your bridge home
The Great Epics
A king lost his kingdom, his dignity and even the person he loved most. Years later, his wife recognized him by a tiny movement of his hands.
A king lost his kingdom at dice, abandoned his wife in a forest, and spent years unrecognisable to everyone including her. The Mahabharata tells this story to a king who has just lost his kingdom at dice.
The Nalopakhyana is a story inside a story.
Yudhishthira is in the forest, in the first year of thirteen, having gambled away a kingdom, his brothers, himself and his wife. He is not coping, and he says so: he believes no one has ever fallen further.
The sage Brihadashva tells him he is wrong, and tells him about Nala, as consolation, and also as an argument. You are not the first. And the man it happened to before you got everything back.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.