual triumph of the former are essential themes deeply embedded in the human consciousness so as to transcend cultures and continents. Of course, in the complicated world we have cocreated, there are no convenient pegs for hanging good and evil. Our times are more Elizabethean than Victorian! There is a lot of grey!

But, the real battle between the forces of dharma and adharma is happening outside but inside each one of us! Each one of us has a little bit of both Ralph and Nicholas in us. The battle within is the Kurukshetra. It is both a Dharmakshetra and Kurukshetra. It is Kurukshetra because we can’t transcend our own inner evil by inaction. It is only by action that we help dharma to emerge victorious.

Action is neither good nor bad. It is the coin of life. We exchange time for action. We accumulate karma with action! To stop acting is itself an action! “So, Act!” says Krishna. But, act within the framework of love and good. Any action that is prompted by a general desire for doing well by everyone including oneself and that is rooted in love and a sincere commitment not to harm others by thought, words or action is preferable over inaction.

We wonder why evilis victorious. We wonder whether good will triumph at all! Yet, the Lord has promised to return whenever there is a threat that good will be totally destroyed. How much more should evil win before the balance is irretrievably tilted and the cosmic force in irreversibly released in the final battle against evil?

But this is the revelation; the second coming and the Hope! Amen