Reading The Mahabharata: Discussion with author Karthika Nair

We are thrilled to have Karthika Naïr read and discuss excerpts from her award-winning poem Until the Lions, a provocative reinterpretation of the Indian epic The Mahabharata. Its key insight—that war stems not from a conflict between “good” and “evil,” but from the very human impulse to hate and seek vengeance—gives it both an epic universality and a disturbingly specific relevance in the light of the recent rhetoric of hatred and retributive violence... Yet, beyond the poem's blood-soaked destinies and edgy verse is a moving humanist call to better understand history and our own destructive impulses that shape it.