I don’t write for myself, I write for the story. I just want to deliver justice to the plot and the characters. It is to them that I owe my ultimate accountability. I believe the story is much bigger than any individual,” says Krishna Udayasankar, who was in the capital recently to launch her first book of the series of The Aryavarta Chronicles — Govinda.
A professor by pursuit, Ms Udayasankar is a graduate from the National Law School, Bengaluru, and a Ph.D holder in strategic management from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she is currently employed.
Ask her from where her love for history and mythology generates, and she says, “Ever since childhood, I’ve been an avid lover of history, because I think that is the root from which we have inherited the traditionally and culturally-rich society of ours. It gives meaning to who we are.”
Needless to say, when she decided to pen her first novel, she took the long convoluted route of churning out a novel leaning heavily on the history.
“My book is not a reinterpretation of The Mahabharata. I have just tried to reconstruct it in the light of the present day to build the world of today with all its political, social and economic complexities.” And in so doing, she says, her greatest ideas have emerged during discussions in class. “Not many students know that I’m writing a book, but once it releases in Singapore I hope it’ll add to my ‘coolness’ factor,” she jokes.

Read more