RETELLING THE GREATEST STORIES EVER TOLD

In Eden, mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik, reinterprets Jewish, Christian and Islamic lore through an Indian lens. He tells us how he strikes a balance between the intimate and the panoramic in his writing

- Shreevatsa Nevatia

You dedicate your new book to your teachers at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour High School, Chembur. We know you acted in plays, but what was high school really like for you?

I was a nerd, a front-bencher, a first ranker, exempted from physical training. I was highly academic, but I would participate in extracurricular activities like elocution and plays. Theatre— plays, skits—all played a very important role in our school. They give it a lot of importance. I didn’t realize the value of it then but now I see how these experiences helped me become a good public speaker.

Not everyone chooses to become a mythologist. What really spurred you to take this on?

It was all very organic. I remember I used to read Amar Chitra Katha, but one day, I discovered a book from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, which told me tales from the Bhagavatam. It made realize that there’s more to the scriptures than the stories I was being told by those Amar Chitra Katha comics. Soon after, whenever I would go to a bookshop, I would typically gravitate towards the section where you had books on philosophy and mythology. Over time, this became my area of interest. I also realized most people didn’t know these stories, and so I would tell them what I had discovered. That often made me the life of the party. At the time, though, it never occurred to me that any of this would become a profession. It was only around 1996, when I was writing freelance columns for friends, that one of them said they knew a publisher who wants someone to write a book on Shiva. I wanted to try and see what I could do, and finally, that book became Shiva: An Introduction (1997).