Kalyug

Kalyug: A haunting corporate-age Mahabharata, where greed, ambition and wounded pride turn family into battlefield that ultimately leaves everyone defeated.

Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug (1981) is a fascinating modern-day reinterpretation of the Mahabharata, transforming an ancient epic of dynastic conflict into a dark and compelling story of rival business families. What makes the film remarkable is that Benegal does not need battlefields, weapons or kingdoms. The new battlefield is the corporate world, where power is pursued through money, influence, manipulation, industrial rivalry and political connections.

At the heart of Kalyug is the disintegration of a family and the poisonous consequences of inherited rivalry. The characters echo the great figures of the Mahabharata, but they are recognisably human, flawed and driven by contemporary ambitions. Shashi Kapoor’s Karan is particularly fascinating. He is intelligent, capable and deeply loyal, yet his loyalties become the very chains that lead him towards tragedy. His predicament gives the film much of its emotional depth.

Benegal’s greatest achievement is perhaps his refusal to portray the conflict in simple terms of good versus evil. Almost everyone is compromised. Ambition gradually overwhelms affection, business interests overpower family bonds, and revenge becomes more important than reason. The tragedy is not created by one villain, but by a system in which pride and greed continually feed each other.

The film is carried by a remarkable ensemble of characters, each reflecting a different facet of the Mahabharata. Raj Babbar’s Bharat is the ambitious and forceful heir whose rivalry with his cousins gradually turns the family conflict into a battle for corporate supremacy. Anant Nag’s Rajan represents a more restrained and morally conscious presence, caught between family loyalty and the destructive ambitions surrounding him. Rekha’s Supriya, the modern-day Draupadi figure, brings intelligence, dignity and emotional complexity to the family drama, while Victor Banerjee’s Deven embodies the calculating, privileged side of the new corporate order. Their relationships are not merely plot devices; they create a web of loyalty, jealousy, love and betrayal that steadily tightens around the family.

At the centre of this web stands Shashi Kapoor’s Karan, arguably the most tragic and compelling figure in the film. Like Karna of the Mahabharata, he is immensely capable yet separated from the family to which he is connected by birth. His loyalty to the rival faction gives him both strength and vulnerability. He possesses the intelligence and strategic ability to challenge everyone around him, but his sense of obligation prevents him from escaping the conflict. Shashi Kapoor gives Karan a quiet dignity rather than making him a conventional villain, allowing us to see the painful contradiction between personal morality and unquestioning loyalty. Through Karan, Benegal makes the ancient tragedy of Karna feel startlingly contemporary.

The film also feels remarkably relevant because the setting may have changed, but human nature has not. The boardroom becomes the battlefield, contracts become weapons, and economic power becomes the modern equivalent of a throne. Beneath the corporate drama lies the timeless question posed by the Mahabharata: what happens when human beings allow ambition to overpower morality?

Kalyug ultimately becomes a tragedy of self-destruction. Every victory carries the seed of another conflict, until the pursuit of power leaves everyone diminished. The families may fight for wealth, prestige and supremacy, but when the dust settles, there is very little left to inherit.

Philosophically, Kalyug reminds us that greed without morality is ultimately a form of blindness. When ambition loses its ethical boundaries, success itself becomes meaningless. Revenge breeds revenge, greed breeds greed, and eventually the very people fighting to possess everything can end up possessing nothing. Nothing good comes from a life governed by greed and the absence of moral values; sooner or later, it leads only to destruction.