Books: Author Trisha Das on her new book 'The Misters Kuru - A Return To Mahabharata'

She tells City Times in a Zoom interview how the character of Draupadi (who is jointly married to the five Pandavas) had always intrigued her and how The Misters Kuru is meant to be not so much a sequel but the second part of her 2016 novel Ms Draupadi Kuru: After The Pandavas.

Trisha gave us a bit of background into the new novel, for those who haven’t read the earlier book.

“In the first book, Draupadi and three other women from the Mahabharata - Kunti, Gandhari and Amba - she used to be Shikhandi - come down to Delhi and they have a sort of second chance at life and there is a lot of comedy and adventure and some romance as well.

“Then they’re given a choice whether they want to stay - and it’s a hard choice because going back to heaven means they get to be in heaven but staying on earth means they have to join the cycle of rebirth. At the end of the book the four women make their choice and it’s kind of a spoiler but Draupadi and Kunti decide to stay back.”

Writing Draupadi’s love story

The character of Draupadi - portrayed as a heroic princess - has long intrigued readers and Trisha is no exception; she reveals she “always wanted to write Draupadi’s love story.”

“In the second book, the Pandavas up in heaven kind of notice that their mother and wives are missing and decide to come down to Delhi to convince them to come back to heaven. And then they get caught up in a life of their own - there is more adventure, more comedy and also this time there’s a battle which I was quite excited to write. Finally, Draupadi falls in love - with one of her husbands - and this time there’s no need for sharing so it’s kind of cool.”

Why did she decide to write this sequel? 
“There were always meant to be two parts to it. So not so much a sequel but the story in two parts. I wanted to do the women first and then have the women established on their own without the interference as it were by the men. And then have the men come down and be forced to deal with the women on their own terms.”

Same characters, new story 
When classic stories are re-told there are always challenges involved as they are deeply entrenched in people’s minds and popular culture. Trisha said bringing mythological characters into a contemporary setting was basically creating “fan-fiction”.

“I’m taking characters out of the original epic and I’m putting them in different scenarios. But I’m not re-imagining the epic. The books pick up from where the epic left off. So I’m not going to be pompous enough to say ‘oh, it’s a sequel to the epic’ because that’s like a really arrogant thing to say. It’s basically fan-fiction.

As someone who has studied the Mahabharata “quite a bit” Trisha feels a personal level of attachment to its characters. “I’ve always felt that in the Mahabharata, definitely the women, but I think to a large extent the men as well, were sort of all banded together and forced to realise a pre-destined path.

"Especially the women, they were given very little choice in their actions and their destiny. And I just kind of felt like, ‘oh my God, it’s so unfair; their lives were so unfair, none of them got to choose’. So what would life be like if these characters were given a choice? And all the opportunity that comes with living in the modern world? How would they react based on their individual personalities?”

It’s sort of interesting even for me as a writer to go on that journey with them.”

A breezy read with a commentary