REIMAGINING THE RAMAYANA

Author Amish Tripathi has again found in mythology the recipe for yet another blockbuster book

- Aditya Mani Jha

War of Lanka, a re-imagination of the battle sections of the Ramayana, is the fourth and penultimate book in the Ram Chandra series

Sometimes it's easy to forget that Amish Tripathi, by any metric one of India's bestselling authors, began his journey with self-publishing. In 2010, after being rejected by over a dozen publishers, Tripathi published 5,000 copies of his first book The Immortals of Meluha, the beginning of the Shiva Trilogy. His agent paid for the printing while he invested his own money into marketing efforts. The rest, as they say, is history. Having sold millions of books, Tripathi is arguably the most sought-after English-language writer in India today. His latest novel, War of Lanka, is the fourth and penultimate entry in the Ram Chandra series.

Like most of Tripathi's fiction, War of Lanka is a re-imagination of ancient Hindu texts, in this case, the battle sections of the Ramayana. But there's a lot else besides mighty warriors and plentiful bloodshed in this book-there's also the pleasure of watching familiar-yet-different characters evolving through the course of the narrative. For example, in the Ram Chandra Series, Hanuman is the leader of the Naga Vayuputras', 'Naga' being the term for anyone in the imagined era who looks different (Hanuman has a flat nose and a distinctive, heavily hirsute face). We are told that Lakshman is prejudiced against Hanuman, a stance we see softening in War of Lanka, as the two iconic warriors fight side-by-side against the forces of evil.