Krishna Udayasankar: I don’t think of myself as either poet or novelist, but simply, a story-teller

Krishna Udayasankar is a graduate of the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore, and holds a PhD in Strategic Management from the Nanyang Business School, Singapore, where she presently works as a lecturer.

Govinda, Krishna’s bestselling debut novel and the first in the Aryavarta Chronicles series of mytho-historical novels, received critical acclaim. She is also the author of Objects of Affection, a full-length collection of poetry (Math Paper Press, 2013) and is an editor of Body Boundaries: The Etiquette Anthology of Women’s Writing (The Literary Centre, Forthcoming, 2013).

Kitaab presents an interview with this talented novelist and poet on the art of writing fiction and poetry.

You made your debut with a novel last year. What started you writing poetry?

I always wanted to be a poet. But, I was (and still am, in many ways) a really, really bad poet. And so, in order to spare would-be readers, I decided to write prose instead. Of course, the tale gets a little more exciting, because the poem I abandoned for prose was what you see today as my novel series: The Aryavarta Chronicles – At first it was a satirical poem, but when I reached a stage where I needed to explore the larger socio-political macrocosm of the story, I realized I needed a different device.