I’ve read various interpretations of ancient stories and they teach you different perspectives.

Have you ever been inspired by books in regional languages? There is the concept of taking the core and soul of our old stories, of our ancient stories and adding something new. That is the tradition that has now been revived. The tradition of reinterpreting our ancient stories from different perspectives was a rich tradition in ancient India and right up to the medieval era. A vast majority of us are deeply rooted in our culture. I don’t think Indians will ever tire of listening to the stories of our gods and goddesses. Stories about gods and goddesses comprise Puranic Katha and these never went out of fashion. How has the mythological fiction genre evolved in India? Let’s see what the readers take out of it. Those things are also shown, that he was a deep and complex man, not just a thug. That he was a brilliant musician, he was a good warrior, a scholar, that he was a good administrator. His violence and lack of control over his temper are shown in the book.īut his strengths, his qualities are also shown. His negative points are not denied and I’m not trying to do that either in my book. The ancient versions of Ramayana have a far more nuanced take on him. Many see him as a villian with no redeeming features, just a violent, brutal man. The key thing is that in modern-day, the image we have of Raavan has been drawn largely from some television serials, and we have a very simplistic take on him. What perception are you hoping people will have towards Raavan post reading the book?

So therefore I thought Raavan – Enemy of Aryavarta perhaps describes the story a lot better. But as I started writing more of the book, I realised that it was the other way around, Raavan rejected his own land.Īn orphan makes him sound like a bechaara, whereas he actually had agency. When I had written Ram – A Sign of Ikshavaku, Sita – Warrior of Mithila, the title of the third book, in my mind, was Raavan – Orphan of Aryavarta, because at that time the story till then gave me the impression that Raavan had been rejected by his own birth land, by Aryavarta. The novel was initially named Raavan – Orphan of Aryavarta. This was towards the beginning of 2014 and I started writing back then. That day I decided my next series is on lord Ram, which would be my interpretation of Lord Ram and Sita ma’s story. Then there was an incident where someone spoke to me about Lord Ram in a disrespectful way, which upset me. Once the Shiva Trilogy was over, I wasn’t sure what I’m going to write next.

The immortals of meluha audiobook