India, March 2 -- The Mahabharata and the Ramayana can be rather unidimensional in the popular imagination - a triumphalist account of good over evil almost verging on a "happily-ever-after"-style fairytale ending. I have always found the epics' amenability to interpretation fascinating, even if it means that people use them to jump to all sorts of conclusions. When I was 10, a classmate told me that the key message of both texts is that women are the root of all evil and wars. However, it is to this offering up of multiple meanings that we owe the profusion of the epics' adaptations across millennia, nations, and languages, and also their enduring relevance....