The cover picture shows Rangeet river(the dark coloured one), a tributary of Teesta, getting submerged into Teesta...losing its identity...see the river maintaining its colour, and thereby its separate identity for some time before losing out...it reflects many hues that we go through in life. How long can you maintain your individual identity while working in an organization before it gets engulfed? Same in the family and the broader social life.Rangeet's desperate bid to fight a losing battle is symbolic of our life in many ways...it is indeed very difficult to maintain a distinct identity for long.So what you get is different shades of life each with a separate identity, separate outlook and even a separate attitude in accordance with the imbibed value system. The social you, the professional you, the parent in you, the son in you. All seem to be a different shade. So what is your actual shade? Or do actually have a "distinct" shade. These are the questions which go through my mind. Are we really an amalgamation of colours, just like the ray of light which carries an apparent "wholeness" till a spectral intervention brings out its different shades?----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------In Bharat, you cannot escape "Mahabharat". That the Mahabharata still influences this country in its overall thinking is evident from the way the popular stories even today gets constructed on the pattern as knit in the epic by Dwaipayan Vyas . And here the reference is not to the various interpretational books based on the Mahabharata characters and themes which even today adorns the physical book stores l or the various digital platforms The influence is much more widespread. The movies, which represent the popular preferences like nothing else, has been fashioned on the Mahabharat-ian parameters since its inception in the 1930s .Over the decades, only the overtness has given way to sublety.The basic influencer remained the same, maybe somewhat subliminally .Just take an example of the seduction scenes in popular movies and compare them with the ones employed by the celestial nymphs like Menaka and Grhitachi and you will find the old versions reproduced in a modern environment and attire .It skips notice as the influence is ingrained and as such subliminal.Or look at the "high voltage" dialogues that precedes the physical fights like "Main tera Khoon Pee Jaoonga" (I will drink your blood) .If you have read Mahabharata, you can relate it to the high decibel utterings of each of the major characters; right from Bhishma to Karna.We can list down, more and more such influences, but the list will be endless.Anyhow, this stranglehold of Mahabharata on events happening around me motivated me to read the book completely. The English translation by Kishari Mohan Ganguly sometime in the first decade of the twentieth century is the one I picked up. And it is because of its easy availability online.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------