My Ram has well-toned abs: Ashok Banker

You have said say that you ‘live with Ram, Hanuman and Krishna for decades’ before publishing an epic series, but you are neither religious nor spiritual…

I think I am a classic example of an experiment a parent may attempt — of not giving the child a religion and observing what happens to him. Given my upbringing, the chances of being religious were minimal. My maternal grandmother was British, born in Sri Lanka, and fell for my very anglicised, Goan grandfather.

My father was Gujarati but my parents separated before I was born. I grew up in Byculla around Jewish, Pakistani, Parsi and Iranian friends, reading Greek mythology, amongst other things. Despite being pushed by the parish priest, my mother and grandmother did not baptise me or give me Holy Communion.

At the age of nine, I first explored Indian epics, but the influence of being a ‘global’ person was so strong by then, that I never felt the need to import the epics into my beliefs. I am so uncomfortable with the idea of choice that I’ve never joined any sort of club and don’t even have a passport. To me, that would mean labelling myself as a person who belongs to a particular place. My writing has nothing to with my personal beliefs.

You wrote crime thrillers and urban fiction for 17 years before publishing the Ramayana series in 2003. What led to this transition?
Early on in my career, I didn’t feel I had the tools to write epics — the required research, deep understanding and more so, an idea of the shape I wanted to give to the retelling.

But there was no ‘transition’. I’ve always wanted my writing, which I call the Epic India Library, to have four wheels — Mythology, Itihasa (History), Contemporary, and Futuristic. The Ramayana Series and Krishna Coriolis belong to the Mythology section. The upcoming Mahabharata series is the second. My novels Vertigo, Byculla Boy, the TV series A Mouthful of Sky and the upcoming Kali Quartet which begins with A Blood Red Saree, are all contemporary stories. Gods Of War and its sequels are the fourth wheel.

You give contemporary touches to the way mythological characters look and think. Why this ‘modernisation’?
I write epics not to tell readers what Valmiki, Vyas, Tulsidas and Kamban thought — mind you, none of them claimed to have seen what had happened either, they were all retellings. Valmiki admitted to have invented portions with Brahma’s approval.

I, too, research sources but write them as Ashok Banker. My life, influences, and imagination will play a role in the way I see a scene unfold. For instance, when I sit down to etch out Ram’s character in the Ramayana, I picture him with well-toned abs.

When I think of a character who feels frustrated, I imagine he would say, “Damn!” just like you and I do. When Devaki and Vasudeva meet alone, I imagine sensuality. I think this a classic human approach to fantasy — I take you back and tell you how ‘I’ see it.

Is a contemporary approach to epics enough reason for readers to pick your books today, when they can easily go back to, say, Valmiki’s version?
There is a market of this sort of mythological writing because I am telling the same stories for my contemporaries, just like Valmiki did for his. You know the story, but it is interesting to read what a contemporary has done to it. James Cameron wasn’t the first one to tell us the story of the Titanic, but we still watched it to find out how he had treated history.