Sharing “The Stories of the Mahabharata”
By Anthony Stoeckert
Sudipta Bhawmik and Avi Ziv are sharing an old story in a modern way.
The two electrical engineers are the creators and producers of “The Stories of Mahabharata,” a podcast that is available on iTunes, and which is broadcast on Monmouth Junction-based EBC radio (1170 AM).
According to the website for “The Stories of Mahabharata,” Mahabharata is the longest-known epic poem. At more than 100,000 “shloka” (couplets), its nearly 2 million words make it about 10 times longer than “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” combined. It also contains “The Bhagavad Gita,” a sacred Hindu religious text.
Mr. Ziv, of Hopewell says the epic story involves a feud between two branches of a royal family.
”In doing so, the work embodies a lot of the early concepts of Indian philosophies that eventually became Hinduism,” Mr. Ziv says. “In India, and in southeast Asia, it’s an enormously popular story. Everybody knows the story, everybody grows up on it.”
And while it’s been adapted for television in India and is part of the culture there, Mr. Ziv says there have been few attempts to produce it in English, and outside of India. Last summer, Mr. Bhawmik came up with the idea of sharing the story via radio.
”It tells the story of mankind in a way which is unparalleled in world literature,” according to the website. Furthermore, Mr. Bhawmik and Mr. Ziv say that while the characters of the poem might be fictional, the story shares the cultural history of the people of Bharata, or India. It has been told on stage (including in a nine-hour play in the 1980s) on film and on television.
Mr. Bhawmik, of Bridgewater, is a playwright, actor and director. For each episode of “The Stories of Mahabharata,” he writes the adaptation and does the performing, while Mr. Ziv handles the production end of things.
”My role is everything that has to do with audio and sound,” Mr. Ziv says. The recording, the music, the sound effects, and all the ways of delivering it in a podcast.”
The podcast got its start through a show Mr. Bhawmik has on EBC radio, which offers programs for Indian American listeners.
”I thought, why not do a radio drama show on the ‘Mahabharata?’” he says. “People of Indian origin love the stories of the Mahabharata and I thought if I could do the show in English in a storytelling format, it would also be of interest to their children.”
He did the first couple of episodes live from the station’s studios and got some positive feedback. He and Mr. Ziv both work as engineers at a high-tech company and Mr. Bhawmik talked about his show with his co-worker.
”Very soon we realized that there was potential to actually produce this in a more edited format with sound effects and maybe reaching a lot more people in the Internet as a podcast,” Mr. Ziv says.
Mr. Bhawmik says feedback on the podcast has been positive and that the text is being published in a magazine titled “DuKool.”
”We… decided to use the podcast technology to distribute the content over the Internet and reach a wider audience — to the world,” Mr. Bhawmik says. “So far, the audience feedback has been excellent.”
Episodes run around 20 minutes. Because the first two episodes were done in studio, episodes starting with the third are available online, but Mr. Ziv says those first two episodes are being re-performed in order to make the series complete.
Mr. Bhawmik says the process for each episode begins with him writing.
”While writing, I do keep in mind that the text should support the storytelling format,” he says. “Once written, we go for the recording. Avi… is our recording engineer, and in his home he sets up a makeshift sound recording booth where I perform the audio drama in front of a microphone. Of course, I have to go through a couple of rounds of rehearsals before recording. After this, Avi takes over. He does the editing, and processing of the sound file to make it sound clean. He then goes for the sound design, which involves finding the appropriate sound effects, the background score, and many other audio details.
Mr. Bhawmik says “The Stories of Mahabharata” improves with each episode.
”It is a commitment, but for both of us, this project is something that gives us the pleasure of creation and an avenue to express our creative passion.”
When asked how long “The Stories of Mahabharata” will go on, Mr. Ziv says that’s hard to tell because Mr. Bhawmik use several sources when making each episode, so it will depend on which details from each story he wants to feature.
”We don’t know exactly how many episodes this is going to take,” he says. “Today, we are about 20 episodes in and we are in chapter 3 out of 18 of this body of work. I don’t know how it’s going to scale, but this could approach 100 podcasts.”
”The Stories of Mahabharata” is available at www.nynjbengali.com and on iTunes. It is broadcast on EBC Radio (1170 AM) on the first, third and fifth Saturdays of each month.