“Aap Chronology samajhiye” : Motabhai’s famous words are pertinent when it comes to answering how Dronacharya ended up being the Chief teacher of the royal princes of Hastinapur.

Before we answer how he ended up in the coveted position, (1/n)

we must dig a little into his past. Drona was a meritorious student & in Gurukul, he forged a good camaraderie with Drupad, the then prince of Panchal. While Drupad struggled in his classes, it was Drona who lent him a helping hand. Overcome with gratitude, (2/n)

Drupad promised him that in the future, if Drona ever needed any help, the gates of his Palace would always be open for him. And with their graduation, they bade good-bye to each other, & pursued their respective careers. While Drupad was anointed the King of Panchal, (3/n)

Drona was struggling to earn daily bread for his family : his wife Kripi and his son, Ashwatthama, who was born a bit mentally unstable. Despite the tribulations of his personal life, Drona continued his austere life as a teacher & turned down lucrative opportunities, (4/n)

because he believed in a bigger cause : merit should guide teaching, not the donations from the parents of the student. But, soon, his penury condition spiralled out of his hands & at that juncture, unable to feed even a handful of morsel to his son, (5/n)

Drona decided that time had come to approach his best friend for help, about whom he had always boasted in front of his wife, Kripi. Drona sold his Ashram for a nominal price & with a few coins, he left for Panchal, with his wife & son. But what happened next is (6/n)

something beyond shocking. Drupad pretended as if he didn’t recognise him & mocked him as a vagabond who resorted to emotional histrionics to exploit his charity in front of the esteemed citizens in the court. (7/n)

Drona was flabbergasted at Drupad’s shocking behaviour & to add to his woes,Drupad insulted him by asking him to sleep near the Royal Palace’s gate for one night. The embarrassment reached a crescendo when (8/n)

Ashwatthama, who was hungry & begging his embarrassed father for some food, was given a glass of rice-water mixed with jaggery & Ashwatthama drank it happily, telling his father : (9/n)

Dad, this is milk ! Thank u, uncle Drupad ! It’s so tasty”. Everyone in the royal court, from the gatekeepers to the Ministers to Drupad, burst into a fit of uncontrolled laughter. (10/n)

The learned prodigy of his era, Drona was reduced to a laughing stock. Unable to bear the exhilarating bursts of laughter with patronising sympathy, Drona walked out of the court, with his wife & kid, (11/n)

but promised Drupad that one day, this insult would be avenged in the commensurate manner.

Years rolled by, Drona was surviving on financial help from his brother-in-law, Kripacharya, the Head-Teacher of Hastinapur; (12/n)

while a part of his consciousness was still being tormented by the hallucinations of that unfortunate day. One day, when the Pandavas & the Kauravas were playing in the Royal Garden with a ball, (13/n)

the ball landed up in the magical well, whose depth till then was not known to anybody. Duryodhana accused Bheem of deliberately throwing the ball in that well, which was accompanied with counter accusations from the Pandavas & the cacophony of blame-game took precedence. (14/n)

Out of 105 princes, only Arjun was engrossed in getting the ball out of the well. Drona, while passing by, was watching the events unfold by. Then, Drona went over & astonished everyone by retrieving the ball out of the well with a single dried blade of grass ! (15/n)

There was a unison in pindrop silence, cutting across the Pandavas & the Kauravas, at such an astounding act of brilliance; which was broken by Arjun, who asked Drona, “Sir, accept my salutations. Who are you?”. Drona gave a simple reply, with an enigmatic benign smile, (16/n)

“Ask your Grandpa Bhishma.” And he disappeared from the scene, leaving a lasting impression on the kids ! That afternoon, during lunch, everyone was talking of what they saw & Bhishma was baffled at such a curiosity among the kids, who would often fight among themselves, (17/n)

instead of talking. When Arjun narrated Bhishma the incident, Bhishma immediately realised who that genius was. Either it had to be the venerated Dronacharya or it has to be some heavenly being, with God-like powers. Immediately, not wasting his time, (18/n)

Bhishma asked his army to conduct a reconnoissance tour across Hastinapur & nearby villages to search for a man, that fit Dronacharya’s description. Now, a question arises in an inquisitive mind : How did Bhishma deduce that it had to be someone of Dronacharya’s calibre ? (19/n)

Why not other contemporary genius ? Because a few months prior to that eventful day, Bhishma had gone to his teacher, the Legendary Parashurama to enquire about his health & if he was willing to teach the art of the divine, celestial weapons to the Kuru princes. (20/n)

Parashurama turned down the offer & told him that he has already retired from the Martial arts before handing over his arsenal of divine weapons to a young prodigy : Dronacharya. Parashurama put lavish praises on Dronacharya and declared that in his eyes, after Bhishma, (21/n)

Dronacharya is the best warrior he has seen over the years and he had no malice or greed in his eyes unlike other seekers of his envied armoury of divine weapons. In other words, Dronacharya was the true successor to Parashurama, in terms of knowledge, intellect & (22/n)

brilliance. And yeah, as luck would have it, Bhishma’s army traced Dronacharya & brought him to the Palace. Dronacharya finally got his perfect opportunity to extract his revenge from Drupad when he accepted Bhishma’s offer of being the Guru of Hastinapur’s royal princes. (23/n)

Finally, a short synopsis : Poverty, coupled with vengeance's toxicity, pushed a genius from an empathetic being with a moral compass to a cold-hearted professional engrossed in the quagmire of revenge. And this proved costly to his legacy, as this cocktail of obsession (24/n)

for his son & his attachment with his coveted designation had led him to be a silent spectator when Draupadi was disrobed in a hitherto grotesque manner. In moments before his death, he apologised to Shri Krishna for being an unintentional accomplice in (25/n)

in Duryodhana’s crimes & Krishna forgave him with Moksh, as after all, despite his crime of being a mute spectator to the ghastly crimes, he was just too brilliant to live another life on the realm of humans ! (26/26)

Good night !