Sons of Gods: The Mahabharata Retold

(Original year of posting: 2006.) I first read the Mahabharata in 1973, in India. The version I read was the big fat book by Kamala Subramaniam. I stayed up all night to finish it, and when it was over I decided then and there that this was the Book to end all Books. It was simply amazing. I've been a voracious reader all my life, but never had I been so floored by a story. I could say this in spite of the less than stellar writing. Subramaniam tends to write in short, jerky sentences, using an abundance of adjectives and adverbs. She spills the melodrama left right and centre, and is not afraid to overdo it in the emotional sector. In a way, the book seems written for children. But the story she tells in that book is simply magnificent. The Mahabharata is Hinduism's great epic story. It may be the oldest written story in the world, and certainly the longest. It tells the tale of kings and queens, gods and demons. It goes off on tangents lasting hundreds of pages, yet al...

I was in London last week and took the opportunity to visit Watkin's Spiritual Bookshop in Cecil Place, just off Charing Cross Road. I was looking for a copy of Kamala Subramaniam's Mahabharata . I felt I need to own this book; after all, it was my own inspiration, so many years ago, and to it I owe the planting of the Mahabharata seed in my mind, a seed that has sprouted and grown throughout the years. Back then, I had borrowed the book from an ashram library in India. I borrowed it again and again throughout that year, read it over and over till I knew it almost by heart. So, I ought to buy it. Own it. There's a second reason I needed to have that book. Though I know that I wrote Sons of Gods from my own memory, without a reference book open to help me, I was afraid that, just maybe, some of the words from my source might have buried themselves into my unconscious and emerged just as they were. To the onlooker, that might be interpreted as plagiarism. After all, I...