Imaginary Worlds - Creating Hindu Fantasy Worlds

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Kritika H. Rao, Shveta Thakrar, Roshani Chokshi, and Ram V are helping to create a new genre. They use elements of their Hindu backgrounds to write fantasy books primarily aimed at a Western marketplace. I talked with them about the challenge of drawing on a diverse religion of beliefs and gods that many Western readers and publishers might be unfamiliar with. Our panel discussion also turned out to be an opportunity for the authors to bond over their favorite deities, the Hindu comics they grew up reading, and the questions they’ve faced about who gets to tell their stories.  Roshani Chokshi writes the middle-grade series, Aru Shah, and she’s the author of The Star-Touched Queen trilogy of YA novels. Kritika H. Rao is the author of The Surviving Sky, which will be part of The Rages Trilogy. Shveta Thakrar is the author of Star Daughter and The Dream Runners.  Ram V is a comic book writer, and the author of the graphic novel, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr. Today's episode is brought to you by HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/50imaginary and use code 50imaginary for 50% off plus free shipping. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So what's it like to buy your first cryptocurrency on Kraken? Well, let's say I'm at a food truck I've never tried before. Am I going to go all in on the loaded taco? No, sir. I'm keeping it simple. Starting small. That's trading on Kraken. Pick from over 190 assets and start with the 10 bucks in your pocket. Easy. Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Non-investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss.

See Kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. This episode is brought to you by PC Optimum. If you like a curated playlist, why not try a curated grocery list? With Swap and Save, the new feature in the PC Optimum app, you'll get PC Optimum's best price for your grocery items. Simply add products to your shopping list in the app, and it'll show you similar items at a lower cost. Add coffee to your list, then swap it for one that's cheaper. Craving chips? The app will suggest some on sale.

To get started, just open the app. It's as easy as that. See the PC Optimum app for details. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Balinski. I have fallen deep into a new realm of fantasy literature. Fantasy novels that incorporate elements of Hinduism.

These stories are written by Indian writers in the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. Some were born in the West, others moved here, and the books are aimed at a Western marketplace. Now, I know very little about Hinduism. I don't know what they're adapting or how they're changing these stories. All I know is it feels very new to me. And there are several writers whose work I really enjoyed. So I wanted to gather them together for roundtable discussion. I was curious to hear about the creative challenges and the publishing challenges of writing Hindu-themed fantasy novels. The group instantly bonded over their shared experiences.

And in the conversation, they do mention the names of Hindu gods and sacred texts, which I was not familiar with. You may not know them either, but I think you can understand everything through context. In fact, I was fascinated to hear them talk about the different aspects of Hinduism, which continue to inspire them as fiction writers. Shveta Thakkar is the author of the YA novels The Dream Runner and Star Daughter, which is about an Indian-American teenage girl who has otherworldly abilities because her father is human and her mother is a deity. In fact, her mother is the manifestation of a star. I definitely grew up with our stories.

I read them in comic book version, Amr Chitra Katha, but when I first started writing, without thinking about it, I wrote white characters, because that's what I grew up reading. It didn't occur to me until I was in my 20s when I looked around at fantasy, which I loved, and I thought, where are the people who look like me? And so that's when I decided I wanted to write characters using the mythology that I'd grown up with. She mentioned Amar Chitwarkatha Comics. They're a company based in Mumbai that makes comics to educate kids about Hindu mythology. And speaking of comics, Ram V is a comic book writer. He's worked for Marvel in DC, and he incorporates Hindu themes into his original graphic novels.

His graphic novel, The Many Deaths of Leila Starr, is about what happens when the goddess of death is forced to live among humans in Mumbai. I grew up in Mumbai to a very progressive family, so I wasn't really, you know, we weren't really too religious or steeped in that mythology kind of thing. But my grandparents in Chennai, kind of thing. But my grandparents in Chennai, my grandmother was sort of the local medicine woman, if you will, for her community. And so she would regale us every year with these mythological stories. So I think I grew up with some distance from them, but also obviously have very fond memories of them. And I think that shows in a lot of my work. Ram, I love what you've done with graphic novels. It's so extremely exciting. I'm

just excited that we're all getting to talk together. That is Roshni Chokshi. She writes a middle grade series called Aru Shah, which is published by Disney Books. She's also written a lot of YA novels, including the Star-Touched Queen series. When that series begins, the daughter of one of the women in an emperor's harem is being forced into an arranged marriage. Suddenly, the character is saved by a mysterious god who brings her to his kingdom in another world. But this world has a lot of dark secrets. You know, similar to Shweta, I also never really saw characters

that looked like myself growing up. And so a lot of my first writing was almost self-insert fan fiction. I also almost exclusively wrote white characters. But a lot of what prompted me to play with mythology was simply asking the question of why, or what if, or that's kind of weird. For example, when my ba was telling me about Ravan, the ten-headed demon king of Lanka,

I knew that I was supposed to be asking like, wow, how could someone be so philosophical and also evil and he captured Ram's wife and sparked this whole war. But because sometimes I'm little more than a sentient dumpster, my only question was how big was this guy's bed? Did he have to floss every single one of his teeth and all 10 heads? Where did he go? How did he get through any sort of hallways? How does this mythology even work?

It became things that were mostly funny or just like, huh, that's a lot of dedication to keep cutting off your head. You couldn't offer something else, like maybe a thumb or something like that. And that's always been my interest in mythology. The things that we accept is like, oh, that's totally fine. That guy cut off his son's head and now he's got an elephant head. And now he's the god of new beginnings. Ta-da, it's a joke.

Is it? What just happened? Am I going to get an elephant head? And that's how my brain usually works. Finally, we have Kritika Rao. Her novel, The Surviving Sky, is going to be part of a trilogy. The novel is actually science fiction, or science fantasy, actually. It takes place on a floating city off another planet in the distant future. The main characters are a couple who have the technological means to remake their world. For me, like these stories,

I always grew up around them, but my real interest came in them when I started to like peel back, you know, the layer and see what these stories really meant, what were they trying to tell us. So for me, my interest really lies more in the philosophical aspect of it, which is why The Surviving Sky and the Rage is trilogy. Like I wouldn't call it, like I never, I never call it based on any kind of mythology. It's very much based on Hindu philosophy. It's got a lot of those philosophical elements in it. So yeah, for me, that's really where my interest sparked, I want to say, in terms of wanting to put that stuff in my books is because I lived and breathed those ideas philosophically.

We'll get to our roundtable discussion in a moment. But first, let's have a meal together. My wife and I cook at home a lot, but that can take a lot of time. HelloFresh is fast, easy, and affordable. HelloFresh does all the shopping and meal planning for you. The ingredients show up at your doorstep pre-portioned, ready to cook, along with a step-by-step recipe card with pictures included. Their produce travels from the farm to your door for peak ripeness that you can taste. You can enjoy this season's limited fall flavor items like apple cider cake with caramel sauce or mini pumpkin cheesecake. They have over 40 recipes to choose from, including vegetarian and pescatarian options.

The meal that you're hearing us make was crispy fried onion-crusted chicken with mashed potatoes and roasted green beans. How did it taste? Mmm. Yum. Wow, another one. Go to hellofresh.com slash 50imaginary and use the code 50imaginary for 50% off plus free shipping.

Again, that's HelloFresh.com slash 50imaginary. Use the code 50imaginary for 50% off plus free shipping. HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit. off plus free shipping. HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit. So I started out by asking Kritika, Shveta, Roshni, and Ram about the first Hindu stories that they wanted to adapt to literature and why those stories spoke to them. Shveta talked about an idea in an early story of hers that she liked so much, she brought it back for her novel, The Dream Runners. And it had to do with a character from an ancient Hindu epic poem. I'd always been fascinated by the story of Prince Eklevia, who wasn't allowed to study archery with Guru Dharna because he was considered too low caste.

So he prayed to a statue of Drona and somehow became the best archer ever. Drona was very unhappy about this, especially because his star people then had to take second place. So he went to Ikhlavia and said, okay, you have to pay me your Guru dukshin, the payment for my teaching. And Ikhlavia said, anything, whatever you want, you just tell me Guruji. And so Guru Dronhan, the payment for my teaching. And Eklavya said, anything, whatever you want, you just tell me, Guruji. And so Guru Drona told him, cut off your right thumb so that he could never be an archer again. And I always thought that's really awful and really gruesome. So I had a bar full of creatures populated by beings from Hindu and Buddhist folklore, and they had

the bleeding thumb sitting there in a jar. And this bar was called Eklavya's Thumb. And so, of course, I had to save that and use it again in the Dream Runners because it was just too, like Roshani was saying, one of the best things about mythology is how outlandish it is, but presented in this completely nonchalant manner. Roshani, I feel like this kind of speaks to you. Oh, yeah, completely. Well, actually, what I'm really curious to hear

what Krithika's take on this, because Krithika, I'm so excited about your debut. It's also one of the most beautiful covers I've seen in a long, long time. And I love that your story has a marriage at its core, because I, again, I just keep coming

back to the fact that I'm a sentient dumpster. But I don't know if you guys remember the Amar Chitrakatha comic of Shiva and Parvati, if anyone, they were hot. I was like, everybody here looks sexy. Am I allowed to think that? Is that blasphemous? Am I going to get reduced to cinders, et cetera. And I would have to say that's one of my favorite stories because it's so romantic. First, she sets herself on fire. Then she comes back in a different life. And everybody's like, they need to get together.

The god of love just dies. And all this stuff happens. And it's just so romantic and lush. And it's about love that transcends over lifetimes. And it's also sacred. One of my favorite images, I mean, a very common image of Lord Shiv is how he has the necklace of skulls around his neck. And I can't remember where I came across this, but there is a story about how Parvati asks him, why do you have this necklace

of skulls? Like, where does this come from? And he tells her that the necklace of skulls are every single one of her mortal lives, that she has to keep going through life as a human until her knowledge is transcendent enough to redeem or reclaim her godhood once more. And so it's his version of keeping her close to him. That is so goth and so attractive. I love everything about it. So I would say those are one of the stories that certainly it sticks with me even now. I mean, it's to me, it's as akin to why we find Hades and Persephone so deliciously sticky and why we keep retelling it over and over again. So that one's my favorite. And Krithika, I'm so curious to see how you, you know, why you chose to write about a marriage. That's so,

that's so fascinating to me to write about. Thank you. Piggybacking off just not your question, but also your answer, Roshani, I'm fascinated with Shiva and Shakti. Like that entire philosophy for me, I think is something that is embedded into all of my books and especially in Surviving Sky and the Rages Trilogy.

And part of that was like, you know, to show that dichotomy and the dualism between Shiva's character and Parvati's character in some ways. And Iravana and Ahilya, who are the two protagonists and the married protagonists of Surviving Sky, I like to think that they are corrupted versions of what Shiva and Parvati and Shiva and Shakti, you know, are represented to be, but really more human versions of that and definitely flawed and so full of passion and anger and love and chaos in so many ways. Shiva is embedded in the work. Like it's, he's just, he's all over the place. Like it's the name of the tree. It's the name of those, you know, technological, those sun-genuring beads, those are called Rudra beads. And, you know, he's just everywhere for people who know to look for him. In some ways, that is one of the reasons why I even picked like a married couple, because I think that marriage, the relationship of a marriage really

shows that push and pull and the commitment and the love. And it's not like you can just kind of feel like, okay, I'm done. I'm walking out. Like, I'm sure you're good, but that's not necessarily the culture that, you know, I'm trying to represent or have been a part of. Shiva and Shakti and their constant, like, you know, as you said, the birth and rebirth and constantly coming together only to separate, only to come together. Like that star-crossed thing is very much a theme of The Surviving Sky. Ram, do you have any thoughts on this?

Yeah. I mean, I guess my approach to it was a bit different. I didn't really consider storytelling very seriously until I was in my mid-20s, late 20s, I suppose. I was always meant to be a chemical engineer. So it wasn't that mythology really was influential at a time where I started thinking about stories. And so my relationship with kind of mythological stories has always been more sort of focused on what it would be like to have that crash into our reality today. So it's always been that kind of mashup of,

I suppose, a more magic realist approach to mythology, if you will. But as a child, it was really these sort of anecdotes of Shiva that got me interested in learning about mythology. Certainly those were the stories I was interested in when my grandmom used to tell them to us because he was such an odd man out. He didn't really fit in with the rest of the pantheon of gods that we had. He was this god who was also a demon. He was this great savior who could also destroy things. And so that kind of duality, that kind of, that's the kind of stuff that got me

interested into it. Well, let me ask you, this could actually piggyback on what you just said. I think a lot of people in the West don't know that Hinduism isn't monolithic, that there's not sort of a singular biblical text that is the one and only story. Have you found that liberating in terms of creating your own spin in developing your characters? Yeah, I mean, this question really comes up a lot, particularly because I do a lot of work in superhero comics as well. And I think it strikes at the heart of how we experience mythologies, not just Hindu mythology, but other pantheonic mythologies as well. They're always rife with contradictions.

Someone's hero is always somebody else's villain. The relationships are all skewed depending on who wrote it and when. I find that in those contradictions is really where the beauty of a story lies. You know, Hinduism, so to speak, as an umbrella covers, you can be a Hindu atheist, and then you can be a Vaishnava, someone who grew up with Krishna. You can be someone who follows Shiva and Shakti. None of that stuff actually has to contradict each other in a way that we expect in the West for stuff to be very black and white, very binary.

That's just not there. Yeah, it's going to be very co-existent. And I like that about that. Yeah, I do too. I just echoing off of that, what we see, especially writing in children's fiction, there is so much of a desire for moral certainty and the way that we tackle mythology, especially when it's inextricable from a living religion. And it's very interesting to me because I think sometimes the people who are most upset with the way we play with mythology will try to say that you should be ashamed of yourself

when really what I see it as is an act of devotion. Yes. It is me playfully engaging with something that I love and something that means a lot to me. And I think that that line of where you draw the sacred is individual, it's personal. It is in the nature of stories to be mutable, to be constantly changing and to need to be retold. And the problem with sort of that intersection between religion and storytelling is that religion hates it when you change anything.

They want to stick to one version of everything. And so I think that is why that sort of inherent conflict between someone going, you know, you should be ashamed or how dare you change or how dare you make fun of this. Whereas that's a religious person talking, whereas a storyteller goes, every time I look at this, I want to tell it a different way yeah it's beautiful yeah i love that because especially i think like hinduism and storytelling hinduism is a religion of stories like wouldn't you say like of course like you know you go read your upanishads and all of that and it's very like you know mathematical philosophy and it's gorgeous like i love that like i've studied it but hinduism in general like i think it's gorgeous. Like, I love that. Like, I've studied it. But Hinduism in general,

like, I think it's, these philosophies were created, they were given these personifications and these gods and goddesses and, you know, whether you believe that they're real or they're just, you know, concepts kind of personified. Like, all of these were meant to be accessible

and stories are accessible and they teach us about ourselves and the universe and our place in it and society and all of those things. And I think Hinduism evolved very much to be that kind of religion. So retellings and reinterpretations and looking at things a different way and questioning and being argumentative about it, I think is embedded within the religion. This very much is a religion for stories, meant for storytellers to give their take on it and have that singular,

subjective way of looking at things be part of a greater truth. Yes, agreed. And absolutely, as an amateur folklorist, I'd say as well that stories are going to, they always, if they're going to survive, they have to change. So what I say when I write, when I use, when I draw in mythologies, that I'm writing loving fan fiction of these myths. Like Roshni said, it's also an act of devotion for me. And I think the problem comes only in that, unfortunately, in the West, people are not that familiar, if at all, what we're working with. So then there comes in this idea that our work is supposed to be teaching them something. Well, you know, all of you grew up with these stories, but was there ever a point where you realized you actually have to start researching your own culture?

Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, what has that been like for you? Oh, it's really, it's difficult because you can go to a bookstore here and anywhere. You know, I live in America. So here in America, you can go to a bookstore and you can find a zillion books about Celtic fairy lore. You can find a zillion books about Celtic fairy lore. You can find a zillion books about what Christianity supposedly means. But trying to find these stories, and again, with that expectation that there's a definitive version of anything. So it's very frustrating to me, like I mentioned before, when I see reviews and people are complaining the book didn't teach them enough.

And you don't even know what I made up, reader. complaining the book didn't teach them enough. And now you don't even know what I made up, reader. I want to shift the conversation to publishing in a Western marketplace. You know, a lot of publishers, I mean, even people who come from Western cultures, there's a lot of like recontextualizing what is familiar, dealing with well-established franchises,

classic fairy tales. What are some of the challenges of writing stories and trying to publish stories in a Western marketplace where many readers and probably editors and publishers are unfamiliar with the background behind these stories? Well, for me, it was the, again, it's a lot of that idea that we're somehow teaching something. We get put into this teacher role, even though that's not necessarily what we're doing. And also, the readership doesn't have the same familiarity, let's say, that they might have with Greek mythology. Then I always feel like I have to be careful what I do, because that's going to be

taken as gospel, if you will. To answer your question, Eric, about publishing in the Western landscape and in the Western sphere, there's a couple of things which I find like interesting and challenging and just, you know, huh, like, I guess that's happening is one is the exoticization of my culture. And not that that is not that it's not that that's new. That's always been happening, like the exoticization of something which is so normal for me. And, you know, people going like, oh, tell us more, like, you know people going like oh tell us more like you know but in this very almost slightly patronizing slash condescending way of being like you know teach us about this you know many you know headed god of yours and what does he do and what does he

mean and I'm like leave me alone you know I have nothing to teach you but but um but it is an opportunity too right like that's the thing. Publishing right now, I'm so glad that it's moving in this space right now where it is allowing for these stories to come out and be accessible to the rest of the world. So while there's an element of exoticization, there's also an element of opportunity for creators like us to come out and tell our stories.

So for me, it's less about like my editors not being on board and not having research or not having that groundwork to work off of because I work with like some wonderful people in the industry. It's more about readers being comfortable with not necessarily understanding everything. But I'm like, maybe that's the point. Like you don't necessarily need to understand every single thing. Like maybe a narrative is going a certain way and you just have to like trust that that's going to happen. But I think like today, sometimes as readers, I feel that we don't necessarily engage with art in that way.

We expect it to do something for us. And that in many ways is a sad commentary on late stage capitalism in itself, where everything must have a purpose. Yeah, I mean, certainly in comics and graphic novels, which is kind of where I've done most of my work. When I started out, it's kind of funny. I was publishing books about Indian stories, Indian characters from the very beginning. And when I started out, I used to get this kind of, oh, it's set in India. I'm not sure we can sell it in this market. I'm not sure who wants to read it.

I had to kickstart my first ever book. It was self-published. It did very well. And about three years on, now I talk to publishers. I pitch them a sci-fi story and they're like, yeah, but do you have anything set in India

with Indian fantasy maybe? And it's kind of funny to see how that's turned around. The other thing is when editors or publishers will read a story and then view it with a framework of a very sort of Western Judeo-Christian morality. In Hindu mythology, Ravan was the villain of one of the epics, but was an incredibly devout, incredibly educated, incredibly loyal person as well.

There isn't really that sort of black and white, good guy, bad guy approach. And sometimes I feel like publishing can take a while to sort of wrap their head around that. And then lastly, I think publishers are very afraid to publish stories that don't take God seriously, that make fun of them, that want to interrogate them, maybe say that, well, this is nonsensical and we shouldn't think of God's this way. And when that happens, because India is such a massive country and has such a massive sway in terms of how a book does, it becomes a very concerning public publishing decision when they come back and say, we are afraid this will have backlash in India. To the question of publishing, I, I hear you, my first book, The Star-Touched Queen came out in 2016. And I don't think that I was prepared

for how to engage with mythology and that the that by writing it, I was automatically always on the defensive, always having to explain why I did something as opposed to Krithika, what you said, just leaving it out there for interpretation, allowing people to come to it and to leave with whatever they want from the story. I think one of the difficult things and very humbling aspects of being pioneers in our field, because I think that's exactly what all of us are. We are pioneers. We're doing the thing that we haven't seen before because we haven't seen it before. And what happens with that is you run into a lot of people's wounded feelings. A lot of people who are desperate to see themselves reflected in art to be portrayed as beautiful, intelligent, and as main characters. And when they don't see

themselves specifically cast the way that they want to in art, it becomes very personal for them. Disney has been very kind to me, but one of the things that was a big cause for alarm when Aru came out was this one guy in India mansplained the hell out of my books. And he sent an email to everybody in Disney. And he was just trolling me. He was trolling me with his opinion. That's fine. But he scared a lot of the higher ups in publishing who then wanted me to make a statement about the things that I did wrong, the things that I should have done differently. And when I said, this is a troll, they were like, are you sure? We don't know. We need to watch our backs. And I understand that fear for publishers that when they go out and they support a different kind of

voice and they put their support behind a different kind of mythos that they have no knowledge of, they're scared. And I say this with no hatred towards that experience. It's just what happens when there's no precedent for stories that have appeared like yours. You know, it's interesting. Something keeps coming up, but the word that keeps popping in my mind is diaspora, because I mean, I was thinking about publishing in a Western marketplace, but of course, you're getting reactions from India, too. So it puts you in a very unique position being between these two people who know a lot about what you're writing about and have very strong opinions, and then people who know very little and don't even know how to trust

their own instincts. So you really have to kind of navigate this field yourselves. Yeah. Yeah. And there is, unfortunately, as Roshni and I have both run into, the idea that diaspora doesn't have the right to tell our stories. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think that's the thing, right?

Like you mentioning that people who have a lot of knowledge and people who have some knowledge but a different kind of knowledge, I think it's a disservice to say that any one person is an expert of something as large as this like religion and this way of thinking which has been going on for thousands of years like there is no one like expert like that does not exist it didn't exist back in like ancient times because you had like different like ashrams and different like sages like arguing the heck out of things like it does not exist right now see i find i find this like super fascinating because the exact same sort of problems and and and the obstacles we're facing is also faced by people writing like star wars novels because there's some guy who's watched every Star Wars movie like 75 times going,

actually, I think you will find in film number four, this happened. And so I really think it comes back to that question of like, I think fantasy is the key word. Like we're writing stories. We're not writing religion. And I think some people want to view it as religion. And even if they don't put it in those terms, they're wired to view this thing as this kind of canonical,

one singular monolithic truth that can never be veered away from. And the best response to that is to go like, yeah, I still did it my way. I'm good. We'll hear the rest of our conversation after this this episode is brought to you by secret secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection free of aluminum parabens dyes talc and baking soda it's made with ph balancing minerals and crafted with skin conditioning oils. So whether you're going for a run or just running late, do what life throws your way and smell like you didn't. Find Secret at your nearest Walmart or Shoppers Drug Mart today. Are there any stories from Indian mythology that you'd love to adapt, but you just haven't figured out how to do it yet?

It's on your list of someday when I kind of crack the code of figuring out exactly how I want to adapt this fascinating thing into my work. Sorry, Eric, I already did it. I love the story of Princess Savitri and Prince Satyavan. I won't tell the whole story because we don't have time, but basically she ends up cheating Lord Yama, depending on what version you're hearing. Sometimes Yama just thinks, okay, you're cool. I'm just going to let you have your husband back. But in other stories, the one I like, Savitri manages to win her dead husband's life back from Lord Yama. And I just love it so much. And I actually already adapted it in a short story in an anthology, but that would have been my answer. I'm fascinated with the character of Duryodhana

and then Karna, like their relationship in Mahabharata, like that, you know, toxic friendship, bromance type thing that they've got going on. And I'd love to one day adapt that. There've been so many like different adaptations of it and done gorgeously, but I want to see what I can do with those characters or even just that you know archetype really and explore that relationship I think there's a there's a lot of room in fantasy right now especially to explore we have some great stories about feminism and a lot of different characters you know women characters and I myself write those but I think there's also space to explore toxic masculinity has done to the world in so many ways. And that's a different like interpretation of feminism in itself. And

I just, I think that that would be really cool. I love that. I cannot wait for you to write that. Thank you. So excited about it. I mean, I think that for me, I'm very, very interested in relationships and the gaps of just the gaps in them. Like, for example, there's this story in the Ramayana about when Lakshman goes with Ram and Sita and they go into exile, he decides that he won't sleep at all so that he can watch over his brother and his wife. The goddess of sleep tells him, you know, you can't do that. You have to, goddess of sleep tells him, you know, you can't do that. You have to, you have to rest. You owe me that rest. And so as a sacrifice, Lakshman's wife, Urmila, takes the sleep for him and she sleeps for 14 years or something like that. And it's such a small, quiet throwaway line.

And I wonder all the time, what were her dreams like? What happened when she woke up? I think a lot about, you know, Krithika, you mentioned toxic masculinity. It's curious when you consider the avatar of a deity and how they compare to our standards of partners and men and women today. For example, I don't think that Ram is a good husband. You know, his wife, after she comes back, gets accused of Ram's in the background. I was going to say, for the record, we're not talking about the Ram in this call. But, you know, she comes back. He forces her

to perform this Agni Puriksha, this trial by fire to prove that she's pure. And even though she proves the sanctity of herself, that she was not unfaithful when she was in captivity, he still leaves behind his pregnant wife in the forest and is just like, bye. That is so messed up. And yet it's those complexities. I'm so curious what those conversations would look like between them. It's nice that there is no, you know, perfect man, perfect woman, or, you know, perfect human or character within Hinduism. I think each of them can be, you know, you can interrogate them. And that's what I really like about working in this field.

Just to sort of add on to that conversation without disagreeing with any of it, despite my name being attached to this, clearly much maligned individual. I find it super interesting that within the same sort of mythology, there is another example of Shiva who's one of his forms is Arjuna-Narishwa, which is half man half

woman and is all about finding power through being in touch with your femininity which is such a progressive idea for its time considering everything around it is steeped in this sort of purushottam ram the greatest amongst all men kind of thing I'm currently obsessed with my reading of the Kalki Puran, which is sort of the equivalent of the Hindu eschatology, end of the world myth. I'm in love with this idea that throughout Hindu mythology, there have been figures who were bestowed with immortality of some sort. And the Kalki myth says that they must still be on our mortal plane until this last avatar of God arrives to fight whatever final battle at the end of this terrible age. I just love the idea that these gods as immortals are still here somewhere among us, hidden maybe. And I think that's a fascinating

angle to approach you know what's it like what would they think of uh to make it sort of almost a little bit metafictional what would they think of hinduism today what would they think of their own stories today uh i think that's that's a really interesting thing for me to explore good omens but make it hindu right i I was just thinking that. I love that. Done. Logline taken. The Hindu good omens may not be written yet, but I highly recommend all the books they have written. I have links to everybody's work in the show notes. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Ram V, That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Ram V, Roshni Chokshi,

Kritika Rao, and Shveta Thakkar, who helped me a lot in putting this episode together. If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode, Faith and Fantasy, from 2018, where I talked about religion and fantasy worlds with leaders in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. You might also like my 2021 episode, The Zen of Sci-Fi, which looked at the influence of Buddhist philosophy on different sci-fi worlds. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. If you like the show, please give us a shout out on social media, or leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. That helps people discover imaginary worlds. The best way to support the show is to donate on Patreon. At different levels, you get either free imaginary world stickers, a mug,

a t-shirt, and a link to a Dropbox account, which has the full length interviews of every guest in every episode. You can also get access to an ad-free version of the show through Patreon, or buy an ad-free subscription on Apple Podcasts. You can subscribe to the show's newsletter at imaginaryworldspodcast.org.