THE DIVINE ROAD TRIP

IN HIS NEW BOOK, MYTHOLOGIST DEVDUTT PATTANAIK SETS OUT TO MAP INDIA’S SACRED GEOGRAPHY

- Shreevatsa Nevatia

Having single-handedly ferried his parents to 40 spots of pilgrimage on a DIY bamboo palanquin, the mythological Shravan Kumar has always been a bit of an impossible ideal. Yet, when Arvind Kejriwal was re-elected chief minister recently, his deputy Manish Sisodia said, “Delhi has again voted for its favourite son, its Shravan Kumar”. For the cover of his new book, Pilgrim Nation: The Making of Bharatvarsh, Devdutt Pattanaik, too, decided to illustrate Shravan. The word Bharatvarsh, too, almost seems borrowed from a politician’s vocabulary. “You now have politicians who are chauvinistic about these words, but there was a time when they were embarrassed by them. Politicians come and go, but I keep writing my books,” says Pattanaik.

Hindutva, one might think, appropriates any narrative similar to itself, but in all his years of writing on Hindu mythology, Pattanaik has ensured he remains independent of affiliation.