Banker’s Shorts–and some long ones too!
Update (11 November 2007): The stories on the EI site are currently offline for technical reasons–some formatting errors needed to be corrected. They’ll be up again soon in a few days. Meanwhile, there’s plenty of other great content at Epic India Magazine for you to read and enjoy!
Richard Marcus, Editor of the Epic India Magazine (which I own and publish), is featuring old short stories by me.
Most of them have appeared before somewhere or other. Some have been posted to my old blog Indian English Spoken Here.
But some are being put up for the first time ever, since they were written. It’s also the first time that all of them are being put up in one place, one after the other.
So if you’re one of those who likes my work and has gone grey waiting for my next book to come out (it’s been over a year since King of Ayodhya after all, and even I’ve gone quite grey since then) you may want to drop by at Epic India Magazine and take a look.
Be warned: Some of the stories are quite graphic in language and content. And deal with intense matters, not meant for the faint-hearted, squeamish, or anyone under 18.
Go on, take a look for yourself. And who knows, sometime very soon, you might even get a look at my next novel, or two, or three…
That’s right.
Exclusive previews coming up of my new books…only on Epic India Magazine.
Why?
Arre, yaar. We are like that only.
Go on. Click, click, click.
“I have only recently discovered the true significance of the Ramayana…”
I have only recently discovered the true significance of the Ramayana thanks to Indian author, Ashok K. Banker, and his modern re-telling. I have glimpsed the true depth behind what I once thought was a simple religious story of good versus evil. A simple tale this is not, but rather a deeply complex and illuminating discourse on our very existence and the rules and codes by which we should live.
“a very unique version of the Ramayana”
There’s this book I read… a very unique version of the Ramayana- by Ashok Banker. His writing evoked pictures and scenes of the occurences in the story in my head. I even began to subconsiously plan my own movie! His writing is very vivid and colourful, and has great scope as inspirational material. This is just one scene I pictured when I read it.
“No book has touched me so much…”
No book has touched me so much since Ashok Banker’s Vertigo, another semi-autobiographical first book I picked up from a pavement bookseller in Bombay’s Churchgate. It was mid 90’s and I was a young marketing engineer in that city. I suppose it is the empathy factor that endears one to books so. Banker’s portrayal was the stuff of dark noir beyond my realm even. But the angst of youth with its attendant insecurities and also possibilities is what had me hooked. I have been following the reclusive writer’s fortunes ever since. One got to feel Bombay, raw and smelly yet strangely captivating in those mesmerizing pages.
“The legend of Rama grows enormously larger as one negotiates the army of words.”
King Of Ayodhya By Ashok K Banker
The complicated art of epic telling and retelling makes it an entangled mesh of imaginations. And the protagonists- their foresight has to be accommodated too. The protagonist of the epic, Rama, the future King of Ayodhya, hardly knows whether to smile or sigh as he crosses the living bridge of leviathans into the realm of rakshasa, “he was resigned to the knowledge that virtually everything they did would be turned into lore and legend, with all the accompanying flights of imagination and exaggeration that poetic licence allowed.� As Rama, traverses the making of his own legend he seems almost amused by what story -tellers would make of his feats as the defender of Dharma. Thousands of years later, Ashok K Banker’s retelling of the epic in the modern idiom only underscores what Rama had already envisaged.
Even if you have grown up listening to the Ramayana, each new telling will not cease to surprise you. And Banker explicates in this notes that it is through the works of Valmiki, Kamban, Tulsidas, Vyasa the tradition of telling and retelling the Ramayana began. “If it changes shape and structure, form and even content, it is because that is the nature of the story itself: it inspires the teller to bring fresh insights to each new version, bringing us even closer to understanding Rama himself.�
In the last of Banker’s Ramayana series, “King of Ayodhya�, Rama leads an army of vanars and bears onto the unassailable shores of Lanka to rescue Sita from the clutches of Ravana. No army had dared to land on the island of rakshasas before. At the behest of Ravana, the sea lord Varuna sends a tidal wave (tsunami) to destroy the bridge that they had built and kill thousands. The army manages to cross with the aid of greybacks but what awaits them is sorcerous engineering of Ravana-he commands the island of Lanka to reform into a new shape under the feet of Rama’s army killing many more. The language of the times seeps into the book-tsunami, hybrid, engineering etc..
Banker’s characterization of Ravana makes him a formidable foe but an interesting one too- the ten headed Ravana is well versed in the shlokas- he can chant them backwards, perfectly inverting every syllable to reverse the energies of Brahman. Besides being a destroyer of worlds and conqueror of realms he is artistic too, “with his many talents and gifts, he was a great artist as well, not to mention a gifted poet and musician, a connoisseur of all arts.’’ It is against such an evil force that Rama and his mortal army have to fight. In the inexorable battle of good and evil only one force will triumph….and Ravana knows there is no escaping the inevitable outcome. “This war is not about any woman, and never was. This war has been waged forever. It is the eternal war, mother of all wars. It is not merely about me, or Rama, or our differences. In another time, he and I were friends much beloved of each other: in another time, we may be so again. We shall be so. Yet in this age, and this place we are at war. And neither of us, if pressed hard, can answer honestly and truly why. For the reason goes to the very soul of ithihaas itself. And as you know the word for history means simply: That is what happened.� Explains the demon Ravana just before he leaves to keep his appointment with death.
Banker’s awe of the legend manifests in the lucidity of the composition and this is magically transported to the minds of the readers – the legend of Rama of Ayodhya grows enormously larger and larger as one negotiates the army of words.
Sold out on pre-order! 
Available only from me directly. 
Available only from me directly. 
Available only from me directly. 