If you were to choose one individual out of the Mahabharata, who, as per your understanding, had the best decision-making abilities, who would that be, and why? What all are the lessons that one could learn through his/her choices made on the Kurukshetra battlefield, or even outside?

To me, there is only one person who fits the bill. Shri Krishna. His decisions are not a result of emotions or its opposite, cold logic. And this is where dharma enters the fray. Krishna’s decisions are underpinned by dharma and in the furtherance of dharma. There is a subtlety to it that more binary viewpoints can’t quite understand. Dharma is subtle but if every decision is underpinned by dharma, it will eventually lead to the right outcomes.

That is why, in the Indic/Hindu worldview, Artha (wealth) and Kama (desire) are legitimate pursuits on the path to Moksha (release from the cycle of births and deaths) but they have to be underpinned by Dharma. It is also why our most celebrated God / Avatar is Shri Rama, because of his strict adherence to what he saw as his Dharma. Dharma is also not singular. For example, I, as a man, have a dharma as a son, husband, father, a leader of my company, a friend etc. Sometimes the different dharmas are in conflict and it is the choice of the dharma that dictates the outcomes.

And the effect of every choice is our karma. Karma is inexorable. No one is exempt from it. Shri Krishna’s stated message is that He came to this world to rid the world of adharma and to establish dharma. Hence, His every action is in consonance with that stated goal.