Been thinking, a lot, also about Epicretold – suppose, just suppose, there were newspapers then, the equivalents of The Times of India and The Sun and The New York Times and the BBC. How would they have narrated the Kurukshetra war and the events that led to it?

I guess my interest in such a narrative is driven in the main by my fascination with ‘war journalism’. It is not difficult to see war coverage as serialised storytelling: episode after episode of drama, over weeks and months and years, with conflict, escalation and resolution, the same major characters weaving in and out accompanied by the same minor actors – all coming together to form an overarching narrative, which, I dare say, pretty well follows the shape of Freytag’s pyramid.

Interesting to think, then, of how the Mahabharata can be told as news. Can the story be strung together as a series of media reports? Would such storytelling make sense to a reader, particularly one not familiar with the storyline? Would it help him/her create own narrative of that ‘reality’?

Solely in the spirit of experiment, here’s a take. I see this as appearing in an ‘international’ newspaper – call it what you will (and drop me a line if you come up with an interesting name):

Pandu family returns
King welcomes Kunti, sons with ‘open arms’

By Our Royal Correspondent

HASTINAPUR:  The family of King Pandu, the renunciant royal who died in the Shatashringa forests in a mysterious accident last week, returned yesterday to a grand ceremony that spilled out on to the streets of the capital city.

The royal widow Kunti and her sons – Yudhishtira (7), Bhima (6), Arjuna (5) and the twins Nakula and Sahadeva (4) – were met at the city gates by Bhishma, the patron of the royal clan, and driven through the high street in a chariot drawn by seven horses at the head of a ceremonial procession.

Accompanied by a select group of palace officials and personal maids, Queen Gandhari welcomed Kunti at the palace gates.

“It is good to be in Hastinapur again,” Kunti said, wiping away tears. “My sons are finally back where they belong.”

At the palace, the family were taken straight to King Dhritarashtra for a private meeting. A palace official present on the occasion said the king was overcome with “tears of joy”.

“I welcome my brother’s family with open arms,” the king said in a statement released later. “This is their kingdom and I am glad they have returned. Now I have five more sons.”

While reports about the cause of Pandu’s death remain sketchy, palace sources confirmed that Madri, his second wife, had opted for the practice of Sati, stepping into his funeral pyre, as “befitting a princess and loving spouse”.

Pandu, though second in line to the Hastinapur kingdom, had ascended the throne 11 years ago, superseding his elder brother Dhritarashtra, who, owing to his blindness, had been deemed unfit by his elders. However, seven years ago, for reasons not yet clear, Pandu had renunciated the kingdom while on a hunting trip to the Shatashringa forests.

He had lived there since, fathering five sons – Yudhishtira, Bhima and Arjuna with Kunti, and Nakula and Sahadeva with the younger Madri.

The Kuru Kingdom, which lies north of the Vindhyas bordering Panchala, is one of the largest in the region, and has been traditionally ruled from Hastinapur, ‘the city of elephants’. Though under King Dhritarashtra the kingdom has seen relative stability and peace, his ability to rule has always been questioned. The king, born blind, is seen as ‘unfit to rule’ by many, including Bhishma, his grandfather. Queen Gandhari’s self-imposed blindness – since the day she found out her betrothed was blind, the former princess of Gandhara has chosen to wear a black blindfold – has not helped his case.

The death of King Pandu and the unexpected return of his family have brought a feeling of unrest in the palace. A highly-placed source, who did not want to be identified, said the king had to be persuaded by Bhishma to invite Kunti and sons to Hastinapur.

“The royal politics is likely to be murkier in the coming years,” the source said.

Treat this as the equivalent of an ‘establishing’ shot, the beginning of this narrative. The next take could be from a Hastinapur-based newspaper – a human interest story perhaps, on the five little boys, the Pandavas. And, yes, there could a political commentary or a news analysis, which would expand on the last quote of the report above.

Guess I will be back with more.

ALSO SEE: The End of Childhood

Image courtesy http://bit.ly/9azpHi

I HAVE let another project run wild. Will I ever learn?

A regular work day, and my very literary colleague Bronwen sends across this link. About amateur novels read on mobile phone, apparently a big thing with Japanese teenagers. Nice, I say.

So she sends me two more. The first on New York Times reporter Matt Richtel’s experiment at tweeting a thriller, the second on a determined bunch bending Twitter their way with short fiction.

Most of that — from what I could see at InstantFiction, twae, Maureen, etc — was micro enough to make flash fiction – even drabble — read like a novel. Richtel’s ‘Twiller’ was an exception, but still short enough to be labelled short story.

Question then was, would a full-length work of fiction fly on Twitter? Was there scope for an episodically lengthy narrative on the medium?

This was the time I was devouring my ex-colleague Prem Panicker’s Bhimsen (so far as I know the first attempt at blogging a full-length, *quality* work of fiction post by post), a reimagining of the Mahabharata, along similar lines as M T Vasudevan Nair’s award-winning Randamoozham, published in the south Indian language of Malayalam many years ago (the English version is titled Second Turn). It occurred to me the tale was just perfect for the experiment.

For one, the Mahabharata is the ultimate war story, providing enough ‘conflict’, enough opportunities for dramatic tension at every turn — surely that would help hold the reader? Plus, I have been fascinated with the narrative since I read M T’s wonderfully nuanced interpretation in Randamoozham as a kid. Plus, plus, war narratives — fictional, semi-fictional, factual — are of academic interest to me.

There was also the irony of attempting to fit one of the world’s longest and philosophical epics into a microblogging site meant to keep your friends updated about your non-activities  (‘am in shower. shoot, phone got wet’). (Not to mention the chance to make manly-man Bhima actually ‘tweet’, which appealed greatly to my wicked side.)

And so started this project (this is where you toddle off to twitter.com/epicretold and start following me).

So far everything was sane, under control. But the trouble with putting something out there is that it takes a life of its own. Before I knew it I found myself talking to the Indian media (Mahabharata + New Media = News Value squared), promising things I had never intended to promise.

How many tweets on an average day, ask the Journalist.

Three to four, I commit without hesitation (woh! where did that come from?)

Do you plan to have other sites to help latecomers catch up?

Oh yes, just starting an ‘about to’ page and thinking of having a separate ‘the story so far’ site as well, I say (seriously dude, shut your trap!)

Well, the short version is that I shot my mouth off and received fairly serious media attention (among others, see stories in Time, Reuters, WSJ-Mint, DNA, NPR, Asian Age, India Today, and Express; Reuters interview here). The pressure is on now (the discerning reader might notice that in twitter.com/aboutepicretold, the ‘about to’ page I did start, I have, demonstrating extreme verbal dexterity, managed to stay clear of concrete commitments – but that’s only for your eyes) and I must confess I have no clue where this thing will take me.

What sort of narrative will actually work here? Three ‘episodes’ a day, is that too far and few? Would the reader have forgotten where we stopped by the time s/he receives the next tweet? More worryingly, what worked for Japanese teenagers might not work elsewhere, in a different genre, across a different culture/cultures.

Good news is, this need not ‘work’ to make this work; I need not have a 1,000 followers hanging on to my every tweet (though that would be nice). As someone said to me the other day, the pleasure is in the process — so, I guess, is the learning.

A confession and a caveat, in that order, as I conclude. Many have asked me how much I have written, have I planned it all out? Not. I have not pre-written this, nor have I mind-mapped it much. After some thought, I have decided to see it as it is — fiction to go, written live. I will take my chances with that. I intend to follow Prem’s narrative structure as much as possible (he’s done the hard work, it is only fair I reap the benefits), in places closely (some of his imagery is too good a fit), in places, not.

Which brings me to the caveat. epicretold needs to be seen as an experiment in social media, not in the Mahabharata. It does not capture the philosophical richness of the epic, nor does it purport to have literary merit. It is simply twiction, nothing more.

Excuse me now, I got to go tweet.

ALSO SEE:

The end of childhood: The first 100 tweets on ER

PS: Check out the Facebook group page for epicretold here

Image: Sunil Krishnan