Jaya

Jaya is Devdutt Pattanaik's retelling of the Mahabharata, the epic that was first known by that very name. The book opens with a question about the cosmos. Above the sky lies Swarga, the paradise of the gods, and higher still is Vaikuntha, the realm of God. Vaikuntha is guarded by the twins Jaya and Vijaya, whose names both mean 'victory'. One keeps a soul in Swarga, where pleasure lasts only as long as it is deserved. The other lifts it into Vaikuntha, where bliss never ends. Pattanaik suggests that understanding the difference between the two is the key to the whole epic.

Rather than follow a single text, he draws on the Sanskrit classic and on the many folk and regional traditions that grew around it, and joins them into one continuous narrative. Among these are the Pandavani of Chhattisgarh, the Gondhal of Maharashtra, the Terukkuttu of Tamil Nadu and the Yakshagana of Karnataka. The result is a Mahabharata that includes voices and episodes a standard retelling would leave out.

The book is organised into 108 chapters and illustrated with more than 250 line drawings by the author. It holds many lesser-known details: the names of the hundred Kauravas, the worship of Draupadi as a goddess in Tamil Nadu, and the stories of Astika, Madhavi, Jaimini, Aravan and Barbareek. It also gives the Mahabharata's own versions of the Shakuntalam and the Ramayana, and discusses how the date of the war can be worked out from astronomical data.

Written in clear, simple language, the book shows why this unsettling and complex reflection on the human condition has shaped Indian thought for more than 3000 years, and why it still speaks to readers today.