Meenakshi: I don't think I'd want to be labelled as a Guiness-anything, let alone "fastest published".

I didnt mean you! I meant your publisher to vie for that title and take the credit!! You get your books published anyways! And we get to read them sooner than later!LOL!

Oh, gotcha.

Well, to be quite honest, my Indian and UK publishers at least have managed to keep up quite well with my pace of writing. I suspect that so long as they're convinced that readers can keep up with that pace as well--in terms of buying the books that quickly--they'll be most happy to publish at a faster rate as well...or at least try!

But forget about the record books, I'm sure that with Mba onwards, you'll get my books sooner rather than later. One reason why I'm taking my time delivering the first book/s is so that, once the series starts, it will proceed at a frenetic pace. I think a big mistake most authors and publishers of series make is starting to publish when only one (or often, not even one) book is complete. It's important to write at least a draft of two or three (or more) books before you publish the first. That's how I was able to complete the six-volume Ramayana in three years, because I was three books ahead from day one.

You ppl just be ready to go into stores every couple of months and say, "Next!".

glad its the Ganesa Palindrome!!!! cos i had voted for it in the poll you had put up in the group..

about the DEVI series, will it be affordable for us???? i mean- the cost of 'quality' comics in india is a bit too high... you know, those comics in the thick paper.. i know this is too early to say, but i just wanted to know your views..

And thank you for voting for it! It's a project I've had on the back burner for several years and I'm really excited about it.



Hmm, frankly, I doubt it will be available in India at all. It's being published by an American publisher and for the very reason you mention, most comics don't make it this far on a regular basis. Especially since this is a more serious 'literary' project, it will be priced higher than the relatively cheaper mass-marked superhero comics and printed on premium stock, etc.

But every five or six issues or so will get collected into a graphic novel in hardcover of paperback, and a few copies of those could find their way here eventually--but they'll be really expensive. Based on current graphic novels available here, it will be as high as the price of two or three paperback books...and very limited copies would come here. Sorry, but only the writing and the visualization is in my hands--publishing and distribution is entirely the publishers' prerogative.

With the Ganesa Palindrome, it's a bit more likely you'll be able to get copies here. But I wouldn't count on that either--again, I'm selling world English rights, and they're likely to publish in hardcover and focus more on USA and UK. India is a very small market for this kind of hard technological Science Fiction, and even though you and I may feel that ALL my Ramayana readers would love to read this new series (I certainly think so), the publishers may not be aiming at this readership at all. In fact, I know they're not.

So again, while all my stories are written primarily for Indian readers, because only an Indian reader can get ALL the nuances and flavour and little subtleties, the only reason I'm able to write these stories and see them published and get paid for them, is thanks to these foreign publishers, so like it or not, they're going out to the world first and only secondarily, maybe, find their way to India.

In contrast, the Mba is all YOUR'S! Published first and last in India, for Indians.

And as far as I'm concerned, my friend, if you keep supporting me the way you do now, you can count on getting a lifetime supply of signed complimentary copies of ALL my work. So you'll be in a class of your own!

wow!!!!!!!!

ashok, i'm speechless!!!!! that would be mindblowing!!!!!

all the very best........

Can't wait. Of the two, for personal reasons I guess, I prefer the Mahabharata to the Ramayana. I've always stated, whatever my criticisms of the historical imperatives of these texts, these two would still be my 'desert island' books, above the Iliad, above the Odyssey, the Aenid, the Bible, you name 'em, I still know which I'd prefer to take. But which version and by whom? The last Mahabharata text I looked at was the 2-3 volumes printed by the University of Chicago, a terrific, but uncompleted project....?

Good luck Ashok! May the muse be with you.

Thanks, Beowolf,

I need all the good wishes I can get. This is not an easy project to undertake. Someone somewhere used the word 'doable'. Yes, certainly it's doable--as are so many other things in life. But the difference between 'doable' and actually doing marks the differences between talkers and authors!

The Chicago editions you're referring to are excellent ones, although from a very western point of view and hence quite irrelevant since they waste much space debating meanings and inferences which we desis already know intimately well, and as you rightly pointed out, it's incomplete.

I personally always thought that it's time someone here and now retold this great story in a desi style for us desi readers. Since nobody else seems to have the balls or the gall to take up the challenge, I'm attempting it. But anyone with sufficient chutzpah could have done it before me--or better than me.

Koi hai?

As they say about every coin having two faces.. I'd think that, while it takes audacity to attempt a project like this., it takes humility on the other side that would be needed to do justice to the attempt..

Since I already know one person who is doing that impossible balancing act.. Why look for more..

Ah, once again I'm left alone to shoulder this heavy burden!



Seriously, though, I sometimes wish someone else would come along and attempt to write really good Indian historical, imaginative, mythical, or just plain any great 'period' fiction.

Why do we have such a dearth of it in our country when we have one of the world's greatest historical and mythological cultural heritages?

I mean, even the US, which has been in existence for barely four hundred years, has entire libraries devoted to its history--and even alternate history!

While here we are, with almost zero authors even attempting to write stories and novels set in our exciting and colourful past.

We need some Ponniyin Selvans in Indian English too!

I feel impossibly childish and tongue-tied when I say this, but your Ramayana (and soon, your Mahabharat probably) has definitely inspired one person... me. Ever since I first read K.M. Munshi's Krishnavatara, I've always considered it one of the biggest misfortunes that he was not able to finish it. I've finally been inspired (by your Ramayana, what I've heard and read (the Prologue at least) of your Mahabharat, and everything on this forum) and have gotten up the courage to start doing preliminary research for a re-telling of the Krishnavatara. Granted, it probably won't be anywhere NEAR what Munshi accomplished, but I think it's worth a shot. I want to do Krishna first, and if all goes well, Krishna willing , I might try my hand at a Dashavatara series, or at least a series about the "main" avatars (I don't entirely know just yet how I'm going to stretch stories such as Matsya, Kurma, and Varaha avatar to make separate books, but I think I might be able to condense them all into one, seeing's how there is a great deal of continuity between them all). This will probably take me a long time, but every offering counts, I think, and this is my humble offering into the sacred fire of Indian literature (to use a rather poetically sentimental turn of phrase).

Namerah,

Please don't feel either tongue-tied or childish. I felt like a complete xplgtzxcyx when I first started writing my Ramayana--I don't even have a word to describe the feeling! Because I thought, hey, what am I doing? How can I do this?

By all means, do go ahead. Krishnavatara is a great series, and one of my all-time favourites.

But just so you know: I have already begun work on my Krishna retelling some years ago. It's one of my in-progress projects. (The plan is to write it twice, in a sense, once as a separate trilogy, and secondly, as part of my Mba itself.)

But stories like these are bigger than any one writer. Just as the Greek myths have been told and retold thousands of times, there's no reason why more than one writer can't retell these stories as well.

So please do go ahead, and I wish you the very best! Jai Shri Krishna! Or, as they say in Vrindavan, Radhey-Radhey!

I think one of the reasons that I felt so... xplgtzxcyx... is that I knew you were already working on a Krishna retelling. I didn't want to infringe on your "domain", as it were, even though, as you said, it's a story so huge that it belongs to the world. In a sense, I think that's why we want to write it (or in your case, are writing it).

'...But the difference between 'doable' and actually doing marks the differences between talkers and authors! ...'

Absolutely. Chutzpah is an interesting word too.

There are books one reads, films one watches, where one thinks, wow, I could have done that.

And there are books, films, where one ends up feeling, wow, I could NEVER have done that.

A rendition of either of these stories is an immense undertaking, for which rightly you have been praised and held in high esteem by even those who have yet to read your work.

Beyond the prerequisite technical literary skills, you're quite right to point out intangibles such as 'Chutzpah', and in this instance, maybe I'm right/wrong, but I can't imagine undertaking such a project without a huge amount of love for the stories. So is it love which is the driving force? Love which as ever is such a major contributing factor to the creative drive?

Godspeed on another magical quest!!! Perhaps it is very much those hard to pinpoint characteristics which define these epic journies for the individual, and I believe your journey is as epic as any bard has undertaken. That might sound pompous, or excessively flattering, or whatever. But I mean it none the less.

p.s. I got to play Dhritarashtra one time for a retelling of Bhasa's Urubhangam. Yet the director felt without the context of the 'full' story, this section alone would not make sense to British audiences. So we attempted to present the major points, in a 2 1/2 hour stage show, which some reviewers were kind enough to suggest was better than Peter Brooks' 12 hour version, though I still maintain I never really ever got to see what the show was like at all....

You know, Krishna is one of the characters I'm looking forward to reading in your Mba.
Krishna, in my opinion is a much more... (can I use the word 'entertaining' and not be lynched?) character than Rama. He is very jovial, and in my mind's eye I can never imagine him without a mischeivious grin on his face.
People consider the young prince of Matsa as Mba comic relief, but in my opinion, I think Krishna is more fun to read. Not just his childhood tales, even his role as a mediator- the scene where Duryodhana and Arjun enter Krishna's bedchamber at the same time is delightful, not because it's funny, but because it's one of the lighter moments in the tense framework of the upcoming war.

Also, if we are allowed to know this, in what manner have you included the Gita in your Mba? The sermon is very uncharacteristic of Krishna's otherwise modest charcter and personality in the rest of the Mba, from which springs the theory that the Geeta is in fact a later adition to the Mba (as is the miraculous protection of Draupadi's honour during her disrobing, which is, at the very least, a later edit, which is clear from the inconsistency surrounding it).

I definitely agree with you there. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan of Nitish Bharadwaj. He has that mischievous grin down perfectly. I swear, it's amazing.

I don't think the Gita is really that incongruous. If you look at Munshi's Krishna, for example, it fits right in with his style. He still jokes, he still flirts, but behind it all, in his mind, there is always the reminder that he is the "sasvat dharma gupta" (protector of Dharma, if I'm not mistaken). Besides, if you get your hands on one of the more detailed re-tellings/translations of the Mahabharat, one with all the backstories and random little anecdotes, you'll see how good he is at psychologically manipulating people.

By the way, I'm very sure that you'll get away with using the word "entertaining." At least I won't lynch you.