Having been tricked by Power and humiliated by the arrogance of those who now wield it, the Pandavas are forced into exile even though they still harbor a desire for justice. They face twelve years of banishment in the wilderness, and a further year during which they must live in disguise and avoid being discovered. The Mahabharata, portrays this exile as a period of extreme hardship in which death is always present – but so is the growing awareness of its opposite. To abandon the palace and swap the city for nature also leads them to renew direct contact with life, embark on a search for knowledge, start a process of cleansing and strengthen the bond of brotherhood. Nevertheless, this strengthening seems to lead back towards war. Part two ends with the famous reflections of the Baghavad Gita in which Krishna responds to the doubts of Arjuna.

After the reflections from the Bhagavad Gita, the war begins: a tragedy that pits brother against brother and sucks up whole families, people of great courage. It is a war of devastating consequences, which does not just threaten the survival of one of the two sides, but the continuity of life on earth. “Even the blades of grass tremble in fear.” A battle in which the clashing sides do not hesitate to use the ultimate weapons. Vishnu himself exclaims: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” This is a war that is also played out inside every human being.

The Mahabharata is one of the world’s greatest books. It is also the longest poem ever written. It was written in Sanskrit, and is about fifteen times the length of the Bible. “Maha” in Sanskrit means “great” or “complete”, “Bharata” is primarily the name of a legendary character, then that of a family or clan. So the title can be understood as “The Great history of the Bharatas”. However in a extended meaning “Bharata” can mean “Hindu”, and, even more generally “Man”. So the Mahabharata could be translated as “The Great history of Mankind”. According to most scholars, the events recounted in The Mahabharata probably have a historical source. Others maintain that the correct interpretation of the poem lies entirely in the direction of myth. Yet others point out the importance of the teaching books in the epic - political, social, moral and religious - and see The Mahabharata as a long treatise of government initiation “As far as we were concerned, this immense poem, which flows with the majesty of a great river, carries an inexhaustible richness which defies all structural, thematic, historic and psychological analysis. Doors are constantly opening which lead to other doors. It is impossible to hold the Mahabharata in the palm of your hand. Layers of subtext, sometimes contradictory, follow upon one another and are interwoven without losing the central theme. The theme is a threat: we live in a time of destruction - everything points in the same direction. Can this destruction be avoided?” Jean-Claude Carrière In our interview with Carrière, he talked about what he sees as the core of the Mahabharata: it is a poem on oblivion. Mankind seems to constantly forget the source of its true nature. Indian tradition says: “Everything in the Mahabharata is elsewhere. What it is not there is nowhere”. Part one, "The Game of Dice", shows us a growing confrontation between two sides battling for power. One side is clearly closer to the idea of dharma than the other, which barely bothers to respect it. To avoid direct hostilities, they decide to play a game of dice; but the game is rigged. Playing with power is a rigged game.

The Mahabharata is one of the world’s greatest books. It is also the longest poem written. It was written in Sanskrit, and is about fifteen times the length of the Bible. “Maha” in Sanskrit means “great” or “complete”, “Bharata” is primarily the name of a legendary character, and then that of a family or clan. So the title can be understood as “The Great history of the Bharatas”. However in an extended meaning “Bharata” can mean “Hindu”, and, even more generally “Man”. So the Mahabharata could be translated as “The Great history of Mankind”. According to most scholars, the events recounted in The Mahabharata probably have a historical source. Others maintain that the correct interpretation of the poem lies entirely in the direction of myth. Yet others point out the importance of the teaching books in the epic - political, social, moral and religious - and see The Mahabharata as a long treatise of government initiation. “As far as we were concerned, this immense poem, which flows with the majesty of a great river, carries an inexhaustible richness which defies all structural, thematic, historic or psychological analysis. Doors are constantly opening which lead to other doors. It is impossible to hold the Mahabharata in the palm of your hand. Layers of subtext, sometimes contradictory, follow upon one another and are interwoven without losing the central theme. The theme is a threat: we live in a time of destruction - everything points in the same direction. Can this destruction be avoided?” Jean-Claude Carrière. In our interview with Carrière, he pointed out what he thinks is the core of the Mahabarata: it is a poem on oblivion. Mankind seems to constantly forget the source of their truly nature. Indian tradition says: “Everything in the Mahabharata is elsewhere. What it is not there is nowhere”.

Alarm-raising and catastrophist films have been made, and they have served their purpose. Now it is time to show that there are solutions. To give voice to the farmers, philosophers and economists who are inventing and experimenting with new alternatives while also explaining why our society is mired in the current ecological, financial and political crises. Pierre Rabhi, Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, the landless workers of Brazil, Kokopelli and Vandana Shiva in India, Mr. Antoniets in Ukraine... Meet the resistance fighters in love with planet Earth. The series of surprisingly concordant interviews proves that options exist and that an alternative is possible. It is a concrete response to the ecological challenges – and the crisis of civilisation in general – that we are currently in the midst of.

  “Because one must produce, one must by all possible means of activity replace nature wherever it can be replaced, one must find a major field of action for human inertia, the worker must have something to keep him busy, new fields of activity must be created, in which we shall see at last the reign of all the fake manufactured products, of all the vile synthetic substitutes in which beautiful real nature has no part, and must give way finally and shamefully before all the victorious substitute products (...)". Antonin Artaud.  

Every morning, we sign the Contract. The system at the heart of our “free" world is based on a kind of contract that we all agree to. We sign it every morning: “I accept competition as the foundation of our system, even though I am aware that it generates frustration and anger for the majority of those who lose. I agree to be humiliated and exploited in exchange for being allowed to humiliate and exploit those on a lower rung of the social pyramid (...)"

The Mahabharata is the epic poem of oblivion; of forgetting the source.