Mahabharata vs. Parable of The Prodigal Son

Mahabharata is a famous Indian epic and we are an extract from it as a reading task. Even though I have the epic at home, but I never thought of reading it. Actually the extract was given a week before but I totally forgot about it, somehow I manage to do a fast reading before Dr.edwin’s class. Thank God, he didn’t ask anything about the extract. I should never do this again. The extract is about the relationship between son and father. King Shantanu sacrifices happiness for his wife Ganga as he stopped her from throwing the eight child in the river and questioned her act. As a result she left him with the child but later returned the son to him as she promised. After a few years, King Shantano fell in love with Satyavati a fisherman’s daughter. When he asked the hand for marriage from her father, he gave him a condition. The fisherman wants Satyavati’s son to be the King after King Shantanu. Hearing this, he walked away without a word since he can’t accept the condition. Devarata, King Shantanu’s son knew about this matter and went to see the fisherman. There he took a very big oath where he will not become the King after his father and he will remain celibate and die sonless. He did this for the sake of his father’s happiness. For him, his father’s happiness is greater than anything else. We are supposed to find another story that has similar theme like this extract and I chose the Parable of The Prodigal Son. It’s a story of a rebellious son who rejects his father and goes of on a wild adventure. He faced failure and despair, finally he came back for his father’s mercy but to his surprise the father received him with warm hearted and forgiving arms. Both these stories show the sacrifices that they do for each other, father and son. It shows that there nothing wrong in sacrificing for our loved ones. But there is one question to think about; are people in this century willing to do the sacrifices to their father or their loved ones? Maybe there are few out there, I guess…