1. The document is a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style story where the reader makes choices that determine the progression of the narrative. 2. The story begins with the reader waking up with amnesia and finding themselves in ancient India, where they make choices that determine their social class and future lives within the Hindu caste system. 3. Over the course of several lives, the reader works their way up the caste system based on how well they adhere to religious and social duties, with the goal of achieving spiritual enlightenment. However, poor choices can also cause them to lose social status or meet unfortunate ends.

1. 1.21 Gitawatts
Another Choose Your Own Adventure
Michael Vu, Jilly Dos Santos, Sophie Whyte, AJ Fuchs,
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2. Introduction
• You should know the drill by now
• If you don‟t, please refer to the Middle East Template.
• I will still maintain that you had no childhood.
• It‟s another „Choose your own Adventure‟ template.
• Why must I make another template like this you ask?
• Well it‟s much more fun to write and read than a boring
essay.
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3. Start
• Well after time traveling to the past in a DeLorean and being
stuck there, you have a sudden epiphany to just have the local
mechanic replace the flux capacitor. Which succeeds and you
come back to your time. Unfortunately a combination of time
traveling radiation and mental trauma from your mother having
the hots for you cause you to have amnesia and occasionally
warp through time. Well, good luck!
WAIT WHAT?!?
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4. WAIT WHAT?!?
• You feel a tug on your stomach and suddenly you
are pulled back while passing out. When you come
to you find yourself lying on the floor.
• You‟ve lost all sense of identity so you check your
pants. What do you find?
Chalice A BIG Spear
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5. Chalice
• Well sucks to be you. Odds are that you ended up as a
prostitute or something. You were probably doing
important stuff at the time, but nobody actually knows
what exactly you did. Maybe you were great and
powerful. Who knew? Men just didn‟t care about women
unless you were, wait for it… the Mongols! There is a
reason it‟s called HIStory.
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6. A Big Spear
• After lying to yourself, you realize that you are male. You are suddenly yelled
at by somebody who you suspect is your father to get ready to work. You
only have enough time to clean one part of your body.
• Do you…
• Wash your face and feel less groggy?
• Wash your hands/arms and avoid dysentery?
• Wash your legs and get off that elephant poop you stepped in?
• Wash your feet and make them feel less sticky?
Face Hands Legs Feet
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7. Feet
• You carefully clean your feet and get rid of the stickiness which distinctly
smells like elephant poop. You get ready and you place your best forward,
to only step in elephant poop again! If only you had shoes… you then realize
that you have no more time to wash again so you head for the fields.
• When you get to the fields you are instantly bored and you are tempted to
slack off when you see a bunch of clay in the river your family uses to irrigate
your crops that you are allowed to work with. You were never good at
farming. All the crops you ever tended to died and withered away. You
suspect that a few of them committed suicide to get away from you too.
• Will you play with clay or will you do back breaking work?
ME PLAY CLAY Boring Work
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8. ME PLAY CLAY
• You start messing around with the clay and you make a pot which
catches the eye of one of the local kshatriya who offers you money that
you and your family would have to work several moons for. You realize
that you are a naturally skilled potter and your family could become
highly wealthy due to your skills and not have to be servants of those who
own land.
• You quickly agree and you rush to tell your father. He quickly disciplines
you, throws the money away and forbids you from ever doing it again. Will
you obey and have your family live in poverty or will you improve your
family‟s standard of living?
They’re fine eating dirt Family First
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9. They‟re Fine Eating Dirt
• You decide to ignore your father and to move out. You
move into town and once a week you gather all the pots
you‟ve made and sell them. You end up reaping profits
that your family could‟ve only dreamed of earning.
Unfortunately one day the city gets caught on fire and in
the haste of it all you trip on your long beard and you
break your neck.
Or is it?
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10. Game Over?
• Well you never followed your darma, you forsook your
family, and well I don‟t really like you all too much now.
• Congratulations! You are now a germ!
• Now give somebody dysentery and germ it up
somewhere else or whatever you germs do. I don‟t care.
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11. Family First
• You are sick and tired of being mere servants of the wealthy so you continue to
secretly make more and more pots by the river. You make several pots a week
and when you have the time you take a trip into the city to sell the pots while
making a nice profit that your family could only dream of having. You hide the
money and use it to buy food for whenever there wasn‟t be enough to feed the
family. You manage to keep the charade up for several years until one night while
drunk, you try to hug a reflection of the moon and you drown.
• Sadly you never followed your dharma and instead did the dharmas of others.
You however get some leeway as you did it for noble reasons. Which is why you
aren‟t going to be a germ.
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12. Boring Work
• You dutifully ignore the cool stream and continue toiling in the
dirt. Where your shoeless feet quickly gets cut up, however you
ignore that and the back breaking work as your father has said to
you that even though this life may be crappy the next one will be
better as long as you follow your dharma. However you also
remember him telling you this while laughing when you stepped
in elephant poop. Regardless you decide to believe him.
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13. Believe
• And this is your life. You wake up, step in elephant poop, and you work
for those who own land and you come home tired, aching, and hungry.
Until one day you see an incredibly beautiful woman. You watch her for
days, figuring out when she appears, borrowing a lock of hair, until one
day you gather the courage to talk to her. You guys hit it off and fall
madly in love. Then you learn that she‟s been engaged to another man
in the village and she belongs of the caste above you.
• Will you keep on trying and convince her to marry you instead or will
you let yet another good thing in your life go and settle for much less?
MARRY ME PLEASE! FOREVER ALONE
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14. MARRY ME PLEASE
• Oh good job you jerk. You managed to get her and you disowned
and now you‟re all pariahs. Outcasts! Untouchables! I really do
hope you make better life decisions in your next life. Well you and
your newly acquired wife are now untouchables. Congratulations.
Just when you thought your life was crappy and couldn‟t get
worse, you made it worse! Seriously. How did you do it?
• You and your wife struggled to get food and water. You both
manage to acquire dysentery and both die a crappy death.
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15. FOREVER ALONE
• You decide that it would be the best for the both of you to forget one
another. You both go your own ways and never see each other again.
You walk home with a heavy heart. Your parents inform you once you
arrive home that they‟ve decided on your next wife and you are being
married in a few suns.
• You are soon married and you grow to love your new wife. However
you soon die from an infection in your foot. Who‟d have thought that
open wounds and elephant poop are a bad combination?
However you led a good life so you manage to get to the next varna.
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16. Yay?
• Well so begins your next life out of many of this varna. You are
the only son of a fairly wealthy family during the height of
Buddhism in the Mauryan Dynasty. You are taught and trained
by your father. One day he decides to retire and have the
merchants‟ guild take care of him. With it he hands over to you
the family business. Will you usher in a new era of greater
success for your family or will you ruin all the hard works the
generations before had done? Good luck! No pressure!
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17. No Pressure!
• To celebrate your newly appointed position you
decide to embark on a giant caravan for a giant
profit. You have two major choices to make first
though.
• Will you embark over land on the Silk Road or will
you embark over sea?
Did you just say silk? YO-HO!
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18. Did you just say Silk?
• You decide to trek over land. You travel for about a moon till you
find your destination. There you find that you can sell your fine
cotton textiles for a fine profit. However you notice that several
merchants are selling their textiles for a price much lower than
yours. Most merchants are paying for those textiles instead and very
few are coming to you. It‟s going to take a long time for you to get
home.
• What will you do?
CAPITALISM HO! Wait it out
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19. YO-HO!
• You buy a fleet of ships which you load full of cotton textiles to
sell. And after a long trip you finally reached your destination.
You manage to sell your goods relatively quickly and you begin
your trip home. However you forget to account the monsoon
winds in your calculations you are delayed heavily. You and
your crew quickly run out of food. And several men die of
starvation.
• Will you turn to cannibalism, pirating, or will you endure it out?
NOM NOM NOM YOU ARE A PIRATE! Endure It
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20. NOM NOM NOM
• You and the rest of the crew eat a few bodies out of pure desperation. The rest of
the trip was pure hell. There was an unspoken agreement to never talk of this and
it is kept. You made a giant profit off of the trip and came back physically safe,
albeit you became a bit more mentally unstable. However several years later your
body starts shaking uncontrollably. You ignore it and a few months later you start
laughing randomly. You are rushed to a local medicine man who diagnoses you
with laughing sickness (kuru as it was later to be called) and your dark past was
revealed. You and your family are deemed untouchables and you soon die from
a constant echoing laughter. Your heinous actions earns you the privilege of
becoming a germ! Congratulations!
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21. YOU ARE A PIRATE
• You believe that you won‟t make it and you refuse to dirty
yourself by eating your own comrades. So you turn to the life
of a pirate. You raid the occasional ship for the food strictly
and in doing so condemn them to death. You and your
crew while a day away from home suddenly die of scurvy.
Should‟ve had some oranges. I hear they make everything
„kay. Your heinous actions end up making you into a shudra.
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22. Endure It
• You stand firm in your morals and standards. When your crew
resorts to theft and cannibalism you stood firm and righteous.
Which unfortunately doesn‟t fill an empty stomach. You starve
to death and become food for the rats and your companions.
• Your morals and standards are what people should aspire to,
however you weren‟t very successful at your dharma. So you
remain a vaishya for yet another life.
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23. CAPITALISM HO!
• You quickly use the profits from the little textiles that you sold to buy
the goods of the ones undercutting you, which you proceed to sell
at a marked up price. This proves highly effective once you sell all
the textiles you had. You use that profit to buy all of the textiles that
were selling for less than what you would have sold for and you sell
that for even more profit! You eventually build your portfolio so high
that you don‟t even have to make trips anymore! You maintain
your monopoly until you get a heart attack and die. Shocking huh?
• You great success in this dharma has guaranteed you another step
in the path to Brahman.
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24. Wait it out
• You decide to wait it out. Surely they‟ll sell out quickly, and the others will come to
you! After several days, which turned into weeks, which then turned to months of
thinking this, you decide to lower your prices. Which is when you learn that the
average selling price was way below what you bought the textiles at in the first
place! You then decide that you mustn‟t come back as a failure so you travel for
several moons till you find a city where the profits are several times higher than
you were even aiming for! You come home a major success and nothing can
make you lose your mojo. Except the fact that you picked up the bubonic plague
through your travels and killed everyone in your town.
• You were highly successful at your dharma, but killing an entire town kind of
knocks you down a notch. Sorry buddy. Try again in the next life.
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25. OH YEAH!
• And so begins the next of many lives in this varna. You were
born into a fairly well off family and you were trained from a
young age in the art of killing others. After several years of
peace your time to prove yourself has come.
• However as you are marching into battle your commanding
officer takes a sudden arrow to the knee and dies. Widespread
fear ensues and many desert. What will you do?
Tactical Retreat THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
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26. Tactical Retreat
• You realize that with your forces at a mere fraction of what it was
prior you couldn‟t win. You retreat to fight another day, which
actually proves helpful. You gather up all the men that ran away
and run a night operation which was super effective. It was a pure
slaughter as the enemy were drunk when you led your group
against them. However you start puking when you see those you
killed ,and you start shaking at the thought of killing more men.
• Will you retire or will you charge into battle again?
I’m too old for this sh- CHARGE!
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27. I‟m too old for this sh-
• You decide to retire and you lead a quasi-aristocratic
lifestyle. Which lasts about a day as the remnants of the
army you slaughtered came and raided and ravaged
your village. Lets see, you lost your house, your land, your
money, and the army slaughtered everybody you ever
knew and loved. Including yourself.
• Your cowardice and lack of devotion to your dharma
cause you to rank down to a vaishya.
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28. CHARGE!
• You lead your band of soldiers and you find the remnants of the army
you had just slaughtered. You find them an arrow‟s flight away from
your village. It appears that they were planning on raiding and killing
everybody there. You finish interrogating a prisoner when somebody
who was playing dead thrusts a spear into your heart, killing you
instantly.
• You gain favor due to your dedication to your dharma and you
manage to pass on to the next varna and become a brahmin in your
next life!
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29. The Face
• Congratulations! You‟re at the top of the food chain. Thanks to
the Aryan belief in Perusha, the caste system deems the Brahmins
(spiritual leaders) as the closest to the Brahman. You are almost to
Moksha, but not yet. You still have a chance to screw it up!
• Today you have the choice to share your spiritual knowledge,
however, that would require you getting out of bed and it‟s so
early…
Share Spiritual Knowledge Be Lazy (like AJ)
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30. Share Spiritual Knowledge
• You have decided to fulfill your sacred duty!
• This morning you plan to go out to teach that
Brahman is the universal soul and the only genuine
reality. First priority however is breakfast. Hmmm?
Bacon or a bowl of bland rice? Decisions,
decisions…
Bacon! Bland Rice
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31. Bacon!
• While you are munching on bacon, you contemplate the
universe and your place within it. Suddenly you realize
your mistake! You are eating flesh and inadvertently
committed one of the greatest sins!
• Suddenly you are surrounded by a heard of angry pigs,
most likely related to the one you are eating, and they
devour you.
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32. Bland Rice
• You eat the rice prepared by your good friend Raj, and have a great day of
preaching.
• You preach the epics: Mahabhatrata, Ramayana, and the Bhagavad Gita. You tell
the public that a balance of their dharma, artha, and kama will help them obtain
moksha. With this you are able to reconvert several Buddhists back to Hindus.
• At the end of it all you meet a hot female Brahmin. You hit it off and get married.
And you live happily ever after, until one day you ask for some salt for her bean curry,
and in a fit of rage she guts you.
• You led a virtuous life and you fulfilled your dharma. You‟ve obtained moksha.
However moments before you die you feel a tug on your stomach and you pass out.
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33. Be Lazy
• Your laziness carries over not just today, but for the rest of your life. You
say it‟s just how you are, but your dharma wasn‟t to be lazy. It was to be
a Brahmin and you unfortunately didn‟t fulfill that. So much for being
close to moksha.
• One morning you realize you are late to a meeting. Instead of lying and
getting caught in it you decide to get there as fast as you can. But in
your rush out of your bed you get caught up in your blanket and you
snap your neck. Should have listened to Krishna. Unfortunately your
laziness causes you to be reincarnated into a sloth.
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34. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
• You give a heart chilling yell and charge. You cut down the
enemy‟s front line like butter and hack your way towards
their commander. Your allies seeing that you haven‟t been
killed yet decide to fight and charge. Together you and your
comrades kill their commander and force them to flee. You
are later unanimously chosen as the new commander.
• Will you lead your new army to glory or will you lead your
army to glory?
FOR GLORY! FOR GLORY!
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35. For Glory!
• You spend the next years waging wars and
expanding the land you own. You overthrew the
Magadha Kingdom and conquered the Greek state
in Bactria and by the time you were done you had
all of northern India under control. You decide to
take it easy and rule aristocratically.
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36. OH YEAH!
• A many years pass and many of your loyal friends and
subjects have passed away, but who cares? You've got
twelve beautiful women clamoring after you, claiming to
be your wives. This is the life. As a great an powerful ruler
at the height of the Mauryan Empire, it is your duty to
lead the people and achieve a peaceful, successful
nation. Or you can just stay in the bedroom with your
wives. The choice is clear...
Something about peace Ladies
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37. Something about Peace
• Congratulations! You've chosen to save the Kama Sutra stuff for special
occasions, and instead you lived your life as a great leader and India has
seen its most prosperous era to date. Your dharma has been fulfilled, you‟ve
created an expansive empire, and your name will be praised for years after
your death. Speaking of your death, it seems that throughout the years, and
the many wives and concubines you collected, you also acquired a number
of STDs. Syphilis, Gonorrhea, Herpes - I even think you got AIDs somehow.
These diseases ravage your mind and body until you pass on to the next
life...
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38. Ladies
• I said the choice was clear! Why would you choose this? Your dharma is
to rule, not to be the inspiration for Casanova. You lived a life of fun and
games (real interesting games), but your people starved and waged
wars amongst themselves, your kama was fulfilled to the greatest
extent, but unfortunately, it wasn't enough for you to reach the
Brahman. Because of your inability to follow your dharma and live with
balance, you are reborn as an untouchable, who due to an
unfortunate accident at birth, can no longer enjoy any of the fun you so
enjoyed as emperor.
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39. OH YEAH!
• Well so begins your next life out of many of this varna. You
are born into a highly powerful family. Your grand pappy
has conquered many lands in his youth and now that he
died the rightful heir (you) will take over as ruler.
• What will you do? Follow the footsteps of your
predecessors and take over more land or will you usher in
a period of peace?
War and Peace What’s Peace?
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40. War and Peace
• You spend your life sending armies across all of Asia,
bringing terror and death to al that stand in your way. After
one particularly gruesome battle though, you get word that
in the frenzy, a local restaurant, Booches, has been
destroyed. Distraught, you turn to religion for solace and
realize that Hinduism, following your dharma and living to kill,
is not the way. You decide to follow Buddhism.
BOOTYISM!
Buddhism
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41. Buddhism not Bootyism
• After hearing the words of the Buddha you become concerned with
the spiritual welfare of all in your Empire Being the zealot that you are,
you erect tall white pointy towers, inscribed with teachings. You instruct
your people to treat all animals, as well as each other with respect and
kindness. Life is suffering, especially if you‟re a strict Buddhist, and you
have to give up all your desires to reach Nirvana. At the end of your life
you are believed to have achieved Nirvana…unfortunately you still
destroyed Booches, so on to the next life you go!
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42. Conclusion
• You wake up in the middle of a parking lot where your time
traveling radiation and amnesia wear off. You suddenly
realized what happened and you realize that the growth
and development of Ancient Indian Civilizations can only be
understood properly with a thorough knowledge of their
religious beliefs and it's impact on their social structure. You
also realize that the social structures that they had for
centuries still affect the people living there in your time!
Unfortunately as soon as you made this epiphany you see
some angry Libyans who shoot you on sight. I don‟t know
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why man, they were saying something about plutonium.

43. Reflection
• The reference to the chalice and spear slides are an
allusion to the gender roles of ancient India, as the
chalice was an ancient symbol for the woman‟s womb
whereas the spear represented the fiery spirit of the male.
There were strong patriarchal family systems and women
were seen as lower than men.
As you progress through the game you are given several
choices when washing your body; to wash your face,
your arms, your thighs, or your feet. Each body part
represents a part of the caste system, just like in the poem
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“To Purusha”.

44. Reflection
• During the course of the journey as a shudra, aka the feet of
Purusha, you see how the work and life of a shudra were
nothing to envy (unless you were an untouchable, of
course). However, in the advancement in the caste system,
if you wanted a better life you had to follow your dharma,
your duty. Even if you were a magnificent potter, you were
better off doing a sucky job as a shudra. After all, if you
continued with your career and shudra duties, you had a
better chance of reaching Moksha, or liberation. Also, you
see that marriage stayed within the caste, otherwise you
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would become untouchables and face discrimination.

45. Reflection
• When you were a Vaishya, aka the thighs of
Purusha, you are challenged with balancing your
duties as a Hindu versus your own life. You were
forced to either starve to death or commit sins to
maintain your life force. By doing your sacred duty
of being a merchant and as a Hindu, whether you
were good or bad at it, you had a greater chance
of reaching moksha.
45

46. Reflection
• As a kshatriya, aka the arms of Purusha, you are expected
to live out your duties as a warrior. Even if you killed or were
killed in battle, it was your responsibility and by doing your
responsibility, you had a good chance of becoming a
Brahmin. The choices you made reflected that very belief
system, albeit with an exaggerated consequence system.
The Gita was also referenced very slightly in your choice of
running away from the fight or fulfilling your dharma. The
Gita reflects the Hindu philosophy of the caste systems as
Vishnu in the form of a human informs Arjuna on why his
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sacred duty is more important than his own desires.

47. Reflection
• During the Brahmin route, aka the face of Purusha, you
see how important it was and is to follow your dharma.
Included as well is the are the some of the basic ideas of
being a Hindu, including the importance of respecting all
living creatures and this lead many Hindus to become
vegetarian. The karma comes into play as well when you
choose the “lazy” option, and you become a sloth.
Karma states that your past actions will determine your
future. 47

48. Reflection
• Through out the game multiple epics and poems are
referenced. Those would‟ve been preached and were
the reason why Buddhism was slowly pushed out of
India in favor of the new, more lenient Hinduism.
Which was possible due to the relative flexibility of
Hinduism due to their polytheistic nature. The fact that
the populace were naturally more comfortable with
Hinduism and the changes absorbed all the features
they desired in Buddhism was the main reason why
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Buddhism is near extinct in India.