Abstract
Focusing on two novels published in 2016, one by HarperCollins India and the other by Hachette India, this paper argues that Savage Blue by Balagopal and Dark Things by Venkatraghavan carve out a new space in post-millennial Indian speculative fiction in English, namely one that does not privilege ‘Hindu Indian mythology’ tropes. Such tropes have been espoused by a growing number of authors whose novels are anchored in Hindu Indian mythology and narratives of itihasa since the early 2000s. Banker, Tripathi, and Sanghi are generally recognized as the authors who first published in this post-millennial genre of Indian fiction in English. This discussion of the novels by Balagopal and Venkatraghavan, alongside ideas of how ‘fantasy’ as a genre has been, and continues to be defined, raises questions about how we might think about ‘Indian fantasy’ as a genre term within the domestic Indian book market and how it intersects with post-millennial Indian living, Indianness, and the popular imaginary.
Keywords
We might begin by thinking about the post-millennial moment in terms of the publishing opportunities that it has created within India. The boom in publishing across trade lists in particular has been immense, and within this boom, genre fiction has taken a place of its own and flourished within a certain segment of the market. Typically retailing at 299 or 350 rupees for a paperback, and published by Penguin Random House India, Hachette India, HarperCollins India, Westland Publications., and many smaller, independent presses, genre fiction in India sells across various outlets including bookstores typically located in malls, airports (domestic and international), train stations, and through digital platforms such as Flipkart, Infibeam, and Amazon India. In the mid-2000s, genre fiction in English gained visibility by way of chick lit, crime writing, and thrillers, as well as what the market has labelled as “mythology” or “mythology-inspired” fiction. In addition to Ashok Banker, 1 Ashwin Sanghi and Amish Tripathi are generally recognized as the authors who first published in the genre of post-millennial mythology(-inspired) fiction, 2 and in the seven years following the publication of Amish’s first book of the Shiva Trilogy, The Immortals of Meluha (2010), there has been a surge of Hindu mythology-inspired fiction in English hitting the bookshelves, all of which draws predominantly on the narrative aspects and protagonists of the Indian epics, namely the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Taking post-millennial mythology-inspired fiction as its starting point, this article considers the relationship of mythology-inspired fiction to what I suggest is an emerging body of post-millennial Indian fantasy fiction.
Moving beyond “mythology”
Although speculative fiction in bhasha literatures has a rich history, it has typically concerned itself with folkloric or Hindu epic inspiration.
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Devaki Nandan Khatri’s Chandrakanta is often cited as an early fantasy novel in modern Hindi fiction due to its predominant fairytale aesthetic. However, as this article moves to consider the specifics of “fantasy” as an established Western genre term, it will become clear that it is problematic to categorize Chandrakanta as “fantasy” against the contemporary formulations of the genre term.
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Tabish Khair and Sébastien Doubinsky (2015) have suggested that Indian speculative fiction in English dates as far back as the early 1900s, with “Sultana’s Dream” by Rokeya Sakhaway Hossain (2015: 228), although a tradition of speculative fiction in Bangla was established still earlier, by Jagadananda Roy and his science fiction work, Shukra Bhraman (Travels To Venus) in 1879, and Jagadish Chandra Bose in 1896 with his short story “Niruddesher Kahini”. In a similar vein, although nearly a century later, Lokenath Bhattacharya’s Bangla novel Babughater Kumari Maachh (The Virgin Fish of Babughat) from 1972 is easily identifiable as a dystopian–speculative novel: the story is set in a nameless detention camp, where human beings are reduced to an animal-like status as the captors provide only for the detainees’ physical needs. Published in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Manoj Das, acclaimed writer in English and Oriya, as well as a Padma Sri recipient, published two novellas, Cyclones and A Tiger at Twilight. Das formulated both novellas as speculative through the inclusion of supernatural beings, unexplained happenings, and strange links with the ancient past. In more recent times, Ruchir Joshi’s The Last Jet Engine Laugh and Ravi Shankar Etteth’s The Tiger by the River and The Village of Widows have all been described as speculative in their own right, and there has been significant interest in Indian postcolonial science fiction in English of late, some of which has included discussion of fantasy too (see Banerjee, 2011; Chambers, 2003; Riemenschneider, 2005). Tabish Khair writes that: Indian English fantasy writing, if not hard-core science fiction, remained alive but not highly visible throughout the twentieth century. Some of it appeared in popular magazines and at least sometimes it can be found in novel form: Rushdie’s Grimus (1975) can hardly evade the tag of “fantasy fiction”. More recent science fiction and fantasy fiction includes Amitav Ghosh’s The Calcutta Chromosome (1996), which won the Arthur C. Clarke Science Fiction Award in 1997. (2008: 63)
Khair’s work is useful in constructing a genealogy of Indian science fiction and fantasy (SFF) and is helpful in thinking how the current trend of Indian fantasy fiction intersects with this lineage. However, this article is specifically interested in how we might think of the genre of post-millennial Indian fantasy fiction in relation to what the domestic Indian market has called “mythology fiction”. I concentrate on Indian authors writing from India, as opposed to Indian diasporic or transnational authors, because I wish to focus on the interface between the ubiquitous “mythology-inspired” novel (within India) and a nascent post-millennial Indian fantasy genre whose authors are mindfully writing Hindu mythology out of its story lines. Admittedly, the US-Indian, transnational writers Vandana Singh and Anil Menon, with their respective single-authored books as well as their co-edited collection of short stories Breaking The Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana, blur the lines when it comes to thinking of fantasy-cum-mythology fiction produced and circulated in India. Breaking The Bow and Singh’s The Woman Who Thought She Was A Planet are both published by Delhi-based Zubaan, while Anil Menon’s slightly speculative Half of What I Say is published by Bloomsbury India (making the shortlist for The Hindu Prize in 2016); both authors I suggest are mindfully engaged in the circulation of their works within the domestic Indian market.
My concerns in this article lie in the construction of fantastical worlds that are not inspired by Hindu Indian mythology, and thus in the analysis that follows I aim to demonstrate how a small number of (Western) fantasy tropes are employed alongside an Indian “fantastical” aesthetic achieved through Indian supernatural beings, Indian tantric practices, hybrid animals, and fairy and elf characters of Indian sensibilities. In order to suggest that a nascent, post-millennial Indian fantasy genre is underway, the acknowledgement of the marked success of post-millennial Hindu Indian mythology-inspired fiction is crucial to my argument. I suggest that this new wave of Indian fantasy, lacking in what has come to be recognized as mythological tropes of post-millennial mythology-inspired fiction, has come about due to a mindful departure away from what I call the “Tripathi trend”. This article, therefore, examines to what extent it might be possible to craft an Indian fantasy genre outside of the “mythology” paradigm and, indeed, outside of the transnational (Indian) paradigm of speculative fiction wherein the context for writing and publishing such a novel is markedly different from the experience of a domestic Indian author. Notably, the authors of the three texts examined here are between 30 and 40 years old, have grown up in India, resided in India for most of their life (with some education in the UK or US), and have sought to publish and market their works within the post-millennial Indian publishing scene. 5 Taking into account the novelists’ personal and creative relationship with India (and “Indianness”), and specifically in the case of Balagopal and Venkatraghavan, their act of publishing at a time when “mythology-inspired” fiction is in abundance, this article considers how Indian fantasy might move forward in its crafting of the fantastical if not through Hindu Indian mythology. What kind of characters, story arcs, and plots might Indian fantasy fiction write if not those of the established literary-cultural scene (that is, those acquainted with mythology-inspired fiction)? Moreover, in crafting a genre of Indian fantasy, to what extent might this genre need to connect with Western ideas and paradigms of “fantasy fiction” (not least because it is written in English from the outset) in order to define itself?
In considering these questions, the paper focuses on three novels published post millennium (two as recently as 2016) by publishing houses in India, novels which manifestly do not employ Hindu mythology tropes in the crafting of characters and narrative plot. We begin by looking at the work of Samit Basu and his Game World Trilogy, which was published by Penguin India in the early 2000s, thus prior to the rush of mythology-inspired novels that have flooded the marketplace following Amish’s The Immortals of Meluha in 2010. The Simoquin Prophecies, the first of the trilogy, was published in 2004, and Basu’s work might thus be considered a forerunner of Indian fantasy fiction outside the mythology paradigm. The paper then focusses in detail on two more recently published novels, namely Savage Blue (2016) by Vikram Balagopal, published by HarperCollins India and Dark Things (2016) by Sukanya Venkatraghavan, published by Hachette India.
The task of defining emerging canons of fiction is not without its challenges as the field is naturally in flux. Exciting as that may be, it can be difficult to group together a collection of seemingly connected novels (in their genre at least) in order clearly to identify how this emerging canon of writing is a departure from the status quo. Within India, novels such as Tripathi’s “Shiva Trilogy”, Samhita Arni’s The Missing Queen, Ashwin Sanghi’s The Krishna Key, and many other novels published in the last decade which anchor their storylines in Hindu Indian epic narratives have been categorized as “mythology” or “mythology-inspired” fiction. This body of fiction evokes a range of cultural (and religious) reader receptions within and outside of India. For those readers with substantial knowledge of Hindu Indian epic narratives or knowledge of dharmic traditions, mythology-inspired fiction can challenge ideas of received cultural and religious histories usually referred to as itihasa. Such challenges occur when the author moves considerably away from the “original” Hindu epic 6 (or inspiration) or where contemporary sensibilities stretch the “original” through narratives of, for example, technology, science, or historical context. When the original epic text is embellished to such an extent that it can no longer be thought of as “original” or as itihasa 7 then readers who bring Hindu sensibilities to the reading experience of such novels might be inclined to consider the narrative as “fantasy” since it no longer represents a historical “truth”. To be clear, I suggest that mythology-inspired fiction which remains significantly true to the “original” story does not easily identify itself as fantasy fiction, whereas mythology-inspired fiction that considerably moves away from the “original” inspiration more readily invokes the idea that the fiction is fantastical (of the fantasy genre).
What I investigate here are novels which inhabit this space; that is, those crafted at a distance from the original source. Indeed, these texts are only tenuously, if at all, connected to Hindu Indian epics and thus, I suggest, they serve as a break away from the Tripathi trend whereby protagonists (or events) from Hindu epics provide a central anchor to the narrative. In the last 15 years, very few of these Indian novels in English have employed manifestly fantastical tropes outside the usual “mythology” paradigm, Basu’s trilogy being the exception. The year 2016, however, brought some new authors into the market, and I argue that Savage Blue (2016) by Vikram Balagopal and Dark Things (2016) by Sukanya Venkatraghavan speak to ideas of Indian fantasy fiction in a new and interesting manner. They employ fantastical tropes that are not manifestly linked to Hindu Indian epic narratives and thus begin to forge, I suggest, a new kind of Indian fantasy writing. Where the reading of mythology-inspired novels might be received as fantastical — dependent on the reader’s specific cultural and religious positioning- Savage Blue (2016) and Dark Things (2016) exhibit established fantastical tropes and thus rely less (if at all) on the reader’s individual cultural/religious positioning. 8 This shift from potential fantasy reader reception to a concrete, actual expression of the fantasy genre is what I wish to explore here, not least because it is a very recent and exciting shift in the genre fiction market in India as authors mindfully craft narratives which are devoid of the usual “mythology suspects”. In speaking of an emergent Indian fantasy genre, it is evident that Balagopal’s Savage Blue (2016) and Venkatraghavan’s Dark Things (2016) exhibit established fantastical tropes (within the Western academy) such as those outlined by Brian Attebery (1992), Farah Mendlesohn (2008), Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (2014), Adam Roberts (2010), John Clute and John Grant (1999), and Gary K. Wolfe (2011). In acknowledging these tropes, the discussion pushes beyond Western-oriented motifs of fantasy fiction to present the finer, culturally nuanced aspects of these novels in order to open up the discourse on how Indian fantasy in its own right might be defined (if not through Hindu Indian epic mythology). This includes the examination of Indian supernatural beings, portals, the creation of other worlds (juxtaposed with Earth which is narrated from an Indian “centre”, such as New Delhi), Indian tantric practices, fairy and elf characters, giants, and hybrid animals.
The Simoquin Prophecies
Samit Basu’s The Simoquin Prophecies (2004) opens with a Prologue. The first line reads: Take an orange, Sambo (if your name is Sambo), a nice round juicy orange. […] Now take one of the pieces, Sambo (is your name Sambo? It doesn’t really matter). Yes, the bigger one, if you must. (2004: 1)
Attebery (1992) reminds us that “fantasy is generally defined in terms of a violation of expectations” (54), and here, in the opening pages of Basu’s novel, the reader is told that expecting names to adhere to specific characters is futile since “naming” does not really matter in this context. On the postmodern fantastic, Attebery writes: “by adopting a playful stance toward narrative conventions, [it] forces the reader to take an active part in establishing any coherence and closure within the text, thereby strengthening the conventional contract” (1992: 53). This invitation to adopt “a playful stance toward narrative convention” is extended further by fantasy’s request to imagine unreal worlds and peoples. James and Mendlesohn (2014) state that “fantasy is about the construction of the impossible whereas science fiction may be about the unlikely, but is grounded in the scientifically possible” (2014: 1); Adam Roberts concurs, stating that “the grounding of SF in the material rather than the supernatural becomes one of its key features” (2010: 5). Given, then, that fantasy violates expectations — scientific, logical, narrative, and thematic — it is usual to find the impossible, the supernatural, and the extraordinary written within its storylines. Given the foregrounding of the impossible in the fantasy genre, how might readers sustain an engagement with narratives that violate expectation and logic at each turn? Wolfe suggests that it is some “affective apprehension of the impossible” (2011: 71) that is able “to sustain our interest in impossible worlds simply by making these worlds emotionally meaningful to us” (2011: 75).
This paragraph from Basu’s The Simoquin Prophecies elucidates ideas of the impossible — the violation of narrative and world-building expectations: Father was very excited when I told him how Kirin made moongold glow and could move objects with his mind. He agreed that the moongold alone proved Kirin was a ravian. But he was really worried when I told him about Spikes, and said that vanars and crows were looking for a pashan who was the son of Danh-Gem’s bodyguard, who would help them raise Danh-Gem. And they think it’s Spikes. That’s too strange for words… Why is he Kirin’s friend, then? He would have killed Kirin long ago, because he knows Kirin’s a ravian. Unless… unless Spikes doesn’t know who he really is. Very complicated. (2004: 286)
Linguistically, the reader wonders at the word “moongold” — what it is made from, what it looks like, and how one might “make it glow”. The reader also starts to piece together the idea of clans or groups of people through the lexemes “ravian”, “vanars”, “crows”, and “pashans”, but pauses, wondering why these supposed “names” are not capitalized, as might be the case if they were distinguishing ethnic groups or tribes. The use of “moongold” suggests magic and, as Attebery writes, “magical code is accepted in a work of fantasy as part of its fictional ground rules, one of the defining characteristics of its universe” (1992: 55). With the possibility of magic, the reader is invited to expect any narrative twist and turn, although accepting “magical acts” or “magical events” can prove challenging as the reader is pulled further into a fantastical (read: impossible) world(s). Basu signals in the last line of the paragraph above that it is possible that Spikes “doesn’t know who he really is”, and he concedes this is all “[v]ery complicated” (2004: 286). This signal that all is not what it seems is another feature of fantasy. Attebery, on this device, suggests “the characters in a fairy tale or in modern fantasy can be viewed as internal phenomena, embodiments of psychological phenomena acting out their struggle toward integration on a projected landscape of the mind” (1992: 71).
The Simoquin Prophecies draws on a variety of sources “ranging from Greek and Indian epics to spy novels, fairy tales to superhero comics” (2004: back cover). It does not privilege the inspiration of the Indian epics over other (literary-) cultural inspirations, although the thrust of the storyline makes strong connections with the devas and the asuras, the eternal fight of good over evil, 9 and thus readers bringing an Indian sensibility to its reading, would make easy connections (albeit loose ones) with aspects of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Basu’s story worlds in The Simoquin Prophecies do not connect with Earth or modern times — as we might know them — whereas the authors Balagopal and Venkatraghavan, discussed below, do connect the supernatural and other worlds with Earth through portal travel. Like Basu, Balagopal’s Savage Blue (2016) creates otherness through fantastical characters (animal and human), and Venkatraghavan’s Dark Things (2016) sets up a struggle between good and evil similar to Basu’s crafting of his character, Danh-Gem. However, unlike Basu, Balagopal and Venkatraghavan craft their fantasy worlds from an anchor of Indian sensibilities, a centring of the “world” in India (New Delhi and other Indian cities and locations are mentioned), and through the naming and identifying motifs of their characters in Indian culture and folklore.
Savage Blue
Vikram Balagopal’s 2016 novel Savage Blue charts the lives of Akila and Shyam, who, at the ages of ten and nine respectively, experience an “encounter” in different ways whilst at boarding school in Ooty, Tamil Nadu (India). Still infectious while recovering from chickenpox, the only two children left in the hospital wing of the school, they are summoned by the school’s cat who warns them of an imminent apocalyptic event. The two children and the cat climb out of a nearby window and make their way to a neighbouring forest just as a “colossal stonehand” (2016: 6) crushes the school and all within it.
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Once in the forest, Shyam escapes, returning to the school and to the world he has always known (thus, curiously, a world not destroyed by some “colossal stonehand” or an apocalyptic event). Akila, however, disappears further into the forest with the cat and does not meet Shyam again until some 20 years have passed. Akila is able to enter and exit worlds through portals which Balagopal calls “splash-throughs”: bodies of water which can be anything from a pool to a puddle, a lake to a river, and all Akila has to do is jump or dive in. Akila has visited 13 worlds in this manner, all different in their ecology, topography, and climate yet all menacing and predatory in their own ways. Through being captured in the forest as a young girl recovering from chickenpox, Akila becomes The Beli (Balagopal tells the reader that this means “the Sacrifice”) in the worlds and she is “sacrificed” every three years until she is spent.
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Akila is pursued at the time of each sacrifice by the Insectoids, a race of hybrid human-insects that communicate through “clicks” and are governed by The Sentinel. Balagopal writes: In the low-hanging branches and twisted trunks above her, three insects hang inverted. They are each a little larger than a man and the one closest to her is suspended no more than seven feet away. Its face is bathed with blood. Her gasp triggers multiple sets of clicking patterns. (90)
When not hounded by the Insectoids, Akila spends her time entrapped within the worlds, suffering at the hands of various predators. Longing to escape, she knows that finding Shyam and bringing him to her world(s) is the only way to escape the hell of being The Beli. She has made a pact with The Sentinel, the “creator” of all life in the worlds and the governor of the Insectoids, that if she can carry a child, spawned half-Beli, half-human, handing it over to The Sentinel at birth to become the next Beli, then, on his promise, she will be set free and be able to return to Earth for good. Akila hunts down Shyam, finding him in New Delhi, and, enchanting him, he falls in love with Akila and she persuades him to return to her world. Within a year of living there together, Akila is pregnant, but as her pregnancy progresses, Akila knows that she is unable to hand the baby over to The Sentinel to become the next Beli.
Balagopal’s novel is both fantastical and Weird. It demonstrates aspects of fantasy fiction, with its creation of the splash-through portals and of the 13 worlds, and yet the menace of The Sentinel, the references to the cosmos (71), and the monsters that haunt Akila looking to kill her and her consorts all resonate with Lovecraftian and more recent ideas of the Weird/New Weird (see Dawson Varughese, 2016). Although there is no mention of Indian epics or mythology in Balagopal’s novel, it is nonetheless anchored in Indian sensibilities. Akila, upon her return to Earth, returns to the boarding school in Tamil Nadu (52, 53), as well as to New Delhi, where Shyam is living (30, 63). Yet it is not only the locations that help govern a sense of Indianness in this book but also the careful blending of Balagopal’s own fantastical ideas with his Indian identity and experiences that fashion a unique sense of the fantastical. The closing scenes of the book help to elucidate this idea; the novel ends with a duel of sorts between The Sentinel — the creator of worlds — and Shyam, who attacks The Sentinel in the knowledge that he is destroying all the worlds created by him. As the worlds collapse on themselves, a heavily pregnant Akila, with Shyam, splashes through into a swimming pool in New Delhi. Balagopal writes: From among the trees two faeries glowed, watching the couple stroll away hand in hand, and one whispered: “There goes The Beli, and the destroyer of worlds.” (403)
Here, Balagopal denotes Shyam as the “destroyer of worlds”, which is a direct reference to The Bhagavad Gita, specifically to Krishna’s words to Arjun. The name “Shyam” is usually translated as “dark”, and also as “dark (-blue) skinned”, a reference to Lord Krishna. Just as The Bhagavad Gita might be read as an analogy of the ethical and moral struggles in life, so we might read Savage Blue. Both Akila and Shyam face deeply challenging ethical and moral questions in order to survive the 13 worlds of Savage Blue, and nowhere in the novel is this more true than in its final scenes, when Shyam confronts the dilemma of destroying 13 worlds in order to save one (the Earth) from the menace of The Sentinel and the Insectoids.
Dark Things
Like Balagopal’s novel, Dark Things (2016) by Sukanya Venkatraghavan is concerned with a world other than Earth. The protagonist, Ardra, travels to Earth from the world of Atala, “a dark realm tucked away under Prithvi” (2016: 11) 12 under the orders of Hera, the Queen of Secrets and Empress of Atala. The portal to Atala from Earth is in an abandoned house, of which Venkatraghavan writes: “The portal was the tiny window right next to the broken door. If a human looked in through the window, they would just see the dusty insides of a forgotten house” (11). Mendlesohn (2008) refers to this kind of fiction as “portal-quest” fantasy, according to her taxonomy in Rhetorics of Fantasy (2008). She goes on to say that “the position of the reader in the quest and portal fantasy is one of companion-audience, tied to the protagonist, and dependent upon the protagonist for explanation and decoding” (2008: 1). This is demonstrated in Dark Things as Ardra brings the reader into her world(s), explaining what she knows and how she has come to know it whilst inviting the reader to wonder with her about those “dark things” she wishes to uncover and fully understand. In this endeavour, the novel echoes Mendelsohn’s assertion that fantasy as a genre “relies on a moral universe: it is less an argument with the universe than a sermon on the way things should be, a belief that the universe should yield to moral precepts” (2008: 5).
Ardra is a “Yakshi”, and spends her time retrieving secrets from humans on Earth by bewitching them.
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In moments of passion, she connects with the human, retrieving his secrets (it is always a man in the novel) prior to returning to the Retrieval Room in Atala for Hera to absorb the “dark things and everything unspoken” (14) into her being. Venkatraghavan writes: Yakshis were shape-shifters but the rules decreed that we couldn’t transform into animals or birds anymore. We could only take on human forms. This power was essential for what we did. We shape-shifted so that humans wouldn’t see through our disguise. But other supernaturals could tell who we were, no matter how we looked. It was an aura that we emanated, which made us recognizable to similar monsters. I couldn’t fool another Yakshi with my disguise. We would know each other instantly. (78–9)
Unlike Balagopal’s novel, the protagonist, Ardra, as a Yakshi, has an association with the Indian epics, although not as strong an association as the protagonists of “mythology-inspired” fiction. 14 Ardra is a Yakshi (male: Yaksha), who in dharmic traditions is linked to the Hindu god Kubera, the lord of semi-divine species such as fairy or nature spirits. In Dark Things, Gandharvas are also part of the plot. A Gandharva, also a semi-divine nature spirit, is renowned for being an exceptional musician to the gods. A Gandharva is usually espoused to an Apsara, another heavenly being, most commonly known as court dancers of the god Indra. All these supernatural beings — Yakshi/Yaksha, Gandharva and Apsara — are mentioned in the Indian epics, the Puranas, and in some folklore, but none play a central role in any of these narratives. What is interesting about Venkatraghavan’s novel is that she has taken the supernatural figures of the Yakshi, the Gandharva, and the Apsara from the Indian epics and, by foregrounding their supernatural characteristics, has crafted a fantasy novel. Furthermore, the manner in which Venkatraghavan has chosen to craft these characters displaces them from their original literary source (of the Indian epics, Puranas, and so on), recasting them into a new narrative and cultural imaginary.
As with the novels of Balagopal and Basu, Venkatraghavan blends elements of Western fantasy with Indian sensibilities. She takes the supernatural, semi-divine beings of the epics, foregrounds their extraordinary abilities (commonly known to those readers for whom the Indian epic texts are familiar), and weaves a contemporary fantasy storyline around them. Early in the novel, we learn that Yakshis are “created” by Hera, the Queen of Secrets, but even protagonist Ardra does not know how Hera brings the Yakshis to life. Venkatraghavan writes: I remember this dark room in Atala which was later used to create more Yakshis; I remember being naked, with a burning feeling in my core. No one ever asked how she did this, how she brought us into this world. All we knew was that it was some deep intricate magic and that we were bound to her by it. (79)
The creation of the Yakshis is not the only magical element in the novel. There is a magic stone with special powers called a “Jwala” 15 (69), freezing spells (104–5), other “dimensions” (221), and the River of Death, accessible only by a door, guarded by Izaru the Third, “Keeper of the Edge of Prithvi” (140). These tropes of magic and other worlds firmly anchor the novel in the fantastical, yet the details of these tropes reveal a deep connection with Indian sensibilities. Such sensibilities and connections with the Indian mindset are found in ideas of tantric practice, “dimensions” or “worlds” such as those portrayed through mandala artwork in dharmic traditions, or simply through the linguistic naming or expressions of these various fantastical tropes.
Indian fantasy
The novels of Balagopal and Venkatraghavan demonstrate, albeit differently, their espousing of the impossible. Incredible worlds, unexplained processes, and magical abilities all resonate with fantasy’s main concern of impossibility when set in the “real” world. Wolfe writes: “whatever we call ‘fantasy’ must first and foremost deal with the impossible” (2011: 68). The characters in Savage Blue (2016) and Dark Things (2016) do not have a connection to the Indian epic texts of the kind we see in mythology-inspired fiction; rather the characters’ extraordinary abilities, their dexterous use of strange (or unexplainable) technology and the ability to ride strange beasts or take off in flight across the Delhi night sky are what define and shape these characters in the reader’s mind. Importantly, these characters shape the reader’s mind through the employment of fantastical tropes which differ from those found in mythology-inspired fiction, and which crucially originate in the Western-generated definition of fantasy fiction. This particular difference between mythology-inspired fiction and Indian fantasy fiction is an important one which I discuss in detail below.
The plots and story arcs of Dark Things and Savage Blue are as different from each other as are their respective protagonists — Venkatraghavan’s Ardra is a supernatural being and Balagopal’s Akila is a once-human who is (nevertheless) pregnant with Shyam’s baby. Balagopal’s novel connects with the genres of fantasy and Weird through its story arc, whereas the story arc in Venkatraghavan’s novel is more consistent with that of a Romance-Fantasy novel. What is common to these two novels, however, is the fact that the story arcs are crafted outside of the mythology paradigm. This shift in the crafting of the plot forges new directions away from the established practice of foregrounding the “epic” protagonist, his/her struggles, and the triumph of good (or dharma) over evil in mythology-inspired fiction. It is evident in the novels of Balagopal and Venkatraghavan that the fantasy worlds adhere to what Clute and Grant (1999) say of fantasy: “when set in an otherworld, that otherworld will be impossible, though stories set there will be possible in its terms” (1999: 338). This is particularly apparent in Savage Blue wherein many worlds are created, all “impossible” in their own individual ways; from black snow to stone giants, from the Insectoids to the swamp world, all the worlds of Savage Blue function within their own narrative, making what happens in them possible. Indeed, Akila is able to exist in all the worlds, and the descriptions of how these worlds function reveal that the stories set within them are possible by virtue of the rules of those very worlds. In Dark Things, Ardra questions the limits of what she perceives to be the universe, what she knows to be true and thus what she assumes to be mythical. Through a conversation with Dwai, Ardra sketches out the limits of her very own (fictional) universe: “It looks like one of those magical stones”, I said. “Belonging to divine beings. Or mythical ones, like Apsaras.” “Apsaras! Those mythical sirens who live in heaven?” His tone was incredulous. “Exactly. Mythical. I doubt they exist.” The irony wasn’t lost on him. “YOU exist but Apsaras are mythical?” “Well no one has ever seen one in years. At least I haven’t. The Old Books speak of them, but for all you know they are just stories told to enchant children. Also, there is no heaven. There hasn’t been any sign of life above for centuries. We believe it is all a myth.” (89)
From this extract, we might understand what Clute and Grant (1999) write of as possibility in “other worlds”. From Ardra’s position as the protagonist, her worldview is based on what she believes is possible; thus, she relegates what she doesn’t believe to the realm of myth. We read that she bases her understandings on what she perceives visually, and she even questions the authority of the Old Books, suggesting that the mythical exists only to “enchant children”. Such a position serves as a meta-commentary on the genre classification of Venkatraghavan’s novel. As readers, are we to believe in Ardra and the possibility of two worlds — Prithvi and Atala? And are we to believe in Yakshis like herself who move between these worlds through portals, retrieving secrets from humans?
What is curious about this very post-millennial, literary Indian moment here is that mythology-inspired fiction anchors itself in itihasa and thus the question of belief in the world(s) portrayed through a novel is a very real one. The term itihasa is broadly translated as “history”, although Romila Thapar writes that it “has come to be used now to mean history, but earlier it was not history in any modern sense of the term” (2014: 55). In literal translation iti-ha-asa conveys “thus it happened” or “thus indeed it was” (Thapar, 2014: 55). The epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, when accepted as an itihasa text, narrate past events as those “that happened”, which by extension implies a true account of historical events. Evidently with Indian fantasy fiction (as distinct from “mythology-inspired” fiction), the premise of itihasa is absent and thus the (Indian) reader for whom the epics represent “true” accounts is not called upon to accept the novel’s narrative as historic, “true”, or representative of past happenings, as they would when responding to mythology-inspired fiction. This matter of reader reception when engaging with the novels of Balagopal and Venkatraghavan is important to consider when we think of how we might begin to define Indian fantasy fiction. The readers of Savage Blue and Dark Things are not pulled into complex and sometimes intricate questions of itihasa, as the novels are not anchored in such source material. Furthermore, the worlds of the impossible are created through recognized fantastical tropes which are consistent with global sensibilities rather than specifically Indian ones. In recognizing that the authors of these two novels have crafted their stories in the light of Western-oriented fantasy (as a genre), it would be easy to suggest that this body of emerging fiction is simply “fantasy”. However, the finer, culturally nuanced aspects of these novels open up the discussion of how Indian fantasy in its own right might be defined (if not through Indian epic mythology). The “centring” of these novels in India and in Indianness, whether this be through specific locations, cultural beliefs, or practices, provides essential ingredients to the fantasy narrative. Given the presence of such “centring”, it would be unfitting to suggest that the novels of Venkatraghavan and Balagopal are simply fantasy in a global, pan-genre sense of the term.
The advent of distinct Indian fantasy voices circulating amongst those of mythology-inspired fiction is both timely and significant. These novels demonstrate that other “epic” Indias might be conceived of; Indias where technology, science, and knowledge can be thought of through a framework that is devoid of manifest Hindu (epic) tropes. This type of imagining is powerful given these novels’ (potential) global dissemination circuits — namely through HarperCollins India and Hachette — as they envisage a very different kind of imagined Indianness than that of mythology-inspired fiction. In thinking of these novels as post-millennial, globalized products, they chime with much of young, urban India’s ever-expanding outlook. Indeed, change is rapidly being embedded within this demographic through access to technology, jobs, money, and loans — in short, new ways of living, and of making and spending money. Such accelerated alterations to lifestyle allow for greater than usual questioning of society, identity, and tradition — a consequence of such a young, mobilized population with opportunity, be it through technology, enhanced personal finance, or education, producing a surge of creative thinking and outputs. I suggest that the novels of Venkatraghavan and Balagopal are indicative of this surge, not least because speculative fiction allows for a certain kind of imaginative endeavour, raising questions about the future, continual globalization, the natural world, urban living (in the case of Savage Blue), and societal governance. As Sudipta Kaviraj reminds us: Questions — about the rationalization of society; the altercations in fundamental religious beliefs; the decline of traditional authority of the king in the political world, of Brahmins in social life, and of the father inside the family; the immense changes in habits of intimacy between the sexes — asked and answered by social theory in the West, are all analysed and answered through literary writing. (2015: 25)
As “Indian novels”, Balagopal’s and Venkatraghavan’s books interface with current society despite the displaced chronometry and the various geographies consistent with the genre of fantasy. These novels tell stories of the contemporary moment as well as of the past and of the future without being anchored directly in a Hindu sensibility. This is significant given that the crafting of an Indian fantasy genre devoid of the usual mythological tropes goes against the prevailing orthodoxy. In this way, Balagopal and Venkatraghavan’s novels act analogously for a changed perspective, an invitation to see the contemporary Indian moment otherwise, through narratives of difference and transformation. Savage Blue, aside from the protagonists’ dynamic and radical (personal) relationship, is deeply engaged with environmental issues and the prospect of destroying life as we know it. Dark Things foregrounds the notion of hybridity through its protagonist, Ardra, exploring the dangers of “categorizing” communities according to their ways of living and their beliefs. Dark Things seeks to cross boundaries, reform staid ideas of identity, and challenge ideas of “norms”. Istvan Csicsery-Ronay suggests that the increased frequency of speculative fictions, borne from outside the traditional Euro-American paradigm, is to be expected: With the availability of sf by more non-European — and especially second-generation, émigré, and multilingual — writers on the rise, we can expect to see the interflow of fantastic elements — oneiric, visionary, hallucinatory, folkloric, mythological, supernatural, surrealistic — to increase, not just as entertainment augmentors or artistic experiments, but as naturalized alternative rationalities, aspects of a larger commitment to breaking down technoscientism and its plausibility norms from within the myth itself, simultaneously reflecting the blending of alternative ontologies and prefiguring the inevitable spectralization of material science as it encounters spookier and spookier phenomena in the folds of matter. (2012: 481)
The presence, however nascent, of Indian fantasy fiction in English within the Indian market is redolent of Csicsery-Ronay’s words here, especially since Balagopal’s and Venkatraghavan’s novels are becoming more easily available outside India, both as e-books and as print books (albeit a limited number) on Amazon.co.uk. 16 Distribution outside India is an important factor in matters of reader reception, especially given that for the first decade of the 2000s, most Indian genre fiction in English was restricted in its sales to “India only” or the “Indian subcontinent only”. 17 Savage Blue, published by HarperCollins India, and Dark Things, by Hachette India, carry the genre classification on the back cover of the novel and in both cases, it is “fantasy”. Despite this increased availability of Savage Blue and Dark Things to global distribution and circulation, the novels have garnered attention predominantly within India: The Hindu covered the release of Savage Blue through an article entitled “Strange encounters” (Ravi, 2016), and Dark Things was launched in Mumbai by actress Vidya Balan, and other Indian-based articles and reviews appeared throughout 2017. The ever-wider distribution circuits and the globally recognized genre term of “fantasy” result in a potential, broader reader engagement for Indian fantasy fiction, and this act of genre categorization facilitates the travel of the novels as “global fantasy” whilst simultaneously promoting “Indian fantasy” fiction as a (sub)genre in its own right. This is a welcome development as in allowing the fiction to travel, it interfaces with new readers and, following Csicsery-Ronay (2012) above, “reflect[s] the blending of alternative ontologies” to a global readership.
