SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Excerpt#4
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4
Blood pounded in Kamsa’s head with the ferocity of a kettle-drum. His vision blurred for a moment and once again he saw the same horrendous vision that had met him moments ago: The sabha hall was filled with fierce kshatriyas and mighty yoddhas, all determined to destroy him and his kin. To wipe out his entire race from the face of the earth. He recognized many of the faces as new aspects of old foes, reborn in this age for the express purpose of decimating and committing genocide upon his true blood-kin. He had met them before, in another city, another age. A place named Ayodhya, where twice before he had bravely attempted to strike a blow for his people’s cause, and had tasted the bitter fruit of their deceitful thwarting of his noble efforts. He had been in possession of a different form himself in that age and place, and been known by another name. It eluded him now, but he knew that his given name in this life simply meant ‘amsa’ of ‘K’, K being the first vowel of that ancient name and amsa being a partial rebirth, similar to an avatar. This was but the newest round of battle in an age-old conflict with the greatest enemy of his kind.
He glanced in the direction of their leader, the one who sat on the Andhaka throne bearing the raj-mukut, the crown of beaten gold that was placed upon the head of the people’s chosen leader, for the Andhaka Yadava nation was a republic in the truest sense of the word.
The being seated there glared down at him with a look of pure fury. He bore the familiar aspect and human garb of Chief-King Ugrasena, he even moved and spoke like him, shouting stern commands that he foolishly expected Kamsa to obey. Kamsa was not fooled by this clever disguise and performance. That old man seated upon the Andhaka throne was not his true sire; that honour fell to a noble being named Drumila, a powerful daitya from the netherworld. Unable to take birth in this age in his true form, he had disguised himself as the chief-king of the Andhakas, Ugrasena, and in this fleshly diguise, he had deceived Ugrasena’s wife Padmavati in younger days, siring a male-child upon her. Kamsa was that child, and he felt the rich, noble blood of his true father raging in his veins now as he did at such times, and he ignored the blathering objections and orders of Ugrasena, a feeble old man who possessed neither the will nor the strength to do what had to be done: Exterminate all enemy. Kill them where you find them, by any means possible. Yet, somewhere within Ugrasena’s incompetent form, there remained a vestige of Drumila and it was to this smriti truth that Kamsa bowed and conceded lordship.
“Fear not, father!” Kamsa said aloud, as the stunned assemblage still reeling from the shock of his bold intrusion and even bolder act of heroism turned to stare at him. “I have slain the enemy in our midst. No more will his deception veil our senses from the true nature of his evil mission!”
He saw Ugrasena blink several times as he absorbed this shouted missive. Beside him, Kamsa’s mother Padmavati, once legendary for her beauty, now a wasted shadow of her former self, covered her face and seemed to weep. Tears of joy, surely, Kamsa told himself. She must be overjoyed at my speed and boldness. His true father Drumila did not respond as Kamsa had expected either: he did not loudly hail his son’s achievement to the assembly or come to Kamsa and press him to his breast in that fierce embrace that Kamsa had craved for so often during his growing years and received so rarely. But that was only to be expected as well; in his human disguise as Ugrasena, Drumila must needs conceal his true feelings for his son. No matter. Kamsa knew his parents were proud of him and that was enough.
He executed a deep bow in the direction of the throne, and raised his head smiling.
The smile faded as he saw the crowd encircling the spot where Vasudeva had stood only moments ago, part to reveal something quite extraordinary.
Vasudeva stood as he had before, facing him. The stupid cowherd that he was, he had neither flinched nor taken evasive nor defensive action when Kamsa had flung the spear. Not that anyone could deflect or dodge a throw by Kamsa easily; but at least the man might have made an attempt. To simply stand there facing death was an act so contemptful it made Kamsa want to spit his mouthful of tobacco on the polished floor in disgust. Of course, such steadfastness might be misconstrued as heroism, a yoddha facing certain oncoming death without so much as flinching. But Kamsa knew better. The man was a coward and so unexpected and stunning was Kamsa’s action that he had no time to react. He simply stood there as the spear, flung by Kamsa with force enough to punch through armour, bone, flesh, gristle, sinew, spine, and emerge out the man’s back – he had done precisely that to other men a hundred times before and knew exactly the force, trajectory and impact of his throw – sped towards him to end his life.
The spear still stood there.
In mid air.
Before Vasudeva.
Kamsa stared, blinking several times to make sure his eyes were not still obscured by the blood from his last skirmish with some cowherds who had strayed across the demarcated border into Andhaka territory. Well, technically, they hadn’t strayed, but the heads of their cattle were pointed towards Andhaka territory, so it was obvious they intended to cross over. He had slaughtered the cowherds, and their kine, down to the last suckling calf and mother of both species. Their blood had spattered on his face, obscuring his vision, and it had taken considerable scrubbing to remove the stubborn spatters. Damn enemy blood. Burned like acid too.
But no amount of blinking or rubbing of his face made the sight vanish or change.
His spear stayed there, floating in mid air, inches from Vasudeva’s chest, its deadly barbed tip pointed precisely at the point where the breastbone met the ribcage, that soft yielding centre spot where the spear would have punched through with minimal resistance, bursting through the heart and emerging out the rear of the Sura’s body.
It just hung there, suspended by no visible means. Floating in mid air. Not floating exactly, for it did not so much as move an inch, merely hung there as if deeply imbedded in some solid object.
But I heard it strike! It hit bone and flesh and cartilege with that typical wet crunching sound they always make at this distance and force.
Then again, he was so accustomed to hearing that sound that it was possible he had simply remembered it from previous occasions. The outburst from the onlookers that exploded the instant he flung the spear had drowned out everything else, after all.
He strode towards the Sura chief-king, people stepping back or moving away, wide-eyed, to give him a wide berth.
He saw a man standing beside Vasudeva stand his ground staunchly, alongwith several others he recognized as the Sura’s clan-brothers and allied chieftains. They stared fiercely at Kamsa with the look he had seen so often before. He saw fists clench empty air, muscles tighten, jaws lock, and knew that they were prepared to take him on with their bare hands if need be. They did not worry him; he could take them on single-handedly, even if Haddi-Hathi was not there to back him up, which he was.
Kamsa stared at the spear. He walked slowly around it. He examined it from all angles.
He could not fathom how the trick had been done. The spear simply stood there, embedded solidly in…in thin air!
He took hold of the spear and grasped it. He felt a shock as it failed to budge.
He yanked down upon it, hard.
Nothing.
He pulled it to the left, then to the right, then pushed upwards. His biceps and powerful shoulder muscles bulged, and he knew that were this a lever he was pushing upon, he could have moved a boulder weighing a ton with this much effort.
Yet the spear just stayed there, as immobile as an iron rod moulded into solid rock.
It was impossible.
He looked at Vasudeva. The Sura chief-king’s face was hard, ready for anything, yet not cruel and mocking as Kamsa had expected. Not the gloating glee that a triumphant enemy ought to have displayed at such a moment.
“How!” Kamsa screamed. “By what sorcery did you do this?”
Vasudeva looked at him for a moment with eyes that seemed almost cow-like to Kamsa’s raging senses. The kettle-drums played out their mad rhythm in his blood, pounding his brain with unending waves of agony.
Then, to the sound of a shocked Aaah from the watching assemblage, Vasudeva reached out, took hold of the spear, which came free of its invisible hold as easily as if he had simply picked it up from a wall-stand. Several spectators clasped palms together and cried out “Sadhu! Sadhu!” in reverential tones – for what had happened was no less than a miracle.
And to Kamsa’s continued disbelief and amazement, the Sura chief-king held out the spear upon raised palms, the action of a man surrendering rather than opposing.
“It was not I,” Vasudeva said quietly. “But the great Lord Vishnu who did this. For it is clear that he desires our people to be at peace. Accept this as proof of his grace and a sign of his protection over all those who work to achieve Shanti upon Prithvi-loka.”
The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores October 2010!
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Excerpt#3
Start at the beginning! Click here to go to Excerpt#1.
3
Devaki shrieked as her brother threw the spear at her betrothed. Her planned union with Vasudeva had yet to be formally solemnized yet she already thought of him as her husband-in-waiting. There was no man she would be happier to unite with in matrimony than the chief-king of the Sura Yadavas. The fact that their joining would only help further the cause of peaceful alliance between the two neighbouring nations was incidental to her. She had always been a woman led by her instinct and spirit, and she knew that she would love Vasudeva deeply, indeed had come to feel great affection and admiration for him already after only a few meetings, and that mattered more to her than politics and statecraft.
She had watched with rising horror as her unruly brother stormed into the sabha hall, then proceeded to slight, dishonour, and variously embarrass her royal dynasty as well as their entire clan by his behaviour. To come thus armed and armoured was bad enough, but to bring a war elephant – especially that brutalized and perverted beast for whom she simultaneously felt pity and disgust – was a terrible act, a flagrant slap in the face of their royal guests. When Kamsa had stared at Vasudeva with that peculiar expression, she had thought that perhaps, for once, sanity and sense had percolated into that dense brain.
When Kamsa had turned, plucked out a barbed spear from the side-saddle of Haddhi-Hathi and flung it with vehement force at her husband-to-be, it shocked the life out of her and she could hardly help shrieking her dismay.
To her further amazement, Vasudeva made no move to twist, turn, dodge, avoid, or otherwise avoid the trajectory of the missile.
The spears Kamsa favoured were brutal things. Metal heads barbed in an asymmetrical pattern of recurved points, any one of which were sufficient to rip to shreds a person’s flesh and organs, and impossible to remove without further damaging the wounded individual. His aim with these inhumane missiles was so renowned, she had once seen him fling a spear at a grama chieftain in a dense milling crowd and strike the grama chieftain in the throat without touching anyone else to either side.
This time too, his aim seemed perfect. The spear was out of his hands and at Vasudeva’s chest, poised to shatter the Sura chief-king’s unprotected breastbone and destroy his heart, killing him instantly.
Her shriek was echoed by an outburst of like screams and shouts of dismay, male as well as female, from across the crowded sabha hall. The distance from Kamsa’s hand to Vasudeva’s chest was barely twenty yards, and the spear flew that distance in a fraction of a moment, yet in later years, as the legend grew, it would be said by some that the spear had slowed in mid air as if travelling through water or against a powerful headwind, rather than simply across empty stillness.
If such a phenomenon truly occurred or if it was merely a product of the active imagination of those watching, she would never know for certain. For no sooner had the spear flown than a man rushed forward, blocking Devaki’s view. It was Akrur, a close friend and ally of Vasudeva and a chief scriptor of the peace alliance between the Sura and Andhaka nations. Later she would learn that he had attempted to fling himself into the path of the onrushing spear, to take the death that was meant for Vasudeva, but at that instant, all she knew was that his body blocked her view and, as if galvanized by Akrur’s action and the violence that had abruptly exploded into a peaceful event, everybody else began moving as well, further obscuring her ability to see.
She saw only bodies and moving heads, none belonging to Vasudeva. But even above the cacophony of shouts and exclamations that had erupted, she heard one sound clearly. The sound of the spear striking flesh and bone came to her like a half-remembered nightmare that would plague the deep watches of restless sleep for many moon-months to come. This sound she would remember because, with her vision obscured, she sincerely believed that it was the sound of her brother’s ill-intentioned spear shattering the bone and flesh of her beloved betrothed; the sound of widowhood even before her nuptials could be completed. It would haunt her until another, far more terrible sound replaced it for sheer nightmarish horror. But that other sound still lay in the future. For now, the sound of metal flung at great velocity shattering bone and splintering it like matchwood, flesh and fluid resounding wetly from the impact, were a horror beyond all imagining. She shrieked again, and would have flung herself forward, directly at her brother, whom unfortunately, she retained a clear view of, and who stood in the centre of the hall, like one of the many stone pillars marching in even rows to either side, like a general flanked by marching cohorts.
In that instant of panic and terror, she saw him turn his head at the sound of her voice. For it was his name she was shrieking. “Kamsa!” His eyes found her in the melee and locked on her briefly. The malice and glee she saw therein, the sheer lascivious delight at what he had just done, was in such start contrast to the awestruck expression he had exhibited only moments earlier, that she could not help thinking, as she had a thousand times over the years, My brother is no mortal man, he is a rakshasa reborn in mortal form. For even if a mortal man had done such an act, for whatever the reason, surely he could not have such an expression on his face, a look that was more demoniac than anything the most imaginative artists and sculptors could conjure up when recreating scenes from the legendary wars against the rakshasas in the Last Asura Wars or that even more legendary battle of Lanka waged by the great King Rama Chandra of Ayodhya. Kamsa could have modelled for those artists and sculptors yet none would have possessed sufficient skill or art to capture the sheer malevolence of the look his face bore at this moment.
Then the moment passed, and he turned back to look in Vasudeva’s direction, no doubt to gloat over the new murder he had just added to his epic tally. And Devaki wished at that moment she had a spear of her own within reach, for she would have surely flung it at this instant, and to hell with filial loyalty and feminine propriety. Just because Andhaka women were no longer permitted to go to battle did not mean they were good only for the bhojanshalya and bedchamber. A daughter of raj-kshatriyas, she had been trained and schooled in the arts of war as thoroughly as her brother. Better, probably, for she had not been banished from Guru sdiekdckcid’s ashram as a child as Kamsa had been for incorrigible behaviour. But of course, there were no weapons here and even at the peak of outrage, Devaki could not simply murder her own brother, however just her motive under dharma.
But in her mind, she flung a barb of retaliation no less deadly and far more portentous: Someday, my brother, your reign of brutality will end. And mine shall be the hand that flings the spear that ends it. This I swear here and now, by Kali-Maa, avenger of the oppressed.
Then she pushed her way through the crowd, desperate to go to Vasudeva’s side, if only to offer her lap for his head in his last moment. The crowd did not resist her for everyone there knew what she was to the Sura chief-king and they stepped aside willingly to let her through. She reached the circle that surrounded Vasudeva and looked upon a heart-stopping sight.
Click here to read more excerpts!
The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores October 2010!
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Excerpt#2
Start at the beginning! Click here to go to Excerpt#1.
2
The massive oak doors of the banquet hall flew open as if struck by a battering ram. They swivelled inwards on smoothly oiled tracks and crashed against the stone walls, swatting aside the guards milling about the entrance. Vasudeva glanced up from his meal just in time to see a young soldier’s foot caught by the lower bolt of one door, dragged to the wall, then crushed against the relentless stone with a bone-crunching impact that left the poor fellow’s face white.
The other guards, milling about jovially until now, caught up in the festive atmosphere, responded belatedly joining their lances and challenging the rude entrants. The armored bull elephant that trundled into the banquet hall paid no heed to their shouted challenges. It was armored in the fashion of Andhaka Hathi-Yodhhas, the dreaded war elephants of the Andhaka clan, its head couched in a formidably moulded headpiece bristling with spikes that made it resemble some demon out of myth, its tusks capped with brass horns tapering to spearlike protrusions, and rows of ugly spikes decorating its sides.
Vasudeva had seen the havoc that these Hathi-Yodhhas left in their wake during close combat. His heart lurched at the thought of what destruction even a single such monster could wreak in a confined, crowded space such as this hall. The dried brownish smears on the elephant’s armourplating left no doubt that its aggressive appearance was not merely for decoration. This particular Hathi-Yodhha had seen active combat this very day and had taken lives in that action. Vasudeva prayed silently that they were not Sura lives, then felt mean and small for having thought so. All life was precious, all humanity united in brotherhood. No matter whose blood lay dried upon the armourplate of this Hathi-Yodhha, it was a death he would not have wished upon anyone.
Supremely confident in its strength and tonnage, the hathi trundled forward without heed for the puny sipahis waving their spears before it. Its flailing trunk, pierced with studs, knocked three of the sipahis carelessly to the floor, then it proceeded to pound their prostrate forms with its leaden feet. The sipahis convulsed and screamed, the screams cut abruptly short as the massive grey feet smashed their heads with practised ease, spilling their lives onto the polished marble floor. Gasps and exclamations of protest met this callous life-taking.
The Hathi-Yodhha swung its massive head from side to side, checking for more challengers before covering the last few yards into the centre of the banquet hall. The surviving gate-guards, brave though they were, shuffled aside hastily, their faces blanching at the fate of their companions. Even the lot of them combined could hardly expect to face a battle-ready war elephant, and this, as they well knew, was no ordinary war elephant. This was the feared and hated Haddi-Hathi himself, named for the pleasure he was rumored to take in crushing human bone. It only made things worse that the elephant, like its rider, was on their side. Theoretically speaking at least.
In fact, Vasudeva thought grimly, they had more to fear from their kinsman mounted on the elephant’s back than from the hathi itself.
That heavily muscled figure, clad in blood-spattered brass armor to make himself resemble an outgrowth of the elephant rather than a separate being, was none other than the universally feared and hated master of Haddi-Hathi, Prince Kamsa himself, evidently returned from a new campaign of reaving and ravaging. Vasudeva glanced around to see his aides-de-camp, indeed his entire entourage of clansmen, all reaching instinctively for their swords and maces. They found no weapons: the party had divested itself of its metal implements at the gates of the keep before entering at dawn in accordance with the terms of the treaty. But even so, their faces and clenched fists betrayed their rage at the sight of the man mounted atop the elephant. That man–nay, that beast, for he was more truly an animal than the creature astride which he sat–had left his bloody handprint upon the spotless reputation of every last one of the Sura houses represented here.
Over the last few years, none of these proud clanschief families had escaped the rapacious raids and ruthless violence of Prince Kamsa and his Marauders. Vasudeva raised his hands to quell the muttered noises of provocation rising from his party, feeling the desire for justful revenge that swelled in their proud warrior hearts. He himself, as king and chief justice of the Suras, had grown heartsick at hearing the numberless atrocities committed by the prince of the Andhakas and his White-clad mercenaries. Their exploits far exceeded any conceivable desire for revenge or simple war-lust; their’s was a campaign of brute destructiveness.
The list of war crimes, in utter violation of all Arya warrior codes, streamed past his memory’s eye like a herd of sheep impatient to return to the stockade before duskfall: women kin violated, homes and herds put to the torch, entire families wiped out overnight…yes, the White Prince had much to answer for. But that reckoning would not be here, or now. King Vasudeva kept his hands raised to either side, and his clansmen subsided reluctantly, their faces still dark with angry blood.
Atop the blood-marked elephant, Prince Kamsa’s proud, handsome face turned from side to side, his piercing gray-blue eyes sweeping the length of the banquet hall, briefly and contemptuously scanning the faces of his many enemies assembled here. He lingered briefly on the women, dressed in colourful and enticing festive garb. The leering grin that twisted his face betrayed his utter lack of respect for any regal protocol.
Even Vasudeva felt his jaw clench as the prince stared with rude intensity at an attractive woman amidst the throng of richly clad nobility only two tables down. That was Lady Pritha, Vasudeva’s own sister, who had travelled here from her home at Hastinapura. Her husband Pandu had been unable to attend due to his ill health, but Pritha’s presence was official and was more than sufficient to prove the solidarity of the great Kuru nation. The unbecoming stare that Prince Kamsa directed at her, a leer actually, was offensive in the extreme.
Vasudeva’s own hands clenched into fists as he struggled to restrain his own warring emotions. What manner of beast was this man, that he would storm thus into his own keep’s banquet hall in bloody armor, dash down his own loyal kin-soldiers, insult a noblewoman under the protection of his father’s hospitality? Often had he heard the tales whispered along the length of the Yamuna among the many clans and sub-clans of the Yadava nation. It was said that Kamsa was a rakshasa begot upon his mother Padmavati by a demon who assumed the form of his father Ugrasena. Vasudeva was a man of rationality and science not given to superstition. Yet, looking at those almost translucent greyish blue eyes that glared at the gathered nobles and chieftains with such unbridled hostility, he could almost believe the gossip. Rage and violence exuded from Kamsa like heatwaves from a boiling kettle.
Then Kamsa’s gaze sought out and settled upon Vasudeva himself. And his entire aspect changed so suddenly, it was almost as if he had seen something quite different from merely the king of the Suras.
As if he’s seeing some terrible foe rather than just me, standing here over-dressed in my ceremonial robes, Vasudeva thought. Kamsa took a step back, then another, and Vasudeva thought he saw something akin to…fear?…cross the prince’s otherwise handsome face. Kamsa’s magnificently wrought arms rippled with muscle beneath the chainmail armour he wore.
Vasudeva was caught off guard by the look on Kamsa’s face. What had the feared reaver of the great and powerful Andhaka clan to fear from a simple peace-loving man like Vasudeva?
The stunned silence in the hall gave way to surprised whispering as the assemblage took note of Kamsa’s strange reaction to seeing Vasudeva. At the same moment the Haddhi-Hathi raised his trunk and issued a bleating call that oddly echoed Kamsa’s own mixture of awe and terror. The sound served to snap the Andhaka Prince out of his reverie.
At once, his face changed. The fearful, awe-struck expression dissipated and was replaced instantly by a mask of such inscrutable blankness that it was beyond mere anger or even fury. This expression Vasudeva was much more familiar with. It was the mask a warrior wore when he prepared to launch an attack on the battlefield, severing his normal human self from the battle machine he was about to become.
But it was that glimpse into Kamsa’s naked inner self that caught Vasudeva’s attention. Yes, that look had been unmistakably an expression of fear. He was still pondering the meaning of that expression when Kamsa issued a loud curse, raised a barbed spear, and flung it with a roar of fury–directly at Vasudeva’s breast.
Click here to continue reading excerpts!
The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores September 2010!
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Excerpt#1
KAAND 1
1
King Vasudeva raised aloft the ceremonial sceptre of the Sura nation. The rod, shaped to resemble a cowherd’s crook, was impressively cast in solid gold, studded with precious gems at the curve of the handle. It caught a bar of morning sunlight streaming in from a slatted window high upon the vaulting walls of the Andhaka palace and gleamed. Beside him, King Ugrasena of Andhaka also raised his own rajtaru. The Andhaka sceptre was no less impressive than that of the Suras.
Both rajtarus–the Sanskrit word literally meant kingsrods–refracted the strengthening sunlight, sending shards and slivers flashing to the farthest corners of the great hall. A calico tomcat curled in the south corner closed his eyes to slits and bared his teeth, peering against the blinding gleam of the rajtarus. The well-fed palace cat’s expression resembled nothing so much as a satiated grin.
The watching assemblage crowding the sabha hall to the limit of its capacity, each lord and lady resplendent in their finery, blinked, then caught their breaths. The sight of the two lieges standing on the throne dais, their traditional rajtarus raised and glittering in the sunlight, presented a startling tableau. To some of the older clanschiefs in the great hall, it was a sight they had never believed they would witness as long as they lived: two ancient enemies, sovereigns of two of the wealthiest herding nations in the great land of Aryavarta, standing together with sceptres, not swords, aloft! Could it be true? Surely it was merely maya? That sight–nay, that vision–could not be real, could it? After generations of cross-border blood feuds, broken only by intermittent outbreaks of war, after so much bloodshed and bitter enmity, after so many failed peace summits and parleys, after so much bloody history had stained the pure soil of both nations, polluting the sacred river Yamuna with the offal of vengeful violence, could peace finally be at hand?
Most of the assemblage, as well as the enormous throng crowding the palace grounds without, doubted it severely. Suspicious frowns creased the faces of many clanschiefs, ministers and merchant lords. Only a few hopeful souls smiled beatifically and fingered their rudraksh-bead rosaries, silently chanting slokas to ensure the fruition of this historic pact.
There were few such personages; the golden age of brahmanism had long since ebbed, and the long-dreaded age of Kali-Yuga was imminent, the dark prophesied age of Iron and Death. Most doubted that this historic pact, wrought after months of anxiety and expectation, would last, or that it would be honoured at all. Yet even the most sceptical of ministers, the most cynical of generals, even the hardened veterans who had somehow survived through the first violent decades of this dark age, prayed as fervently as their brahmin brethren. For while few believed, all hoped. All desired. If it could somehow be brought to pass, if the Devas truly saw fit to grant them this release, then they would accept peace, nay, embrace it, with all the warmth and welcome they could muster.
So, when both kings brought their rajtarus together in an inverted V, touching the gem-studded crooks lightly together, every citizen, high and low, watched with bated breath. Even the calico tomcat, stretching himself in preparation for a foray into the royal bhojanshalya–he smelled the unmistakable, delectable fragrance of sweetwater fish being grilled in the palace bhojanshalyas–paused and turned his head, smelling the sour sweat of hesitant hopes and anxious prayers in the close air. The rhythmic martial count of the dhol-drums underscored the whole scene, omnipresent in the background, like a giant unified heartbeat, marking the four-by-four count to which all Arya ceremonies were performed.
King Vasudeva’s soft tenor blended with King Ugrasena’s aging gruffness as both kings recited the ceremonial sloka aloud, each line cued to them by whispering pundits seated behind the dais. The sacred flame, symbol of the firelord Agni, flared up brightly as a purohit, one of the many ceremonial priests who oversaw the arcana of traditional rites and customs, tossed a ladle of ghee onto the chaukat. The flames shot up almost to the raised sceptres, licking briefly at the point of their unity. Sunlight above, fire below. It was an impressive and auspicious moment, brilliantly and meticulously conceived and staged by the purohits of both nations. To the dwindling brahmins of Aryavarta, such occasions grew more precious with each passing decade, as the world turned away from the old ways and traditions. For the duration of this ceremony, the pomp and grandeur of Aryavarta, literally the Noble and Proud, would shine as brightly as a beacon fed by the light of brahman shakti itself. The chanting of the two kings rose to a peak, ending with a final sloka that seemed to echo from the very stone walls of the sabha hall. This last bit of theatrical magic was wrought by the brahmins again, strategically positioned at the far walls of the hall, joining in with the chanting of the kings at the penultimate quartet, raising their voices–to match the raised voices of the well-rehearsed kings–until it seemed that the world entire spoke the sacred Sanskrit verses.
||yadrcchya copapannah svarga-dvaram apavrtam||
||sukhinah ksatriya partha labhante yuddham idrsam||
The chanting died away, the omnipresent drumbeats fading away at precisely that instant. Into the sudden silence that followed, the watching assemblage could hear the cracking and snapping of the sacred flame as the purohit fed it incessantly with ladlespoons of the sanctified ghee. The faces of the kings had grown warm from the heat of the flames, a few beads of sweat standing out on the clean-shaven good looks of the young King Vasudeva and the tips of the grey-shot beard of aging King Ugrasena.
Moving in perfect unison, they lowered their rajtarus until the inverted V assumed its correct shape. The crooks of the sceptres dipped directly into the flames themselves, and the purohit ceased his ghee-tossing to allow the sacred fire to quell itself somewhat lest the kings lose the skin from their arms. The beads of perspiration swelled and then rolled down their over-heated faces as both monarchs kept the crooks of their rajtarus held in the fire just long enough to let the heat travel up to their bare hands.
Finally, the royal purohit gave the word quietly enough so that only the kings could catch it, and both lieges broke their stances, stepping around the fire. They exchanged sceptres, each handing over his proof of kingship at the exact same time as he accepted the other’s royal seal. This was handled with surprising ease, considering that both rajtarus were blistering hot by now. The watching assemblage could hardly know that both kings had had their hands anointed with a special colourless herbal paste prior to their ceremony, or that the near-invisible paste obscured the transmission of heat quite effectively.
The sight of the red-hot rajtarus being exchanged and then held aloft, to allow every individual in the hall a chance to see this momentous event, seared itself into the minds of all present. The painstakingly staged ceremony had served its purpose. Then, with obvious relief, and great smiles cracking their tense faces, the two kings embraced.
The crowd released its breath. Upon the fortified palace battlements, waiting courtiers blew long and hard on their conch shell trumpets. The low mournful calling of the conches filled the air for hundreds of yojanas, echoed from end to end of both kingdoms, calling the most welcome news in over two centuries. Peace. Shanti. Outside the Andhaka palace walls, the waiting crowd, now swelled to several tens of thousands, broke into a ragged roar that almost drowned out the conches. Royal criers rode out through the avenues and streets, pausing at corners to shout out the news in Sanskrit then in commonspeak, officially confirming the details of the peace pact. Stone pillars, carved and ready for weeks, were hastily but ceremoniously erected at strategic spots in the capital city and at crossroads along the national kingsroad, setting down the same details for posterity–or at least as long as stone and wind and rain would allow, which would probably be a millennium or two.
Sadly, the peace pact itself would not last a fraction of that time.
Click here to read the next excerpt from SLAYER OF KAMSA
The fantastic adventures of the Hindu God Krishna have entertained and inspired people for millennia. Playful cowherd, mischievous lover, feared demon-slayer, the legendary exploits of this super-being in human form rival the most rousing fantasy epics. Now, the author of the Ramayana Series®, the hugely successful epic retelling of the ancient Sanskrit poem, works his magic once again with the tales of Krishna. All the pomp, splendor and majesty of ancient India come alive in this extraordinary eight-book series.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
The Krishna Coriolis: Book 1
Click here to request a signed copy (limited availability)
The Harper mass market edition will be in Indian bookstores October 2010!
SLAYER OF KAMSA excerpts start next this week
Excerpts from SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis will be posted here next this week onwards. Not sure of the exact date. Excerpts will start from Wednesday 1st September onwards! There will also be a special contest based on a few simple questions related to the excerpts – the prizes will be free signed copies of the book! Be here or beware! (Lol.)
Okay, here goes! Excerpts from Slayer of Kamsa will run for the next several days, starting tomorrow morning 8 a.m. Indian Standard Time (IST). As the chapters are short, I’ll be posting two chapters each day for a week! The chapters will go up each day at 8 a.m. IST. After the excerpts are done, I’ll run a simple contest as usual, and winners will get free signed copies of the book delivered by courier, no strings attached. 
A good book takes time, a better book takes a while longer…
Update on The Valmiki Syndrome, my first major non-fiction book, being published by Random House India. While my editor and publisher Chiki Sarkar was very pleased with the finished manuscript and even sent me a thank-you note (shown alongside) on completion of writing and editing, I have since decided to scrap that draft and return to the drawing writing board. Why, you may wonder? After all, the book was written and rewritten several times already (five complete drafts, by my count, not including numerous minor rewrites, additions, deletions, etc), edited line-by-line by one of the most prominent editor-publishers in the country and scheduled for publication in October. The cover was ready, the printer waiting, the sales and PR team ready and eager to launch the book. And it’s true, most if not almost all writers would have yielded to commercial constraints and let the book be published. After all, if the editor and publisher was happy with the book, what was the problem?
The problem was that I wasn’t happy. I felt that while the manuscript ‘worked’ in its present form, and worked quite well, it wasn’t the book I had originally set out to write. There were many things I had been unable to include for various reasons, and many things that had crept in that read very well but which I felt were extraneous to the main argument. Also, I felt the book had become a bit too commercial, too glib.
So I’ve decided to rewrite it from scratch. Throw out the entire final draft that was about to go to the press and start from word one, page one, all over again. I feel this is the only way to get back to the original vision I had of the book, and try to come as close to it as possible. I’ve done this before by the way – I threw out the first draft of Prince of Ayodhya and started from scratch with a totally different beginning, back in 2000. I wrote an entirely different science fictional version of my Krishna series back in 2004-05 (some of you have even read it and given me feedback on it, thanks for that). And of course, I’ve written as many as ten different beginnings to my Mba series before finally settling on the phinal-phinal one, which goes into the publication pipeline in October, by the way.
But this is the first time I’ve scrapped an entire book – after the editor, publisher and entire publishing team were ready to publish and launch the book. I’m doing it in another instance too, by the way, with my old 1994 novel Byculla Boy, which I’ve been rewriting from scratch, again trying to get back to the original vision of the book that I had. I feel it’s the only way to produce the best book possible.
And that is the only goal an author should have, isn’t it? To produce the best book possible, no matter what.
Thankfully, Chiki Sarkar of Random House India, who is a visionary editor in her own right and who has been a part of The Valmiki Syndrome project since it was just a germ of an idea, has been more than sympathetic and understanding, and despite trying hard to convince me that our final draft was good enough for publication (and failing), has now agreed to give me the extra time and opportunity to rewrite the book to satisfy my own high expectations.
Will I succeed this time around? I think so. I’ve spent enough time with this book and done enough work on it to know what’s wrong and how it can be set right. And I’ve done this kind of overhaul enough times in my four-decades-long writing career to know it can be done and often results in the best work of all. So here I go again! Wish me luck. And oh, just by the way, The Valmiki Syndrome will not be in bookstores this October as originally announced. I’m not sure when it will be out – perhaps late 2011, probably even sometime in 2012. I’ll keep you updated once I finish the new, final version and Chiki Sarkar accepts and approves it! Which would be sometime early next year.
Until then, you’ll have SLAYER OF KAMSA to read, my only publication in 2011, and a very slim book at that, but even so, well worth the exclusivity!
Slayer of Kamsa: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis
Here’s the final front cover of the mass market paperback edition of SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis, published in September by HarperCollins India under their Harper imprint. I really love what designer-illustrator Pinaki De has done with the colours and texturing and graphics. Initially, I was concerned that there were too many elements and colours but once he changed the colour scheme and added the layers of texture, all my doubts vanished. Now, I love this cover! It’s now officially my favourite cover of all my books and their various editions – and when you consider that there are over one hundred editions of over a dozen books, that’s a LOT of covers.
This is the cover flat (the full cover including the back, spine and front laid out flat) – the text blurbs have yet to be added on the back cover as well as the spine text, publisher logos, ISBNs, etc. The book is scheduled to go to press in mid-August so I hope to receive my copies by end-August or first week September, probably just a day or three before you start seeing them pop up in your neighbourhood bookstore. Less than a month now to the start of my long-awaited Krishna Coriolis series! It’s been in the writing stage since 2004 and as you know by now, it tells the life story of Krishna while also overlapping with some incidents of the Mahabharata. In fact, the Harivamsa of Vyasa which provides us with most biographical information about Krishna is a part of the Vyasa Mahabharata itself. When I realized back in 2004-05 that my Mba retelling was growing too huge to fit into one series, I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great Krishna-Dweipayana Vyasa and split the Krishna story into a separate series. And here it is now.
Excerpts will start around mid-August, probably 16th August, to whet your appetite for the book’s release in September. Mark your calendars and keep in touch!
Vengeance of Ravana: Book 7 of The Ramayana Series – on the path to publication
This is the almost final cover design for the Penguin India edition of VENGEANCE OF RAVANA: Book 7 of The Ramayana. I’m posting it here along with some good news. The first is that I have finally resolved the textual issues I had with the manuscripts of VoR and SoS and as a result I’ve finally (finally-finally-finally!) decided that both books ought to be published. This means that the series will end at eight books, not six or seven, and that I have finally been able to deal with the Sita banishment issue in a manner with which I feel satisfied. It’s only taken me six years – which is longer than it took me to write the first six books in the series! But it’s done. VoR will be released in a mass market edition by Penguin in a few months, followed within three months by the mass market edition of SoS. I’ll confirm publication dates once Penguin informs me of the same.
For those of you – “you few, you happy few!” – who’ve bought and read the exclusive limited signed AKB BOOKS edition of VoR and have ordered the exclusive limited signed AKB BOOKS edition of SoS, this may not be reason to jump up and down, which is bad for your joints anyway. But for the vast majority of Ramayana Series readers out there, I’m sure you will be happy to see why I chose to rescind my own earlier decision to end the series at six books and chose to continue it in these two additional volumes. I can’t promise that the answers I provide in these two books will please everyone. Indeed, they may please no one. Because the point of writing these books is not to please or displease, it’s simply to complete the mental journey I embarked upon when I began writing Prince of Ayodhya and finished that first book way back in the year 2000, long before any publisher was willing to even look at such a manuscript, let alone publish it. Today, I have journalists, readers, editors, booksellers, publishers and others who keep writing to me and telling me that I’m responsible for a wave of resurgence in Indian mythology. I really don’t give a damn about any resurgence or the commercial ramifications of making mythology “cool” as one editor put it. What I do care about is the wealth of great Indian literature that has been ignored by the world for so long in favour of other mythologies and legends of the western hemisphere and that deserves a wider readership and exposure.
As I’ve always said to anyone who praised me for the series: This is not about me. It’s not my story alone. It’s our story. Our history in fact. I’m proud and happy to have been the one to retell it in my humble and flawed attempt. But I’m not anyone special or talented for having done it, just a product of a great culture and people that share one of the world’s finest storytelling traditions. In my opinion, the finest.
Unbuttoning Don Draper: Who’re These Mad Men?
One of the best television series currently on air, perhaps even the best television series ever. Does that sound like high praise? Well, it’s not meant to sound competitive – there are other shows that are also the best in their own way. Breaking Bad is excellent too, if a bit downbeat and often downright depressing. But if you judge a story by its storyteller’s intentions – or our perception of his or her intentions – then Mad Men clearly aspires not merely to excellence or even mere perfection, but to greatness. Showrunner Matthew Weiner is clearly the most brilliant television storyteller working in the biz right now, in my humble opinion, and his mind and vision make Mad Men the most accomplished television drama ever, also in my opinion. You have to watch it to know what I mean. Season Four started last night (Sunday night) in the US and if the first episode is anything to go by, it heralds yet another triumphant achievement in a long-standing series of triumphs. It doesn’t matter if you don’t care for advertising, or if you think the Sixties America portrayed in the series is sexist, racist, homophobic, etc, etc – which it clearly is, no question about it – or if you don’t like everything about the show, or even anything about it. The point is, this is a show that creates a fictional world that is a mirror to history and lets it speak for itself…and walk and talk and dance and sing and live and die. All on its own. There is no sermonizing, no political correction, no social commentary, no critique of the past – just great storytelling, and great television. Take it as it is, play it as it lays.
The show has already passed beyond mere television excellence to become a cultural icon. After a slew of awards and near-iconic status for its principal creators and performers – Jon Hamm is like today’s Gregory Peck, a star and legend in his own right – Mad Men is now inspiring a slew of books on the era, all linked to the series. The best among them seems to be Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America by Natasha Vargas-Cooper. The author was interviewed this week by New Yorker Magazine and I found her insights into the show as well as on the period to be fascinating. Here’s an excerpt:
“Mad Men,” which returns to AMC this Sunday night, is a television show that sometimes thinks it’s a novel—in particular, a John Cheever novel. Like Cheever, the Draper family lives in Ossining, New York, and their colorful address—42 Bullet Park Road—is an allusion to one of the author’s novels. The literary references don’t end with Cheever. The characters on “Mad Men” read almost as much as they smoke, drink, and cheat. Bert Cooper extols the virtues of Ayn Rand, Don Draper broods over Frank O’Hara’s poetry, and the secretaries at Sterling Cooper furtively pass around an “unexpurgated” copy of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” warning each other not to read it on the train because “it’ll attract the wrong element.”
Read the full interview with Natasha Vargas-Cooper at The New Yorker website.
SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis – Book your copy now!
Courtesy of designer Pinaki De and Editor Saugata Mukherjee, here are two sneak peaks of the almost-final cover design of the Harper edition of SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis, published by HarperCollins India. It will be available in all Indian bookstores in September. If you want the AKB Books Signed Limited Edition Hardcover, all you have to do is fill up the AKB Books Request Form to book your copy. (No advance payment required.)
Sons of Sita, Slayer of Kamsa, Dance of Govinda…and Mba: Book 1
Update: Corrected from 5 to 4 titles based on availability.
Just a reminder to use the AKB Books Request Form to book your limited signed copies of the above titles. This particular list of my next 4 titles will stay online until 31st August 2010. After that, a new list will be put up which will be valid for the next three or four months. And so on. Due to the number of my published titles and the high demand, I am not able to offer signed copies of previous books at present, just the titles listed above. Each of these will be limited signed (but not personalized) editions and once this limited stock is over, these titles will not be available again! So book your signed copy now and don’t miss your chance to be one of very few readers worldwide to own one!
And in case you were wondering, it doesn’t cost you a rupee (or even a paisa) to book these copies!
One for The Road
When any commercial publishing category or genre becomes as ubiquitous as the word ubiquitous itself, it’s time to deal it a swift kick-in-the-nuts send-up. What better way to do it than by satirizing the work itself? This being the year, if not the millennium of the post-apocalyptic epic EOW (End of World) thriller, it’s a particularly good time to pull down the shorts on some of the genre’s bigger successes. Now, I’m actually a great fan of Cormac McCarthy, and he’s about as far from the cash-in-on-the-bandwagon kind of author as you can possibly get. But Jacob Lambert‘s hilarious send-up of McCarthy’s brilliant post-apocalyptic novel The Road on the literary blog The Millions is to die for. Check out this excerpt:
An hour later they were on The Road, an Oprah’s Book Club selection. He pushed the cart and both he and the boy carried knapsacks in case they had to make a run for it. Cannibal rapists, roving bloodcults. Greenpeace volunteers. In the knapsacks were essential things: tins of food, metal utensils, a broken Slinky, a canopener, three bullets, a picture of ham. He looked out over the barren waste, the scorpled remain. The road was empty, as was its wont. Quiet, moveless. Are you okay? he said, quotation marks dead as the reeds. The boy nodded. Then they started down the road, humming a sprightly tune. The tune was silent, and unsprightly.
Read the complete spoof of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road at The Millions.
Dancing with Govinda, Slaying with Krishna
And, coming close on the heels of the glowing praise from Chiki Sarkar of Random House India after completing work on my first major non-fiction book The Valmiki Syndrome, here’s another outpouring of compliments from Saugata Mukherjee, my editor at HarperCollins India who will be publishing SLAYER OF KAMSA: Book 1 of The Krishna Coriolis, my retelling of the life and adventures of Krishna and also a companion series to my Mba. Saugata sent me a very warmly worded email after reading the final draft of DANCE OF GOVINDA: Book 2 of The Krishna Coriolis recently. I’ve only edited out the other business-related matters, but didn’t need to edit a single word or phrase of negative comment on the two books – because there were none!
Spent most of last evening reading this – it’s got everything in equal measure to make it a blockbuster! It’s simply unputdownable (probably also because I am at the end of the KAMSA edits) and I can see you’ll probably lead a whole new generation of readers into mythologies but in a cool, contemporary way. Also, on the other hand, I feel SLAYER will in many ways bring back a lot of AB (not the grand oldman of Bollywood!) lovers – it’s a perfect first book for a series like KRISHNA…there’s hardly much I can do to enhance the readability of the book, since it is quite beautifully written.
A Note From The Editor
The above came to me with gifts of free books, including a lovely limited edition hardcover of a Murakami novel, from my Editor at Random House India, Chiki Sarkar, on completion of the editing of my first major non-fiction book The Valmiki Syndrome. I guess this means she likes it!
Dear Ashok,
A small gift to show my appreciation. It’s been a really great experience working with you and you’ve been a dream to edit.
Wish best wishes,
Chiki
July 10, New Delhi
News and Updates: The latest from the Bankerverse (again)
As with the last update on 11th June, those of you who’ve been keeping tabs on the right-hand News & Updates column may not find many surprises here. But there was one important announcement that wasn’t in that last update and a couple of minor ones, so here goes…
Waiting eagerly for my next books? Book your copies now!
AKB Books, the limited signed editions of a few select titles of my work, available exclusively via this website, are all currently sold out. However, if you wish to ensure your copy of any forthcoming AKB Books title, all you have to do is fill in the Request Form to book your copies! Don’t worry about payment – you will be contacted once the book is available and informed of the necessary details.
AKB MBA is on its way at last!
After all the ups and downs of the past several months (and years), I have finally found a way to share my Mahabharata retelling with all those of you interested in reading it. No, it still won’t be mass published and distributed in bookstores worldwide – I’ve already explained earlier why that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon – but it will be available from this website in a few months, before the end of this year. If you wish to ensure your copy, please fill in the Request Form now, and keep in touch with this website from time to time.
THE VALMIKI SYNDROME
Next in line for publication is THE VALMIKI SYNDROME, my first major non-fiction book being published by Random House India in a few months. As mentioned earlier, I have chosen not to offer any sneak peeks, previews or sample chapters from this book, unlike all my earlier titles. In fact, I’m not saying a word about this book until it’s released! You’ll just have to wait and see what it’s about.
SLAYER OF KAMSA
As outlined in my Epic India Library plan, my Mba Series will run in parallel with the Krishna Coriolis. While my Mba will be available exclusively via this website, the Krishna Coriolis series will be on bookshelves across India, thanks to HarperCollins India, the publishers! The first book, SLAYER OF KAMSA, will be out in stores before the end of 2010. The series is an action-packed retelling of the life and adventures of Lord Krishna from before his birth until after his death on the mortal plane, written in a narrative style suitable for Young Adult readers. The Krishna books will be much shorter than the Ramayana Series books and written in a far more compact and thrilling narrative style. SLAYER OF KAMSA will be followed soon after by DANCE OF GOVINDA. These first two books in the series will follow Krishna’s story from before his birth until the day he confronts and kills Kamsa. I’ll post excerpts as well as the cover design here sometime in August. So don’t forget to check back!
SONS OF SITA
Delayed but not forgotten! My seemingly interminable revisions are finally approaching an end. As I’ve mentioned earlier, after considerable thought, I decided to cancel mass market publication of Vengeance of Ravana, extract a substantial portion of that book (VoR) and add it to the manuscript of SoS. That required a fair amount of revision and rewriting, hence the delay. Many of you have pre-ordered copies of SoS and have been waiting eagerly for them. Once again, apologies for the delay and thanks for your patience. SONS OF SITA will be available in its signed limited AKB Books Edition in August. For those of you who have been asking, there will be a few copies of VENGEANCE OF RAVANA also available. Please note that I’m unable to inform each person individually by email, so you will have to keep in touch with this website for further updates.
PRINCE OF AYODHYA, the Graphic Novel
The first volume of my long-awaited graphic novel adaptation of my Ramayana Series, written by me and illustrated by Argentinian artist Enrique (Quique) Alcatena is ready to enter the publication pipeline. Those of you who have seen sample artwork from this comic or have been following its development for the past several years will be aware how much work and patience has gone into its creation. I will confirm publication dates in a month or two, once I know for sure.
TEN KINGS
My first historical battle epic, TEN KINGS based on the Dasarajna incident in the Rig Veda, has been bought by new imprint Amaryllis Books in a very good deal. Thanks to Jay and Priya of Jacaranda, and Sanjana Roy Choudhury, Chief Editor of Amaryllis! TEN KINGS will also be my first book published in Hindi and other Indian languages. The book is currently scheduled for mass market publication in January 2011. If you thought my Ramayana Series was good, and if you think my Krishna books are action-packed and fast-paced, then just wait until you read TEN KINGS. It’s by far my best book ever. A great story, a magnificent battle epic, and a historic saga of the founding of the Bharata nation.
THE KALI QUARTET
A BLOOD RED SAREE opens my first contemporary fiction series, The Kali Quartet. This is a global thriller featuring three strong women protagonists who are caught up in a major financial conspiracy involving financial institutions secretly profiting from human trafficking. This is likely to be my next internationally published series as well and currently, my agents are fielding offers from Indian publishers for subcontinental rights. I’ll update when I know more, but look at this as my next major work for the next few years, now that my Ramayana Series, Mba, Krishna Series are all complete and in the publication pipeline. It’s also, in my humble opinion, my best work ever!
More news and updates every month from now on…
A BLOOD RED SAREE – Book 1 of The Kali Quartet
This is an earlier post (from May) which I’m reproducing here as this is going to be my next major publication after TEN KINGS. As I write these words, at least two major publishers are in negotiations with my agents to purchase publishing rights to The Kali Quartet. It will be at least a week or two, possibly even several weeks, before I’m able to confirm which publisher and roughly when the first book, A BLOOD RED SAREE, will be released. But for the moment, I thought these brief notes would help keep you informed about this, perhaps my most ambitious contemporary fiction series ever.
Some of you have been writing in asking me about The Kali Quartet. Some have assumed it’s another mythological epic like my Ramayana Series. I thought I would set your minds at rest and tell you a little about this upcoming project.
For one thing, The Kali Quartet has nothing to do with the Ramayana Series or mythology. The ‘Kali’ reference is just that, a reference. The story is completely contemporary.
So without further ado, here’s a short note on The Kali Quartet and the first book in the four-ology, A BLOOD RED SAREE.
The Kali Quartet by Ashok Banker
A BLOOD RED SAREE
THE BURNING SAFFRON SKY
THE AGE OF KALI
THE COLOUR OF RAIN
A Blood Red Saree
- Synopsis
Three abused women unite under the guidance of a mysterious American benefactor to battle a powerful conglomerate profiting from the trafficking of women and children.
An international conglomerate of financial masterminds is secretly funding human trafficking and passing off the multi-billion dollar profits as a legitimate international investment opportunity.
Can three ordinary women stop this barbaric conspiracy of profit? They are not alone in their fight for justice. A powerful caucus of wealthy high-placed women in Washington DC led by the First Lady herself meet in the White House to pledge to end this despicable business. With financial aid and secret information from these anonymous benefactors, the three women form a Trimurti, a sacred troika.
Now, the battle is on as each of them uses her considerable skills and determination to attack on a number of fronts: legal, financial, and when all else fails, through violent confrontation.
One will not survive, the other two will face brutal opposition and immense challenges. Like three aspects of the Eternal Goddess KALI herself, they risk their lives and loves in a struggle to the death.
Each volume of THE KALI QUARTET is complete in itself, while forming a section of the larger story. Read consecutively, this is one epic thriller in four volumes.
- Series Synopsis
Sheila Ray: daughter of a disgraced dead police officer, she’s finally put her traumatic childhood behind her to establish the first successful women’s gym in Kolkata. When she protects a pair of persecuted lesbian Olympic women boxers from a vengeful politician, she finds herself literally under fire and on the run both from the powerful forces running the Maoist insurgency in India, as well as the Government and police.
Nachiketa Shroff: her ex-husband and his family’s attempt to kill her for not bringing a dowry for her arranged marriage put her in a wheelchair for life; after using the law to destroy them financially, she now runs her own NGO offering free legal representation to battered Indian women. But when her office burns down, destroying a decade’s work and almost killing her (again), she knows it’s time to step up the activism and go after the people at the top of the pyramid of exploitation.
Anita B: The first Indian woman private investigator, unabashed lesbian and LTBG activist, she returns home to Kerala to attend the funeral of her childhood best friend and runs smack into a cobra’s nest of trouble. Not only was her friend murdered for opposing the development of a major five star tourist resort but Anita’s own misogynist brothers are part of a ring of child traffickers using a Christian mission and orphanage as a cover.
Three women, each of whom has been abused by men in different ways and has built a life and reputation designed to help other women from similar abuse, are unwittingly drawn into a web of international human traffickers. Working alone at first, each discovers a different face of the hydra-headed monster that is modern-day slavery. Their individual quests for justice and survival lead them up to the top of the pyramid of power, where they discover a terrible secret. An international conglomerate of financial masterminds – bankers, insurance executives, fund managers – who are secretly funding illegitimate activities such as the enslaving of women and children in the third world, drug trafficking and even terrorism, and then whitewashing the multi-billion dollar profits under the guise of a legitimate international investment opportunity!
The stakes are phenomenally high, the parties involved are the Who’s Who of the financial and political world, and their resources immensely powerful. What can three women do to stop this barbaric conspiracy of profit?
But they are not alone in their fight for justice. An equally powerful caucus of wealthy high-placed women in Washington, DC, led by the First Lady herself, meet in the White House to pledge to end this despicable business. With financial aid and secret information from these anonymous benefactors, the three women are able to form a Trimurti, a sacred troika, and unite together.
Now, the battle is on as each of them uses her considerable skills and determination to fight the forces of unbridled profit by attacking on a number of fronts: legal, financial, and when all else fails, through violent confrontation.
Like three aspects of the Eternal Goddess KALI herself, they risk their lives and loves in a struggle to the finish. One will not survive, the other two will face brutal opposition and immense challenges. But at the end, they will triumph and succeed in substantially crippling the enterprise and as importantly, exposing it to the world at large.
TEN KINGS: The historic battle that founded the Bharata nation
The 7th Mandala of the Rig Veda (quoted above) tells us of a great and terrible war called Dasarajna: The Battle of Ten Kings. In that legendary conflict, ten major tribal chiefs (kings) of the ancient world sought to displace and destroy Raja Sudas of the Bharata tribe.
The ten kings were supported by numerous individual champions and smaller forces, and were instigated by the great seer Vishwamitra. Many of them were allies of Raja Sudas and traded with the Bharatas and were friendly with them. But that fateful day, they turned against Sudas and his small but strong tribe of Bharatas, surrounded them with forces so superior that Sudas could have no chance of survival.
Their intention was to destroy Sudas and the Bharatas, take them as dasyas (slaves) and divide the Bharata lands and possessions as spoils of war. One day, out of the blue, their great army assembled on the banks of the Parusni river (present day Ravi in the Punjab region) and challenged Raja Sudas.
Vastly outnumbered, outmatched, and outplanned, Sudas should logically have surrendered. But he knew he had done nothing wrong, and being a righteous king, with the support of his people who loved him and respected his leadership, kindness and generosity, he chose to fight.
He was also supported by the spiritual mentorship of his guru, the legendary Vashishta.
And so, upon a stormy day by the banks of the Ravi, the battle was fought.
Legend tells us that in fact, Sudas might well have been Raja Bharat himself, son of Dushyant and Shakuntala, grandson of Vishwamitra.
The Rig Veda tells us that against all odds, Raja Sudas of the Bharatas (hence Bharata-Raja) fought that day against the Ten Kings…and won. The battle was impossible, the victory a miracle. The Rig Veda also tells us that the devas themselves watched from above as the battle progressed, and due to the moral superiority of Raja Sudas, Lord Indra chose to support the Bharatas.
Not only did Sudas and the Bharatas win, they routed the enemy in a massacre that was aided by nature itself, when the river and weather came to their aid. Was it Indra himself or merely a brilliant battle strategy by Raja Sudas? Either way, the Bharatas won the day. And as a result they became the dominant tribe of the Indian sub-continent.
Later, Raja Sudas’s descendants split into the Puru and Kuru lines, and waged another great war for Arya supremacy: the Mahabharata yuddh.
In a way, DASARAJNA (Battle of Ten Kings) was the turning point in the itihasa of the sub-continent.
Because it was by winning that war that King Sudas Bharata established his tribe as the ruling tribe of this part of the world.
And it is in his honour that all people of the sub-continent came to be known in time as Bharatas.
That story has never been before been told in all its glorious detail. Indeed, while the Rig Veda tells us some details of the war and its aftermath, very little is known about why the war began, how it became inevitable, and so on.
It’s a rousing tale filled with intrigues, conspiracies, back-stabbing, fierce erotic encounters, brutal court politics, family conflicts, and race against time in the hours before the battle. All the enemies and allies who will face one another on the battlefield are seen in the first half of the novel, playing their shrewd politics and pretenses in the court of Raja Sudas, pretending to be his allies, his friends, his neighbours, well-wishers, advisers, while secretly plotting and preparing to go to war against him. The reason they do this is because they intend to destroy his kingdom from within first – and if that fails, their armies are already assembled and waiting at the boundary of his kingdom, ready to invade. And as the story progresses and Sudas stands firm to his principles – his dharma – they all desert him, one by one, and go to join the other side, until finally Ten Kings stand against him, outnumbering his force more than ten times.
Leading and instigating them is Anu, the longtime arch-enemy of Sudas and the Bharatas, and Anu’s spiritual adviser, none other than the legendary brahmarishi Vishwamitra (of Ramayana fame). Vishwamitra has an old history of enmity with Sudas’ own adviser, Vashishta, and has an axe to grind by instigating this attack on Sudas and the Bharatas.
DASARAJNA is based on events described in the Rig Veda and confirmed by historians and archaelogists as being a true story. It is the seminal tale of the great battle that established the Bharata nation in the sub-continent which is present day India.
TEN KINGS will be published in English and Indian languages by Amaryllis Books, an imprint of Manjul Publishing, in early 2011.
Request A Book
Hi. As requested by several of you, I’ve created a Request A Book page where you can fill in your details and book a copy of any of the forthcoming AKB BOOKS Limited Editions.
The best thing about it is that you don’t need to pay in advance to place a request. That’s why it’s called a Request and not an Order. Even if you already have my bank details, please DO NOT pay or transfer money for any book. That’s why I haven’t mentioned any prices either.
Once each book is printed and copies are ready to despatch, you will be contacted and informed of all necessary details such as price, etc. At that point, you can choose whether to buy it or not, change your delivery details, ask for more than one copy, etc.
Unlike previous AKB BOOKS, these titles will NOT be personalized. That means that when I sign each copy, I will not be able to address it to you or anyone else by name. It will only be signed by me.
Right now, all you need to do is fill up the Request Form, providing all the details correctly as of this point in time, and selecting the titles you are interested in getting – you can always change your mind and details later. This form is just a way to Book your copy of each of these AKB BOOKS Limited Editions so I know roughly how many copies of each one to order from the printer.
And you don’t actually have to pay even a rupee in advance!
Isn’t that cool? Well, what are you waiting for then? Go for it!
Mba: The Limited Edition – okay, let’s do it!
Thanks to one of those extraordinary events that nobody can predict, the situation with my Mba has changed. I’m not going to explain what happened and go into details here, but let’s just say it’s completely unexpected and out of the blue. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have guessed this would happen and the fact that it did is probably the exception rather than the rule.
First the not-so-good news. This doesn’t change the situation completely. I still don’t know if or when the series will be published in the mass market. Probably never. So those of you who have been voting to buy copies after they’re available in bookstores – or even to buy the full series once it’s in bookstores – you’re not likely to get that chance.
But for those of you who have voted (and are still voting) to pre-order a copy or buy it once it’s available here from AKB Books, well, this news is meant for you all! In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that all those who voted for Option 1 in the poll – you are the ones who gave me the motivation to do this. If you’re so eager and willing to pay to get the AKB Mba in hand, then I’m willing to bring it out in a limited AKB Books edition. It won’t find the much larger audience that it probably deserves (in my humble opinion) but at least it will reach those who want it the most.
In fact, you guys are willing to pay in advance and pre-order it, but I’m not going to ask you to do that. It’s enough that you’re willing to order it online and that there are enough of you who do for me to issue it in this limited edition for you. There will be no pre-orders or advance bookings as I’ve experienced too many delays and put you through too many postponed deadlines already. This time, I’ll wait until I have the printed copies in hand, and then offer it for sale via this website.
The good news is that I will be accepting all major credit cards as well as direct bank transfers and payment via cash deposit. There will be only a limited number of copies and each volume of the series will be available for a limited time only. But at least it will be available in this way. The limited number of copies means that you will need to place your order at the right time and make the payment promptly.
I don’t have a definite date for the release of volume one yet. But I’m hoping to be able to offer it by November or December this year. That means that copies will be ready to order in November of December 2010 and are likely to sell out within a few days of opening orders. It could even be sooner, it’s possible.
Due to the limited number of copies I’m able to offer this way, and the presumably large number of readers who would be interested, I’ll be giving first priority to those who have ordered books issued under my AKB Books imprint already. I already have your email addresses and will be emailing you closer to the release date. But mainly I’ll be using this website to post the information and so I’d request you to kindly keep in touch and visit here as often as possible.
This is official and confirmed by me – the first book of Mba will be printed sometime before the end of 2010 and will be available in a limited edition exclusively via this website. It will not be available in bookstores anywhere. I can’t confirm about overseas orders just yet but they’re highly unlikely. If I’m able to offer them, they will be at a high price, I’m afraid, as the bookstore had serious issues despatching boooks via postal service earlier. The only option would be courier and that would cost far more than the cost of the book itself.
I’m also able to confirm that the Krishna Coriolis will be published in full – all 8 volumes, not just the first two. And that, as planned, it will run in parallel to the Mba series. Ideally, both should be read together since the Krishna Coriolis is actually the Harivamsha section of the Mahabharata, split into a separate series by me because the main Mba was getting too massive already.
And finally, the Mba books offered via AKB Books will be more expensive than regular mass market books that you find in your local bookstore. That’s the price of a limited edition.
So to sum up:
1. AKB Mba will be published after all – but only in a limited edition available directly via this website.
2. There will be no pre-orders or advance bookings and payment. Payment will be accepted only once the book is ready for immediate despatch.
3. The first volume should be printed by November or December 2010.
4. Keep in touch regularly with this website – it’s the only way to be sure you know when the first book of the Mba is out, and the only way you can order a copy.
5. Due to the limited print run, only one copy per order will be despatched and once the print run is sold out, it will not be reprinted – that will be the first and last edition issued by AKB Books, truly Limited Collector’s editions.
I guess you should know that by doing this, I will lose money. A lot of it. The higher price per copy won’t make a great difference – the reason for the higher price is because publishing is economical only when printed in large quantities on offset. This limited AKB Books edition of the Mba will be for you loyal readers, and you alone. Why did I change my mind and decide to do it this way after all? Well, that’s just it. I didn’t change my mind. Something happened that nobody could have expected, and it changed the situation dramatically.
Better an epic read by a few than by none. Keep in touch! Don’t be a stranger, wokay!
Literary Children of a Lesser God? – How Filipino Fiction gets short-changed by US publishers
The Rumpus remains my favourite go-to literary blog each day. In fact, I find so many interesting things there that I hesitate to link or re-post them all, as it’s lazy and becomes a convenient way for me to avoid writing my own posts. Someday, I tell myself, I must re-start writing intelligent literary blog essays dealing with Indian literary issues too. Someday soon!
Meanwhile, here’s a very informative and insightful essay on the paucity of Filipino Literature in the USA. This comes in the wake of the debutant novelist Miguel Syjuco’s novel Ilustrado winning the Man Asian Literary Prize while still in manuscript, which I also wrote about and linked to earlier in a different context. And of course the author herself is a Filipino American.
Excerpts from the essay:
In the past twenty years, twenty novels out of a quarter million have passed through the needle’s eye to find a U.S. publisher?
This isn’t because there aren’t enough Filipinos interested in the literary arts, or because we don’t write in English. The first Filipino novel written in English, A Child of Sorrow by Zoilo M. Galang, was published in 1921. About 93% of the Philippine population over the age of ten is literate, among the highest literacy rates in the developing world. The language of instruction in schools is English. And there is a sizable population of literate, English-speaking Filipinos in the U.S.: According to the 2000 Census, there were 2.4 million Filipinos in the U.S.—18.3% of the Asian American population and the second largest Asian ethnic group after the Chinese.
We’re here, but like many people of color we don’t see ourselves reflected in books or movies or TV programs. If we are referenced in pop culture, it’s Joan Rivers making another joke about us eating dogs, or characters on Desperate Housewives disparaging Filipino medical schools. Otherwise, we’re invisible.
Why I Write – Maureen Tkacik
Maureen Tkacik (also known as Moe Tkacik) is a writer and journalist based in New York. She’s worked at the Wall Street Journal, Jezebel and freelanced as well. I liked this essay by her in Columbia Journalism Review about her experiences in journalism and how journalism has changed. It’s not strictly a ‘Why’ I write piece but it sort of fits into the general theme. Here’s a quote:
What I sensed was that while the laws of supply and demand governed everything on earth, the easy money was in demand—manufacturing it, manipulating it, sending it forth to multiply, etc. As a rule of thumb (and with some notable exceptions), the profit margins you could achieve selling a good or service were directly correlated to the total idiocy and/or moral bankruptcy of the demand you drummed up for it.
This was easier to grasp if you were in the business of peddling heroin, Internet stocks, or celebrity gossip; journalists, on the other hand, were at a conspicuous disadvantage when it came to understanding their role in this equation. In the past, newspapers had made respectable margins selling a non-inane product largely because people had little choice but to herald their sublets and white sales alongside the journalists’ tales of human suffering/corporate corruption/government ineptitude. The times were prosperous enough that much of the print media even chose to abstain from taking a share of the demand-creation campaigns of liquor and tobacco brands in the seventies and eighties. Indeed, journalism, it went without saying, was about delivering important information about the world—information people (and democracy!) needed, whether they knew it or not. That journalism’s ability to deliver that information—to fill that need—ultimately depended, to an unsettling degree, on the ability to create artificial demand for a lot of stuff that people didn’t actually need—luxury condos, ergonomically correct airplane seats, the latest celebrity-endorsed scent—was an afterthought at best, at least in the newsroom.
Read the full essay by Maureen (Moe) Tkacik at Columbia Journalism Review.
Read a feature article by her at Vanity Fair.
Read a feature article by her at The New York Times.
Read a feature article by her at The Investigative Fund.
Check out her blog.
Ramayana Rediscovered – book review
This is an old book review by me. I don’t recall where it was published and don’t have an online link, although it was fairly recent – so it was probably one of a couple of book reviews I agreed to do for Times of India. The reason was obvious: the subject was one of interest to me!
THE PENGUIN COMPANION TO THE RAMAYANA
By Bishnupada Chakravarty, Translated from Bengali by Debjani Banerjee
Did you know that the Valmiki Ramayana tells us that Dasaratha permitted Sita the use of clothes during the 14-year exile–and that Lakshman carried them around in a leather case? Or that when they were married, Sita was only 6 years old and Rama 13? Or that after he became king, Rama made Sita sit on his lap and drink with him? Or that kshatriyas were freely permitted to drink and eat meat, and to indulge their sensual needs—Dasaratha had 350 wives? Or that the Pushpak was designed very similarly to modern aircraft, with seats by the windows, and was fuelled by a mixture of honey, vegetable oil, mercury, and alcohol? Or that Rama was known as Kakpakshadhar because of his long sideburns (Kakpaksha means sideburns)? Or that even if Kaikeyi had not pressed her boons upon Dasaratha, he would still have had to make Bharata king because he had vowed to Kaikeyi’s father Ashwapathi that his grandson would be crowned king?
No, I haven’t made those factoids up. You’ll find them all, and several dozen more, listed in the section titled ‘Known and Little-known Facts of The Ramayana’, in The Penguin Companion To The Ramayana. If, like me, you’ve spent several years reading and rereading every possible edition of the adi-kavya, you may not find such revelations surprising but if you’ve always wanted to actually sit down and read the Valmiki Ramayana but never had the time, then this handy little guide is perfect for you. It has a short synopsis of the epic, followed by a more detailed narration–but which also eliminates several key details for want of space–and sections like the one mentioned above, which goes beyond such little factoids to provide short essays on the working of the Pushpak, the route that Rama and his companions flew on the way back from Lanka to Ayodhya, a Reader’s Ready Reference which lists all the major personalities and places in alphabetical order, and even a map depicting Rama’s route during the exile, and Pushpak’s flight afterwards.
Everything is based on the Valmiki Ramayana. As you’re probably aware already, the Kamban Ramayana differs in a plethora of details, including geography, names, flora, fauna, dress, language, customs, and even the events of the story itself. As for Tulidasa’s Ramcharitramanas, which is often mistaken for a retelling of the Ramayana itself (it’s actually a commentary on the epic), the differences are not only of detail but of spirit as well. For that matter, even Valmiki, a reformed dacoit formerly named Ratnakar, never claimed to have created the story of the Ramayana; he sincerely believed it to be a true history and simply wrote it down in his legendary kraunchya metered verse, thereby marking the beginning of all literature. If you’d like to know more about this seminal epic of our culture, this little companion is a great way to do it quickly and entertainingly. It also makes a great guide to have by your side when reading other, much longer retellings by certain modern authors, whom we shall not name!
On Writing First Person Point of View: The Rumpus tells you how
The Rumpus has become my go-to literary website every morning. I always seem to find something of interest there (and I don’t mean the explicitly pornographic websites that advertise on the site – yes, I’m not kidding). It’s a literary Work-in-Progress. I also enjoy Stephen Elliott’s ruminative email updates each morning in my mailbox, which often include brief mentions of his sexual leisure activities – hints of his girlfriend coming over with ‘needles and ropes’ and stuff like that, what drug to take today, and so on. I guess it’s true what they say, we’re attracted to read about or watch people who are nothing like us in real life, at least it applies to me. I can read about or watch films about people whose lives are nothing like my own and I feel I understand them better than I would, say, movies or books about authors who mostly sit around and read and write and watch movies or spend time with their families.
Anyway, today’s pick from The Rumpus is this excellent essay by Rob Roberge on Point of View in writing. It doesn’t say anything I didn’t already know, but it says it simply and clearly and explains it well. Here’s an excerpt:
when a writer has chosen to tell a narrative in first-person, they’ve made a choice that offers them plenty of opportunities, among them:
Immediacy.
The intensity, drive and wonderful rhythms and word choices of human speech,
The chance to exploit and explore a single voice and no fear of shifting Point of View at the wrong time (since they’ve chosen to tell the story in only one POV)
Among the obstacles inherent in first-person?:
You’re trapped with that single voice and you’ve offered yourself no variation in POV—so it better be a compelling one in every single word choice (though this is true of second and third-person, as well). But you run the risk of a redundant voice.
When a reader sees the opening line is in first-person, there is a tacit contract with the reader (often an unconscious one, understood simply from hours, days and years of exposure to narrative) that the text will be contained to that single POV. This, of course, assumes it’s not a multiple first-person narrative, like As I Lay Dying, or a novel that will shift—nearly always unsuccessfully—from first-person to third-person at some point, as in Hemingway’s problematic (primarily because of its lack of focus caused by the shift between first and third-person) To Have and Have Not.
As a result of the reader knowing the POV will stay in the mind of your first-person narrator, there is the accompanying tacit contract—that no scene will occur without the narrator being present to observe/participate in the scene.
“The best goddamn book about being a writer” – book review
I don’t recall exactly where this book review first appeared. But I know when it appeared. as the first line suggests, it was the same year that Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ was published, probably within a week or two of it’s publication. I still stand by the review – ‘Youngblood Hawke’ is a great goddamn novel.
In Stephen King’s new non-fiction book On Writing, the King of bestsellers candily reveals several shocking insights into his life and career. Among the more controversial revelations are the ones about his drug abuse, dependence on presciption medicines and excessive use of alcohol.
Interestingly, these eye-opening tidbits weren’t written after his recent accident as some critics first assumed but were already in the draft that lay on his desk at the time of the accident.
Those who have had the pleasure of reading King’s earlier non-fiction book Danse Macabre as well as his countless interviews (the best of which were collected in the book Bare Bones) will know that cutting open a vein comes naturally to King.
In fact, King is one of the few mega-selling writers whose personal attitudes and professional persona are very much alike. Unlike Jackie Collins, Danielle Steele, or David Baldacci whose personal histories have virtually nothing in common with their authorial voices and sensibilities, King the writer and King the man are much the same person. Or so I deduce after twenty-odd years of reading everything by him I could lay my hands on.
But rarely does an author reveal his whole story in a book, however honest he or she may be in real life. In fact, some of the most brutally honest novelists whose books are filled with shattering human insights and emotional truths so stunning that they haunt the public imagination for generations tend to be miserly with their own personal stories.
How much do you know about any author really? Nowhere near as much as you probably know about, say, a film star or socialite. Even the most famous authors are far more comfortable writing about other people than being written about themselves.
V.S. Naipaul, for instance, was notorious until a few years ago for turning journalists out of his door on the most trivial of excuses – “You’re too young to have read all my books,” he said famously to one young lady reporter. Anything to avoid talking about himself.
Which is why it’s rare to find a book that tells you truthfully what it’s really like to be a writer. Let alone a famous, highly regarded writer.
In fact, there’s not been a truly great novel in generations that takes you behind the scenes of the writing life. There aren’t even too many too choose from: One recent bestseller was titled just that, Bestseller. A pacy, enjoyable novel by Olivia Goldsmith, author of The First Wives Club, Flavour of the Month and other woman-of-substance novels, it was a refreshing insight into the big bad world of modern publishing.
Over the years there have been a few such books here and there. Some have even been quite readable. You might be able to think of several.
But how many really first-class novels have you read that deal with the writing life? Stephen King’s own Bag of Bones is one of the few commercially successful novels that was also critically well-received. But the story concerns itself mainly with the protagonist’s attempt to come to terms with his wife’s sudden death rather than with his career as a bestselling novelist.
Recently, while reading Herman Wouk’s war saga, I decided to go back to one of his earlier, lesser known books. It’s a novel called Youngblood Hawke. Coincidentally, I had picked it up at a second-hand bookstore years ago, after reading a similar essay on novels about writers, written by Stephen King. In that piece, he had recommended this novel highly, and claimed it was the best novel about a writer’s life that he had ever read, or words to that effect.
I began reading Youngblood Hawke with scepticism. Having some minor experience of the writing life myself, I was prepared for another soapy sexy melodrama set against the backdrop of the writing life. Or even a vast, sprawling saga set in the publishing world, just as Wouk’s War novels were human dramas set against the historic events of the Second World War.
There was also the off-putting fact that this novel was first published in 1962 and was set in the period of the late 1940′s and early 1950′s. Now, how on earth could any novel about publishing in that period have any relevance to the field today?
But once I read a few pages of Youngblood Hawke, I had to read a few more. And then a few chapters more. And then another hundred pages, and then another. And so on, until a day or two later I put down this 878 page-novel with a sigh of disbelief.
Youngblood Hawke is not just a novel about the writer’s life. It’s a great novel. I’m saying that with no holds barred, no critical hedging or cadging. I’m not a critic, first of all, just a reader and book-lover. So I’m not ashamed to call a spade a spade, and a heart a heart.
And this one’s a bright, red, pulsing big-hearted ace of a novel. No question about it. It’s the kind of novel that doesn’t take into account the short attention spans of television, the glamorous scene-stealing special effects of big-budget cinema, the thousand distractions of modern living. It doesn’t even make concessions to bestseller ingredients, to commercial viability and smart packaging.
It simply tells its tale, at the length the tale deserves, with the detail and attention to detail that they deserve. Whatever happens seems completely inevitable, as credible (or incredible) as real life itself. I’m sure Youngblood Hawke must have been a bestseller – Wouk never wrote a non-seller in his life, to my knowledge – but it’s not written like a cold-hearted bestseller. It’s a hotblooded genuine giant of a book, a roaring young monster of a story that just rages and reaches for the sky and grabs a fistful.
This is probably the best goddamn story I’ve read in a novel in months. Don’t even ask me which was the last novel I read that touched me so deeply, I can’t remember it’s name.
Don’t be put off by the title. Youngblood Hawke, or Arthur Hawke as the author’s more homely name is in the story, is the protagonist of this redblooded story. He’s a new novelist whose first novel has just been accepted for publication by a major New York publishing house.
The editor assigned to the book, a foppish, pompous, pseudo-literary type that reminds me of half a dozen major Indian editors in New Delhi even today, hates the book as well as its author. He looks down upon it as middlebrow fiction, fit only to sell to the ignorant masses in order to raise money to publish “real” literature.
It’s the same reaction that Dickens, Balzac, Faulkner, and a dozen other great names received when they first sought to be published. And this is where the truth of Wouk’s novel begins – and never lets up. He tells you what it really is like to be a talented, prolific, eventually successful and bestselling American novelist. He shows you every twist and turn of the path with such authority and generosity you simply gape and enjoy the ride.
I won’t tell you the story of Youngblood Hawke because that’s the beauty of this book: A great story, brilliantly told. You will, of course, find some parts tedious, especially if you think television and films are entertainment and books should all be elegantly crafted prose poems less than 150 pages in hardback. But if you take the time and effort to read them, you’ll find that no crafty literary novelist would trouble himself with so much authentic detail.
And most amazing of all, despite the fact that close to half a century divides the period and writing of this novel from the present day, the novel still stands as a valid portrait. If not in every detail of the publishing industry – a few more zeroes have been added to every figure mentioned – then certainly in every human and emotional detail.
As the old cliché goes about writing well: Just cut open a vein and let it flow. Wouk sure as hell opens that vein and it flows so freely and richly, his typewriter must have been washed in blood! Someone get the man a transfusion.
Youngblood Hawke is the best goddamn book about a writer I’ve ever read. What’s more it’s a great goddamn book about anybody, period.
