Neha in Mahabharata

chapter 3

A young man emerged out of the chariot . He looked so handsome that she was mesmerized by his beauty even forgetting about her troubling situation .

He asked her " young lady , why are you running " in Sanskrit . She was panting heavily .

" I need help , they are coming after me " she could only make up those words , she pointed her fingers towards the forest.

There was no one there and he asked her who were chasing her . " Those men " She was still panting heavily , she was not in a state to make long sentences ,that too in sankrit .

Karna understood that some people were chasing her , he could see that she wanted rest . She must have really run for her life from whoever it must have been chasing her . He wondered what she was doing alone , as it was not safe for women to roam around like that .

" I'm karna , king of anga " he introduced himself , without a pause he continued " You can come with me in my chariot if you wish , I will drop you at your place , it's not safe to stay here anymore , and women usually don't go alone , I wonder what you were doing here "

Neha couldn't believe her ears , is he really trying to fool her , but it didn't seem so . He seemed genuinely concerned about her being alone , besides why would he try to joke at this time . And then there was his attire which was unusual . There wasn't a shoot there , there were no signs of a crew , and huge crowds that would usually gather when there was shooting . Was he really karna and the ones who tried to molest her , the Pandavas . They had introduced themselves with those names . She was in her train of thoughts when she heard karna asking her again " come with me , I will drop you at your place " . she wanted to go home more than anything . She said " yes " . Soon she was inside the chariot , it had a lot of room for like three people to sit . Surprisingly it was not moving too slow as she expected . But moving in a chariot felt different from all the ways she had travelled before .

As the chariot moved a little further , karna asked her name , she told him , then he asked her where they had to drop her. She gave him her address , but he looked confused after hearing it . Then he told her that he knew no place of that sort and advised her to stay in the palace till he finds the place she mentioned .

She didn't know what was happening, at first it looked like this place had shut itself from development like in the outside world . Still following old ways , she only had seen several huts till now and the road it was not a proper one , and travelling in chariot though it was not bad , was very unusual. She just thought this was some kind of preserving olden ways like she had read in social classes about heritage sites and even visited one such site in Karnataka called hampi . But she had not seen people riding on chariots or people living in huts there . There were roads and proper houses , only the historic structures were preserved and maintained properly there . But this was different. It looked like an actual ancient place . Though it looked different from what she had seen in Mahabharata tv shows , everything reminded her of it . She had even heard people having names of famous character from Mahabharata , even karna , who is now helping her . A wierd thought occurred to her . Could it be that she had time travelled to Mahabharata time . From what she had seen and experienced till now the possibility could not be ruled out . She started to feel fear in her heart , her head started to feel like it was spinning . She decided to keep calm , she looked outside , the sceneries kept her out of the thoughts for some time . After a while , she was curiously and carefully listening to karna who was now having a serious conversation with the charioteer . Everything he said was weird , he was asking about the state of his kingdom, anga and the charioteer seemed to be praising him and karna was trying to give all the credits to his subjects . They were talking about other kingdoms and their politics . He frequently used the terms " hastinapura" , " suyodhana " and " Pandavas " in their conversation. Neha was shocked at hearing those words that she didn't mind about complete context in which it was said , they were also talking so fast and fluently in Sanskrit that she couldn't keep up with them. But her earlier suspicion that she could have somehow landed in Mahabharata era was now seemingly becoming true .