Angels & Demons

Characters from India’s mythological cosmos are the new inspiration for writers in different languages

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Akanksha Pare Kashiv

As the story goes, told and retold in colourful pages of the Chandamama and Amar Chitra Katha comic books over decades, it has always been about good versus evil. Generations have grown up on stories of Indian mythological figures, gods and demon kings, battling each other for cosmic balance. Those were also the grandmother’s tales, simple and straight, black and white—about righteous heroes vanquishing evil incarnates. They were the kind of story loved by children and adults alike. They still are. But along the way, came a twist in the tale.

Enter the millennials, used to flipping pages of manga on the iPad, and not so much considered the bookworm. A whole new generation born and brought up in the digital era has been stereotyped as an inveterate gizmo-loving lot of geeks, unabashedly averse to carrying a book alongside an i-Pad in their backpacks. Not any longer. The seemingly uber-cool generation appears to be in for an image makeover with techno-savvy dudes stumbling on an unusual genre of storytelling: mythological-fiction.

Even as the foundation stone for a grand temple is laid by Prime minister Narendra Modi at Lord Ram’s birthplace in Ayodhya on August 5, the ‘fictional’ Ram is back in a new ubiquitous avatar as the god of paperbacks. And so are Shiva and a phalanx of other deities from the tomes on mythology. With dozens of young novelists revisiting the hoary epics to piece together gripping thrillers around mythical heroes in contemporary settings, Indian fiction writing had never been closer to ‘divinity’ in the past.