Mba

(Note: This page is still being revised by me. –AKB)

I began work on my Mba, as I call it, back in 2004, when I finished the Ramayana series. But the research, study and thinking that went into the series actually began years earlier, in the late Nineties when my childhood interest in mythology and the epics was revived by certain personal events. So in a sense, you could say that I’ve spent my entire life (43 years and counting) preparing for, researching, and working toward this one story.

As of this writing, on a cool, overcast Thursday in early September 2007, I’m nowhere near finished. In a way, each day I sit down to work on this epic feels like the first day all over again. No amount of reading, researching, studying, writing, rewriting, re-rewriting, re-re-re…you get the picture…no amount of work can make me an ‘expert’ on this great story of stories. Because the Mahabharata is, in a sense, the mother of all stories, an ocean of stories, a forest of stories, and it truly is all-encompassing. Our entire culture is contained within it, our entire pre-history, or, to use a less sexist word which I prefer, our itihasa. To do justice to it is demanding every ounce of my resources. And I was never a particularly brilliant or talented writer to begin with, nor a very gifted scholar, so I have to work much harder to compensate for all those failings. There are days I wish someone else would do it and do a better job of it…and yet, when the writing is going well, or when I experience a stunning flash of insight, I wouldn’t want to give up one moment of this long, hard labour of love.

And so it goes.

Those of you who’ve read my Ramayana series and are waiting eagerly for the Mba to appear in stories, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a while longer. Perhaps years longer. That’s because, unlike with my Ramayana series, where I had to permit publishers to start publishing the early volumes even as I worked on the later ones, I couldn’t bear to do the same with this story. For one thing, it’s a much larger story in every sense of the word–longer, many more characters, incidents, details, sub-plots, etc. For another thing, I’m fortunate enough to not need to pre-sell it to raise financial support for the actual writing. In short, I can afford to take my time, and to write the story through before revising, rewriting, editing, etc, and only when I’m completely satisfied with the results, offer it for publication.

The good news is that once I finish, the whole series will be complete and available for publication. And hopefully, publishers will be able to bring out the books much faster. The six volumes of my Ramayana series were published over a period of 39 months (3 years, 3 months), which was in itself astonishingly fast. I’m hoping that publishers will see fit to publish my Mba at an even faster pace: My ideal time-span would be 18 books in 36 months, which is a book every alternate month. I’m told this is impossible given the usual trade limitations of the publishing business in India, but I still hope. I think two months is more than enough time for a reader to finish reading a 1,000-page book, and so, 18 books of around 1,000 pages each published over 36 months would be the closest to a ‘continuous’ storytelling experience possible. It would, of course, be a record of sorts in the history of publishing, besides being the longest single story ever published, to my knowledge at least. But those are minor matters: In the end, these decisions will be taken by publishers, not me. As some of you may be aware already, authors have little say in either the publication process or even the final appearance of their books. The only thing we do have total control over is writing the work; and that’s why I’m taking all the time and effort possible to get it right.

But writing is only the beginning, in a way. Because the truth of the matter is, my Mba may never see the light of day at all. Think about it. A work of this size. Which publisher would take it on? In India, I have tremendous faith in my current publishers and editors; they’ve done a great job with my Ramayana series and other books, and I’ve no doubt they’ll support my Mba all the way as well. But outside India, I have faint hopes of the work being published at all. It’s too big, too massive in size and scope, it doesn’t fit any of the commercial parameters of present-day publishing, and in every sense of the word, it’s not at all a viable proposition, business-wise. I’m already resigned to the fact that my Mba will be published only in India, which means, even at the end of years of work, and a lifetime of preparation, study and effort, I won’t have much financial compensation to show for all that work.

But let’s face it, if I was only interested in the money, I’d be writing movie screenplays for a living. Or writing bestsellers. Or working in advertising or television or a more dependable-paying profession. Or at the very least, I’d have done what numerous agents and publishers abroad have urged me to do: taken only select portions of the story and written them as an ‘epic fantasy’ trilogy. One agent even said he could get me an advance matching the one he’d secured for an American fantasy author he represented: the figure in question was $10 million for three books (world rights).

Nobody decides to take on a story like the Mahabharata single-handedly and devote years to it with any expectation of financial rewards. As one reviewer said, quite eloquently in his exuberant, effusive review of my Ramayana books, I must be ‘quite mad’. It’s a wonderful madness, and I wouldn’t trade it for all the millions in fantasy publishing.

So, I have no good news for those of you waiting eagerly for my Mba to appear in stores. It will take as much time as it takes. And once it’s done, it may or may not be published. And if I’m not totally bankrupt by then (a surprisingly common circumstance in my life, despite my surname), then I’ll hopefully find the resources and support to do it again, with my next series, which is, I’m afraid, even more ambitious and less commercially promising than my Mba: A 25-volume historical fiction retelling all the major events of Indian history from the Buddha to the present-day in a sweeping epic historical narrative spanning 2500 years.

But that’s another windmill to be tilted at another day.

Warmest wishes

Ashok Banker
Lokhandwala, Mumbai, India

Update: 1 December 2007: As of now, it looks like I’m at least a year away from finishing the series. Which means that the Mba will not see print before 2009. I know a lot of you who have been waiting for a long time are going to be disappointed to hear that. What can I say? Hastinapura wasn’t built in a day–neither was Indraprastha! Sabar ka phal meetha…