When I first started reading and wrote a review of 'The Winds of Hastinapur', I thought that it would be another one of the various versions. But, as I read further it had quite a few perceptions to add to mine. There was a storytelling aspect to it, which few authors have. Sharath Komarraju is one of them.
His interview is in two parts, mainly because he has more to add to the story. As one reads on, one would feel this aspect coming true. He talk about the fantasy characteristic of the story, the mythological aspects, and why he decided to write and how he intends to keep doing it, until the end.
Could you describe the journey of ‘The Winds of
Hastinapur'? How did it begin?
Like all storytellers in India, for quite some time now I’ve had this
vague notion that I must write something with the Mahabharata, as the backdrop.
Since it’s such a written-to-death topic, I read most of the available
literature on the epic and found it to be overwhelmingly male-centric.
The few
exceptions focused on Draupadi alone, and even those seemed too eager to
portray Draupadi as a modern-day feminist.
I thought there was room in the market for a
feminine adaptation of the story, where all the lesser known people like Ganga,
Satyavati, Amba and Gandhari find their voices.
Your novel came out along with a number of
mythological novels. What according to you was different about it?
I think mythological novels are the ‘in’ thing now. There is a perception
in the market that that’s what readers want. It’s
not unlike the teen-romance wave that took off in the early part of the decade.
Most of the mythological novels that we see in the market now are really thrillers,
disguised as fantasy. There is only cursory attention given to traditional
fantasy elements, and the pace, characters and structure all conform to the
thriller genre. There is a lot of physical action and suspense.
Hastinapur is more in the traditional fantasy mould. Ganga and
Satyavati will not pick up swords and fight bad guys, for example. In fact,
there is very little fighting in the book. The
conflicts are more moral and psychological.
What kind of research did you put
into it?
When you write on a topic, which
has been written extensively about before you, then I
think it’s important that you take steps not to re-invent the wheel.
So, I read the works of S L Bhyrappa,
Pratibha Ray, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Irawati Karve, Ashok Banker etc. This is, of
course, in addition to Kisari Mohan Ganguli’s, English translation of the
original.
Who was it that told you that you
could become the author, you are today?
Nobody did. After voraciously
reading books for fifteen or so years, one day I wondered why I cannot write
one myself. I went ahead and did it. I liked it (the experience, not the book)
so much that I kept going, and I don’t intend to stop until I die.
It never struck me
to ask anyone if I could write.
How would you relate the lives of
Bhishma, Ganga and Satyavathi to the lives today? Any similarities?
Well, people
across time and space are united by want. All of us want things, and
most of us want things that we cannot have. If there is one feeling that all of
us, without exception, can relate to, it is that of wanting something and being
ready to move mountains to get it.
So as a writer, my job is not to
look for similarities between the people in my story and real life. It is to
portray them and their conflicts in as real a manner as I can, so that the
reader will be convinced that it really happened. If
that is achieved, the reader will then find his own meaning within the tale.
This is one of the great joys of
reading, that each reader’s experience is intensely personal. If it’s a good story, it will mean many things to many
people.
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