Suksy's Pensieve

I think it came in ET of 11th November. --- THOSE who've read their Mahabharatha or watched the B R Chopra mega serial will always remember that climactic moment when Yudhishthira loses the wife in a game of dice and a weeping Draupadi is dragged to the gaming hall in the royal palace at Hastinapur where the disrobing of the Pandavas' wife is divinely pre-empted by Krishna. There was an entirely different twist to the tale last Tuesday on Diwali night in the Kundapura Kedarpur village in the Dhampur tehsil of UP's Bijnore district when a drunken 28-year-old Ram Singh gambled away first his money, then his ring and finally his watch before staking his wife for a sum of Rs 5,000 and losing her too. When the winner went to Ram Singh's house to claim the wife, what followed was completely contrary to what Vyasa had scripted. Instead of letting herself be dragged away, Ram Singh's wife picked up a burning log of wood and used it to beat up the winner who fled in tear...