Week 7 Story: The Pandavas Gang

Author’s Note: This story is based on the Mahabharata, taking place in The Himalayas. I have changed the story by placing it in the twenty-first century and turning the Pandavas into the Pandavas Gang.  The five brothers are the leaders of the Pandavas.  Their cousins and a rival gang, the Kauravas, claim they deserve to take over the streets (instead of the throne as in the Mahabharata) of the city Hastinapura in the kingdom of Kuru.  The Pandavas disagree...  This all leads to the events in The Himalayas story.  I also took some liberties in the build-up to the story.

The Pandavas Gang 

The Pandavas brothers could hardly remember a time without each other.  Yudhishthira, Bhima, Arjuna, Nakula, and Sahadeva could always count on the knowledge that their brothers were nearby, for they felt as if they were one.  They ate, slept, and fought together.  The brothers had the same friends, and they also had the same enemies.  It had been natural to take charge of their father’s gang once the brothers came of age.  They had taken it together, five bodies merging into one head that hoped to rule the streets of Hastinapura.

The Pandavas brothers had always been stretched against another’s back, familiar with the muscled hands that patched up gunshot wounds and knitted scars from knife fights, ready to compensate for the brother they knew tended to lean to the left when throwing a hooked fist, ready to take a bullet – knowing they were always safe when they were together.

All of that changed when Arjuna disappeared.

The brothers had entertained the rivalry of their cousins, the Kauravas, without much thought as children.  Nothing had seemed quite so real or serious then when they played with plastic pistols.  Once the Pandavas took over the gang, however, the balance between the boys who had been playmates in the schoolyard was disrupted.  The cousins became strictly rivals, and they too claimed to deserve the throne of Kuru’s city.

In the fight to gain control of Hastinapura, the Pandavas brothers had been ousted from the city.  Exiled with their shared wife, Draupadi, they escaped to the forest of Kamyaka.  At first, it had been okay.  They did struggle, but they were relieved to at least be together after all the bloodshed.

And then Indra called Arjuna to his celestial city.

The brothers were avid followers of the Gods, devout men who were studded with sins, but their first reaction had been panic.  Yudhishthira gathered up his remaining brothers and pushed them north.  The gang went in search of answers in the Himalaya mountains.

Image from Wikipedia