If Vyasa were to submit the Mahabharat manuscript to publishers today…

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Dear Mr. Krishna Dwaipaayana,

Thanks for sending in your manuscript of the “Great War” between cousins to our chief editor. Unfortunately, she’s vacationing in Shimla, and checking her emails only to see if her salary got credited. Our deputy editor recently left our company to head the literary department at DailyDeal.com. So, I, along with three other summer interns, am in charge of the slush pile. Which brings me to you. To cut to the chase, we were not impressed with your saga.  It’s not like we found it entirely uninteresting. Well, I take that back. We kind of found it really boring and clichéd. The plot and the narrative have too many flaws, in our opinion.

Here are a few that come to mind right away.

Let me start with the title. “Mahabharat” does not capture the imagination. It just does not have that zing, you know what I mean? I suggest that you call it something along the lines of “How I braved Bhishma uncle and started a war” or “I too have a war story.” If you don’t like those, how does “Beat, Slay, Love” sound? Or anything with the word “Dork” in it? Who exactly is Bharat? Why did you name the book after him? I was looking for this guy throughout the story, and felt let down that he never showed  up. You see the confusion?

The good news is that mythological narratives are all the rage today. The bad news is that you need to cut down the length of your story by approximately 23 hours.  Most of us simply cannot read anything longer than an SMS.  I began snoozing long before the war even started in your tale.

By the way, who is the protagonist of this story? I don’t normally use words like protagonist. But I saw this word yesterday in a movie review of ‘Barfi’ and have taken a fancy to it. Your story has too many characters, and frankly does not sound believable at all. We were looking at the movie angle, and your book has more characters than we have actors in Bollywood. Even Sanjay Leela Bhansali might be hard pressed to come up with his usual extravagant and insipid adaptation of your work, unless maybe if Amit-ji and Shah Rukh Sir agree to play 14 roles each.

Oh, here’s an important thing. Most women are unlikely to warm up to your yarn. You really ought to think through this, man. Would it kill you to make Draupadi practical, tough talking and a go-getter, yet with a soft and romantic side to her? Dude, if you don’t listen to me, you’re gonna have these aggressive modern women crapping all over your head on Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.

On a positive note, I got to say that I found your character of Vaasudev pretty interesting. Any chance you can change him into a boy wizard or an IIT alumnus from Jalandhar who falls in love with a girl from Salem? I’m afraid that there aren’t many people these days who buy this whole “avatar” concept. Rather, we like to fantasize that Jesus lived in Kashmir and that Shiva was a Tibetan chieftain.  Did I mention that we like IIT alumni and love stories? We can’t get enough of this stuff, I tell you. Hey, how about this? Maybe Arjun studied at IIT Delhi, and Duryodhan went to REC, Kurukshetra and Draupadi was this chick who had the habit of chatting with five boys at the same time on Facebook?

Dear Veda Vyaasa sir-ji, I don’t know if you’re aware of what I’m about to tell you. We’re all immensely bored with our insignificant lives. For the love of God, give us a nice fantasy about vampires, or a silly cubicle humor tome about making power point slides, and I’ll try and push it through because I think you’re a nice guy. Anything except this subtle, multi-layered spiritual saga of conflict and human foibles. It just won’t fly, my friend.

cheers.

Ms. Rupa Penguin Bhagat.

PS: Who typed this manuscript? Are you sure that he understood everything you told him?

PPS:  Please tell your buddy Valmiki to stop calling and SMS-ing me. If we ever published his story, I’m pretty sure that feminists outraged by “Sita” will burn our offices down.

(Read about the author Srini Chandra’s book ’3 Lives’ here - an inspirational novel that is quietly winning the hearts of readers)

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