Mahabharata – Tilottama – {Ep.176} – Stories From India – Podcast

In this episode, we’re going to cover a story that one of you listeners requested. This story is about Tilottama, a rather extraordinary apsara. There are actually many stories featuring Tilottama, but we’re only going to cover the main one. We’ll see how an architect and builder can also construct people and not just buildings. We’ll also see the consequences of yet another of my father’s generous wishes gone all wrong.

This story starts not with Tilottama but with me! Very much like our last story about Shibi – this is a story within a story. And just like the previous one, today’s story also happens within the Mahabharata.

I was in conversation with the Pandava brothers. Now because we haven’t reached that part of the story in our coverage of the Mahabharata, I’ll go a little light on the details to avoid giving away anything. Let me just say that I was trying to tell the Pandavas all the things that can go wrong if brothers got married to the same woman.

I told them I had no better example of such a situation than that of Tilottama and Sunda and Upasunda.

“Friends of yours?” Asked Bhima lazily. It was obvious he was looking to cut the story short. He didn’t really seem to care. After yet another extra large meal, a nap seemed more attractive to Bheem than a story.

Arjun grumbled about needing to go practice his archery, Nakul and Sahadev mentioned that they had to feed the horses.

Yudhishthir stepped up to my defense thankfully. “Now brothers, we should at least listen to what Narada has to say. Narada knows everything! Just look at his podcast listeners for example. Listening to him once a week has made them so much wiser”. And just like that all the objections disappeared. 

The story within the story began with two Asura brothers – Sunda and Upasunda. Their father was Nikumbha, who may not have been very interesting himself but whose namesakes certainly were very interesting. A different Nikumbha was Ravana’s nephew. Yup Ravana the mega villain of the Ramayana. A third Nikumbha terrorized Krishna’s granddaughter and fought with Arjun and Krishna. Yes, the very same Arjun who was listening to this story now. It’s a small world indeed. 

All three Nikumbhas fell into the villain category and not the hero one. In Sunda and Upasanda’s case you could certainly say that these twin apples did not fall far from the tree. This was totally not the case with their grandfather Prahlad and great grandfather Hiranyakashapu. We had talked about them in Episode 20, but the tl;dr there is that Hiranyakashapu was evil, Prahlad was not, until later he was and then he was good again. I just realized that if I had to hunt for a pop culture reference to explain Hiranyakashapu and Prahlad, the Star Wars characters Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker most fit the bill.

Sunda and Upasunda were not Kylo Ren, to continue the Star Wars analogy. They were also not Siamese twins. They were technically two separate individuals. But they lived exactly identical lives, just as Siamese twins might. They always dressed exactly the same. They ate exactly the same food. They even slept in the same bedroom. 

In school they used exactly the same textbooks, turned in exactly identical homework assignments and scored identical grades without getting accused of cheating. Now like I said, their father was a baddie for sure. Their grandfather Prahlad was okay, at least in childhood. But again, the great grandfather was evil. You might think given the flip flopping it was their turn to be good again.

For Sunda and Upasunda, their choice of being a hero or a villain was undecided at that time. The one thing they had learned from the experience of all the Asuras ever was that when you pray to the Gods and Goddesses and ask for a wish, said Gods and Goddesses trick you. It happened to Kumbhakarna, it happened to their Great-Grandpa Hiranyakashapu. So the plan they came up with was to be smarter than the Gods.

They did all of the usual things. Number One – finding a suitable mountain. They choose a mountain in the Vindhyas instead of the Himalayas. This choice had to do with Number Two. The choice of God to pray to. They choose Brahma, the creator of the Universe. Quick sidebar here, Brahma is also my dad. Anyway, Brahma is notoriously easy to please. He goes out of his way to grant your wishes. So Brahma wouldn’t mind visiting them in the Vindhyas whereas to pray to someone like Shiva, the Destroyer, they would normally have to go pray in the Himalayas.

Sunda and Upasunda prayed on their chosen mountain for days. That was usually enough with Brahma, and it was enough in this case as well.

Brahma appeared faster than even they expected, but he explained that it was because he was checking off more in one visit, because there were two people praying to him instead of the usual one. 

Sunda and Upasunda were ready when Brahma asked what he could do for them. “Make us immortal” the twins said in one voice.

Brahma said, “sure, sure, anything you boys want. Now I’m forced to ask one question – the other gods made me do it. So I’ll ask you – are you planning to use your new power to fight against the Devs, take over Swarg and to declare yourselves Kings of Swarg?”

“No,” said Sunda and Upasunda. Which was technically the truth. They were planning on declaring themselves Emperors, not Kings.

“oh well, that’s good enough for me!” Brahma said.

He rifled through a deck of cards he had.  Power to disappear, Power to evaporate the oceans, power to destroy mosquitoes, power to change water to wine, power to walk on water, power to appear in dreams….hmm I don’t see the card for immortality. I must have run out of those.

No prizes for guessing why.

“Sorry boys, can’t do immortality. Not today. It’ll take me a day or two to make that up”

The twins suggested that they could wait a day or two, that was not a problem.

“You don’t understand,” Brahma explained. “It’ll take a day or two for me. And 12 of my hours are 4.32 billion years for you. So no, you really can’t wait a day or two, seeing as by then the Earth will have been engulfed by the Sun becoming a red giant before its eventual demise as a white dwarf”

Given ancient Indian science wasn’t very advanced, none of this made any sense to the twins. But they had prepared for the possibility that Brahma could not make them immortal. So they switched their request to something else. They wanted Brahma to make it so that the only way they could be hurt is by each other. The only way Sunda could be hurt was if Upasunda hurt him, and vice versa.

“Done” said Brahma, “and sorry I can’t stay. I have already spent almost a nanosecond here. That’s too long for me, even with the two in one visit. Bye”

Sunda and Upasunda were gleeful. Their plan had worked perfectly! They were practically immortal now, because no matter what happened they would not hurt each other.

So they tested it. By deliberately stubbing their toes on a rock. By hitting themselves with a club, and increasingly dangerous stunts. The only thing that hurt Sunda was when Upasunda did something to him or vice versa.

With that they did exactly what Brahma thought they promised not to do.

Sunda and Upasanda declared war on everyone and everything that stood in their way. Their goal was to restore Hiranyakashapu’s glory and they seemed well on the path to doing that.

Except then something happened. Something they hadn’t anticipated. And it was thanks to Vishwakarma.

Brahma realized he had made a mistake, when a crowd of Devas showed up at his doorstep. It goes to show how trigger happy Brahma is with his wish granting that it took him a while to understand who it was whom he had made practically undefeatable.

But, he assured the crowd that just like always he had built a vulnerability, an Achilles heel so to speak.

Still that wasn’t winning him any favors with the crowd. Finally, Dad tried to pull me in to do crowd control. Unfortunately I got the wrong idea and thought they were asking me to play a song for them.

That misunderstanding cleared up quickly enough with some strong boos.

“So you want a way to defeat Sunda and Upasunda, yeah?” I asked

“Yes!” chroused the Devas.

“I see. Then you want to work it so that someone comes along and sparks a fight between the two”

Some Devas scoffed at the idea. “Don’t be ridiculous, Narada. Nothing will get those two to fight”

Then I suggested if perhaps that was because they never experienced love and jealousy.

That got the crowd thinking. We did a bit of research, pulled out their high school yearbooks and talked to their classmates. No one remembered any romantic situation that either twin had been involved in.

“So that’s how you want to solve this thing then.” I said. But it was easier said than done.

No one could think of any Apsara or woman who might agree to play the role here. So a bit more brainstorming later, Brahma, the Creator of the Universe, said “why don’t we create such an Apsara?”

Now that was an idea everyone liked. But despite that everyone balked when Brahma suggested that he be the one to create this Apsara. Hadn’t Brahma done enough damage already? 

So the Devas requested Vishwakarma, the celestial architect and builder to build them a woman. Vishwakarma objected – he could build palaces, bridges, dams, houses, and various forms of intricate machinery. But he said he couldn’t build a woman.

We insisted that yes, he could. Brahma even passed him a recipe. So Vishwakarma gathered all the ingredients from everywhere. And Brahma breathed life into the woman Vishwakarma carefully constructed from the ingredients. These ingredients were a little bit of the best of everything. That’s what the word Tilottama means. 

Tilottama knew right away what she must do. Unlike normal human beings who would have required a few years of parental care, followed by K-12 education and then University, Tilottama was born ready! Literally.

She went straight to the Vindhya mountains, where she was told the brothers were hanging out. She spied them from a distance. They were near a riverbank and they were heavily drunk, which worked perfectly for her plan. She began picking flowers, and gradually appeared into their view.

“Who’s that lovely maiden?” asked Sunda

“I don’t know,” Upasunda said, “but she is lovely indeed. Let’s go talk to her, and maybe abduct her if we need to”

“Straight to the point as usual” Sunda said, “I think we should abduct her, and only talk to her if we have to”

So they walked over, and each Asura grabbed one of her arms. And then hesitated. They were awestruck. They had never seen someone this beautiful. They didn’t know it was possible for someone to be this mesmerizing.

Tilottama anticipated this. “Are you two big strong men here to help me collect flowers?”

“Only if you agree to a cup of coffee with me?” both brothers said. And then stopped and stared at each other, surprised by their own reactions. They were used to taking things for granted. Why were they trying hard to be charming? But the bigger thing that both brothers missed is that neither of them had asked for a coffee with “us”. They had said “me”. Odd that they didn’t realize it right away.

“Of course I will!” Tilottama said. “But I can only spend a limited amount of time, so how about I have coffee with whichever one of you brings me back more flowers in 5 minutes?”

No sooner had she said it, Sunda and Upasunda both scrambled to collect as many flowers as they could. And they returned in 5 minutes. Despite the inherent indeterminism of this exercise, Sunda and Upasunda came back with an identical number of flowers. So it was a tie. 

Now a reasonable step forward was for them to find a polite gentlemanly way to break the tie.

But not so with these belligerent Asuras. 

Sunda accused Upasunda of cheating. One of the purple flowers he had had a petal missing. So that flower should not count, and Sunda should be declared the winner.

Upasunda countered by saying that Sunda’s stems were not all even. You can’t make proper arrangements with those unless the stems lined up exactly. So Sunda’s flowers shouldn’t count.

This escalated when Sunda said that it had been the same even back in school, when Upasunda got the same grade even though he had spelled a word incorrectly and Sunda hadn’t. It was clearly unfair. Upasunda had a few other counter arguments. And just like that, a lifetime of tiny differences came pouring out.

This deep seated resentment eventually led to blows. They got their clubs out, and later their swords. Long story short, they solved the world’s problems by eliminating each other.

The Devas were especially pleased with Tilottama. Brahma granted her the power of being able to travel anywhere she wanted. It’s a good superpower to have. I know, I have it myself.

So, as I concluded telling this story to the Pandavas, I waited for a reaction. When it came it was not quite what I expected.

Arjun said “I don’t really see how this is analogous to our situation with Draupadi. We don’t have deep-rooted psychological problems with each other. And we’re not going to fight over it.”

“True,” Bheem added “and even if we did, we don’t really have time to fight each other. We have a hundred evil cousins, they’ll keep us busy for a while”

Nakul looked at each other and then at me and added “If this was meant more for me and Sahadev, rest assured we aren’t like Sunda and Upasunda. We have practically polar opposite views on everything. We both like horses, but that’s about it”

Sahadev nodded, eagerly. Clearly the polar opposite view didn’t apply here.

Yudhishthir was the last to speak. “Thank you for that story, Narada. Honestly I don’t think it’ll help us. I think it’s better if you tell it to your podcast audience instead” 

And so that’s why you’re hearing this story folks!

That’s all for now

Some notes on the show

There are many other stories of Tilottama. Including one about her rebirth, and a different variation in which tried enchanting Shiva. This also happened in another peripheral story in the Mahabharata. There are also stories of her rebirth as the demon Banasura’s daughter,  there is a story of her as a widow who prayed to the Gods to be reborn as an Apsara. And yet another story that actually features an encounter with Durvasa – the toughest houseguest who judges and curses everyone.

I hope to cover some of these other stories in future episodes.

That’s all for now. 

Next Time

Now next week is technically episode number 178, but if you combine all the bonus and mini episodes, it’ll actually be episode number 200! Which for me is just another reason to celebrate. Garuda was the character of the week at the very beginning of the show. So, it’s only fitting that we cover Garuda’s story next.