S
UDHA Murty laughs a lot.
She laughs without restraint, with
spontaneity. Heard over
the phone, it’s laughter that makes you
picture in your mind
a person who will make you believe
that the world is an interesting place,
a place that you can shape, at least to
some extent, as you wish.
Hearing that unbridled laughter makes
it easy to understand why Sudha Murty
is such a great storyteller. A few years
ago, she used to read out stories on radio
for children, and many of her books- in both English and Kannada – are
also perfect for reading aloud. Fittingly,
with The Serpent’s Revenge, she once
again takes on the role of storyteller,
reintroducing India’s greatest epic –
the Mahabharata – through charming,
often extraordinary tales. “I am not
the author of these stories,” she writes
in the introduction, “I am simply
a storyteller who has tried to dip into
this ocean of ancient, mesmerising tales
after referring to multiple sources and
removing many illogical details in
Sudha Murty’s The Serpent’s Revenge: Unusual tales from
the Mahabharata throws new light on the little known aspects of
the Kurukshetra War and the characters who peopled it
| INTERVIEW & EXCERPTLITERATUREThe
STORYTELLER
of the
IMAGINATION
60 66 February 2017February 2017