Usha Narayanan, author of Prem Purana, has donned many hats, before becoming a successful full-time author. In her glorious career, she has dabbled with genres like thriller and romance, before turning to mythology. Her works Pradyumna: Son of Krishna and The Secret of God’s Son have been praised as ‘Indian mythology at its fiercest and finest’.
Her latest book, Prem Purana is about stories of love and extraordinary devotion found in Hindu mythology. On the launch of the book we asked her what about the mythological stories attracted her to write about them.
Here’s what she had to say.
The idea of writing mythological love stories was born during a conversation with my editor Vaishali Mathur at the Jaipur Literature Festival when she suggested that I should combine my strengths in writing mythology and romance. At that point, I was busy with The Secret of God’s Son and it was only after it was completed that I could think seriously think about this. I knew that our epics and Puranas focused more on the battle between good and evil, with heroic gods and fearsome demons confronting one another. Only a few love stories were widely known, such as the one of Kama shooting his arrow of love at ascetic Shiva, or of Arjuna winning Draupadi’s hand at her swayamvara.
I began my quest by re-reading all the ancient lore with an eye to discovering tales of the heart. As always, when writing mythological fiction, I wished to focus on untold stories, using my imagination to bring alive minor characters or lesser-known aspects of major ones. The first character who caught my eye was Ganesha. We think of him as the lovable elephant-headed god with a fondness for modakas. But who did he marry? People in the south of India swear that he is single, but others state vociferously that he is married. The images in temples show him either alone or with a wife or two. What are their names? Some say Siddhi and Riddhi, while others think their names are Siddhi and Buddhi. That was enough intrigue to stimulate my mind!
Another interesting layer to the story is the idea that Buddhi, Siddhi and Riddhi represent intellect, spiritual power and prosperity. As their names are merely mentioned in passing in most Puranas, I could give full rein to my imagination in portraying them. I endowed the three with distinct characteristics and showed Ganesha wooing them in different ways, according to their particular likes and dislikes. My Riddhi is sprightly, Buddhi is silent and deep, and Siddhi is fierce and opposed to the very idea of marriage! Their stories span three realms and four yugas, shedding light on many engaging aspects of Ganesha, the first among the gods. To add to the appeal, I discovered that in Bengal, during Durga Puja, Ganesha even has a banana bride!
I think readers will enjoy seeing Gajamukha in a refreshing new light in Ganesha’s Brides, the first of the three stories in Prem Purana.
“Siddhi watched as more and more arrows struck Ganesha, causing blood to flow like a flood. Was he ready to meet death rather than forsake his promise to her? Would he sacrifice everything for the sake of his love?”
**
For the second story, Mandodari, my inspiration came from the Ramayana. Ravana was Brahma’s great grandson on his father’s side and an asura prince on his mother’s. Choosing to follow the asura path, he pillaged heaven and earth, ravished women and abducted Rama’s wife Sita. What I found of interest was not his war with Rama, but his relationship with his wife Mandodari. How did she react to all this? Did she protest or did she submit silently to his actions? What was her background? Did the rakshasa love her? And the most exciting question of all―did Mandodari come face to face with Sita, the woman she regarded as the instrument of doom that would bring down Lanka?
I found no answers in the commonly available texts where Mandodari features in a mere two or three scenes. Fortunately, however, there are many Ramayana versions available. I followed the uncommon trails, used my imagination and fleshed out the queen’s character, placing her emotions at the centre of the narrative. The story also reveals startling new facets of Ravana’s character and motivations. I think Mandodari, with all its twists and turns, will be riveting and revelatory to readers.
“‘Snatching a woman by force or stealth is not an act of valour, Ravana. She is not an object of lust or a means to settle scores with your enemy,’ said Mandodari, her voice loud and clear. She would speak the truth regardless of consequences. It was a risk she had to take for Ravana and her people.”
**
After delving into the lives of a merry god and a dire rakshasa, it was time to move to the human plane, with the story of King Nala and Princess Damayanti. She turned down the gods who courted her at her swayamvara and chose Nala as her husband. Though she chose love over immortality, Nala was driven by his own demons and abandoned her in a dangerous forest. Damayanti struggled to survive the perils that confronted her at every turn, but forged forward regardless. She did not give up hope and devised various stratagems to reclaim her happiness.
I was fascinated by her strength and also by the magical swan that plays a key role as the messenger of love. I named the swan Gagana, meaning sky or heaven, and created a charming and audacious companion to Damayanti. The Kali demon, who plays a major role in my previous books, Pradyumna: Son of Krishna and The Secret of God’s Son, is the enemy that Nala and his queen must confront. How can a mortal pair combat the power of the demon who reigns over a dark yuga that signals the end of the world? Love, loss, hope and despair form the chequered background of this poetic tale.
“‘Majestic Ashoka, whose name signifies one who destroys grief . . . Free me from pain and unite me once more with my Nala!’ cried Damayanti, sinking to her knees under a soaring Ashoka tree. Alas, the tree made no answer and all she could hear was the wind rustling among the leaves.”
**
A major part of my excitement in writing these stories came from the opportunity to focus attention on the women in our epics who are often sidelined. We often find that a woman is regarded as a prize to be won, someone who is forced to watch quietly while her husband makes disastrous decisions. However, the heroines in Prem Purana are central to the action. They are strong, independent thinkers who inspire the males in their lives―god, asura or king―to do the right thing and live up to their responsibilities.
I hope readers enjoy reading these tales which provide a good mix of fervour and fury, heroism and heartbreak, set against a spectacular backdrop spanning heaven and earth.
Category: Specials
An Unresolved History: A Legacy Of Partition
By Urvashi Butalia
It is close on two decades now that I have been researching and writing on the human histories of Partition. As story upon story unfolds, and terrible, painful histories begin to emerge, it does not, contrary to popular wisdom, become any easier to deal with them.
One of the many grave consequences of Partition—and one which remains all the more prevalent today—has been the ease with which so many Indians and Pakistanis fall into a pattern of mutual demonisation, so that virtually everything, whether it relates to bombs, or to violence or to foreign relations or to territorial claims, can be laid at the door of the ‘other’. If it was not so serious, it would be laughable: imagine two mature, intelligent (if one can use those terms for nation states) countries in the twenty first century placing virtually every failure at the door of the ‘other’. Indeed so powerful is the jingoism, and so deep the suspicion, that attempts to move out of that are seldom successful.
The story below provides an illustration of this.
I once received a letter from Pakistan, sent by a young man called Tanveer Ahmed, who had made it his mission in life to bring his grandmother, originally from Kashmir, to Indian Kashmir to meet her siblings, and he wrote to ask if I could help in getting her a visa.
His letter started by recounting the facts of his story. They are as follows:
- I have been trying to re-unite my maternal grandmother with her siblings since 1989, having met them that year (They live about 90kms apart, divided by the LOC since October 1947)
- After objecting for many years, my maternal grandfather finally agreed to allow me to seek an Indian visa for my maternal grandmother after learning of the death of her younger brother. He even expressed interest himself in visiting her remaining family members.
- Being a British citizen (I have lived in the UK since the age of 4) it was obvious that I would seek my Indian visa from London (I have been to India twice before—1989 and 1993). After meeting the concerned Visa Officer and outlining my reason for travel, he stipulated that I should request a fax from my relations in India to verify our relationship. After confirming that to be the only stipulation, I duly received a fax from my Indian uncle in Rajauri and presented it to the visa officer. He, in turn, expressed that he found it impossible to believe that Hindus and Muslims could be related and insisted that I re-apply for my Indian visa from the IHC in Islamabad. He was at pains to insist that IHC (Islamabad) would merely request an NOC from IHC (London) and that I would promptly receive my visa within a matter of days. He even gave me his personal phone number in case of any problem with IHC (Islamabad). On his persistence, I felt I had no option but to trust him on his word despite my scepticism.
- When I applied in Islamabad, I was initially told to check after a few days, then a couple of months, then I was told that my case was in the Indian Home Ministry pending approval. After a few months, I was informed that the issue could take up to two or two and a half years.
- I also applied for the LOC crossing in November 2005 only to learn a few months ago that people applying after me have been and come back.
Tanveer wrote in desperation, anxious to find a way of getting his grandmother to Indian Kashmir to meet with her relatives. Concerned that both her age and her heart condition would make it increasingly difficult for her to travel, he gave up his job in London to come to Pakistan and devote all his energy to achieving the goal he had set himself. To him, getting his grandmother to Indian Kashmir was not only a personal mission—she was the one who had brought him up as a child—but also a way of contributing to the lessening of tension between India and Pakistan. He saw visits to and reunions with relatives across borders as one way of doing so. As he said:
My personal and professional experience of life equips me well to make a positive and constructive input into Indo-Pak Relations. It’s a real pity that neither country has been able to read that about me thus far. I completed a cycle ride from Torkhem (Pak-Afghan border NWFP) to Wagah (PAk-Indian border Punjab) in the sweltering heat recently to display my seriousness for peace between the two countries. I aim to continue this cycle ride from Attari to Kolkatta as soon as my grandmother has been re-united with her family.
Despite his best efforts Tanveer Ahmed’s labours continued in vain, with little hope of a visa being granted for his grandmother to travel to India. With some help from him, I was able to explore this story further and to meet with his grandfather in England, and as the story unfolded, other aspects became clear.
His grandfather was among the many Pathans, men who came to Kashmir in October of 1947 as part of what has come to be known as the raiders’ attack. A little over sixteen at the time, Tanveer’s grandfather said he knew very little about why they went to Kashmir, but that as a group of young boys, they found the whole enterprise to be something of an adventure. At some point they came across a group of young girls who were running away from the violence, in search of safety. The boys divided up the girls between them, and Tanveer’s grandfather married the girl who came to ‘his share’.
At the time, the assumption was that her family had all been killed. She converted to Islam and stayed on with her husband in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, believing all the while that everyone else in her family was dead. After some years, her husband moved to England, and she stayed behind, and it was a chance encounter with a relative of hers in England—a distant cousin—that led her husband to the discovery that some members of her immediate family had survived and were still living in India-administered Kashmir. And among them was her brother.
Keen to go back to what she still thought of as her home, Tanveer’s grandmother began to focus all her energy—as so many Partition survivors do—on meeting her family again. But her husband, fearful of this new element in their lives, was not at first willing to let her go. Eventually he agreed, but at that stage, it was bureaucracy and the political standoffs between the two countries that continued to work against this family.
As with so many Partition stories, this one too remains unfinished in its telling. Many years later I heard from Tanveer that a visa had finally been granted and his grandmother did finally manage to go to her family home across the border. What we do not know is what that visit meant to her – did it finally resolve something for her? Put a closure on a history that had so far remained unfinished, perhaps incomplete? And what did this search mean for Tanveer, born after Partition, with no direct memory of it, but with its constant presence in his life? These are questions to which we’re not likely to find satisfactory answers. These are questions that still do not easily enter the histories of our countries for the tension between history and memory prevents us from seeing how they can so fruitfully overlap and enrich each other.
This story is in no way adequate to even begin to understand the complex and multiple legacies of Partition that stretch their long arm into the present of India and Pakistan and that still influence the ways in which both nations and indeed their peoples relate to each other. There are not many countries in the world where, after seventy years, the divide is still so deep politically, that any contact is difficult, sometimes, as in Tanveer’s family’s case, virtually impossible, and looked upon with suspicion. No matter that travel restrictions have eased in the last several years but there is still the very real fear that the moment things go wrong in the India-Pakistan equation, the first thing to be affected will be the issuing of visas. Traumatic histories leave many scars that take several generations to heal, and India and Pakistan are no stranger to these, but the opening up of contact, the easing of travel barriers, the issuing of visas—these things signal a return to the ‘normal’ behaviour that is so necessary for nation-states to own, regardless of how terrible their pasts have been.
AUTHOR BIO:
Urvashi Butalia is a publisher and writer based in Delhi. She is co founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house and now runs Zubaan, an imprint of Kali. She has written and published widely on a range of issues. Among her published works are a co-edited volume, Women and the Hindu Right: A Collection of Essays, Speaking Peace: Women’s Voices from Kashmir and the award winning history of Partition: The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India which has been translated into eleven languages. (Urdu, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, Assamese, Marathi and French, German, Bahasa, Japanese, Korean)
10 Things You Should Know About Akash Verma
Akash Verma is a man of many talents. Not only is he a bestselling author but also an established entrepreneur. His profile lists him as the co-founder of two start-up companies before which he had also dabbled various roles in major corporations like Coca-Cola, Big FM and Red FM.
Akash is back with his fourth novel, You Never Know: Sometimes Love Can Drag You Through Hell…, a romance thriller which will keep you at the edge of your seat till the last page.
Here are a few things facts about the bestselling author.
Early beginnings!
Master of many talents
Woah!
It’s all in the genes.
Relate!
Quite a quirk that is…
The next time you want some gossip about the tinsel town, you know whom to turn to.
Wow!
Aww!
How many of these facts did you already know about the author?
5 facts About the Father of our Nation You Should Know
Today marks the 148th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, or as he was dearly addressed, Bapuji. The extraordinary figure he was, revered and followed by many, Bapuji followed a simple, ordinary lifestyle. His teachings on truth and nonviolence (ahimsa) inspired the masses in India’s freedom movement against the British Raj, and it continues to do so even now.
Here are a few facts about the man who changed the landscape of India forever.
Revelation!
Humble soul
Gandhiji understood the importance of self-sustenance
Gandhiji believed meditation was important for both body and mind
Kasturbaji died in prison, sent there with Gandhiji for civil disobedience
How many of these facts did you know about Bapu?
8 Steps to Improve Your Quality Of Life And Achieve Your Goal
We all dream about a glorious future and set goals to turn it into a reality. What if someone told you that you only need 5 years to achieve your goals.
Arfeen Khan in Where will you be in 5 years gives you crucial tips that are practical, effective and can be implemented from day one. He also helps you chart out your growth and solve your personal problems.
Here are 8 steps that he insists will help you improve your quality of life
Take Control of Your Health
Grow Your Wealth in a Steady Manner
How Passionate Are You about Your Work?
When Someone Knows You Better than You Know Yourself
Stay Curious and You Will Enjoy Life
Things Belong to You, You Don’t Belong to Them
How to Be Creative? Play Games
Stay Tuned to Your Social Support System
Tell us what do you do to improve the quality of life.
8 Things that Scaachi Koul Said that Will Always Matter (Even When We are All Dead)
As children growing up, we tend to question everything and everyone. More often than not, we rebel against age-old customs imposed on us at every step, only to be told by our elders that we are too young to understand the ways of the world. Amidst this hormonal and social chaos that we are suddenly pushed into, it can be difficult to know that you’re not the only one who feels this way. Sometimes you just need someone to tell you that at the end, everything will turn out to be just fine.
Here are 8 times Indian-origin Canadian writer Scaachi Koul said things that would have made growing up so much easier.
When she told us that it’s okay to be any size, but not okay to be shamed for it.
When she showed us how a piece of clothing might define our waistlines, but not how we are as human beings.
When she taught us how it’s important to rationally question everything, including our parents.
When she held a mirror to our society’s face and magnified the ugly truth.
When she reminded us of our first childhood heroes.
When she showed us why it’s alright to do everything ‘forbidden’ and not feel guilty.
When her humour was self-deprecating, yet, damn honest.
And finally, when she told us exactly what we all need to know…
So, what is your advice to your teenage self?
Everything You Need to Know About Level 5 Leadership
IN 1971, A SEEMINGLY ordinary man named Darwin E. Smith was named chief executive of Kimberly-Clark, a stodgy old paper company whose stock had fallen 36% behind the general market during the previous 20 years. Smith, the company’s mild-mannered in-house lawyer, wasn’t so sure the board had made the right choice—a feeling that was reinforced when a Kimberly-Clark director pulled him aside and reminded him that he lacked some of the qualifications for the position. But CEO he was, and CEO he remained for 20 years.
What a 20 years it was. In that period, Smith created a stunning transformation at Kimberly-Clark, turning it into the leading consumer paper products company in the world. Under his stewardship, the company beat its rivals Scott Paper and Procter & Gamble. And in doing so, Kimberly-Clark generated cumulative stock returns that were 4.1 times greater than those of the general market, outperforming venerable companies such as Hewlett-Packard, 3M, CocaCola, and General Electric.
Smith’s turnaround of Kimberly-Clark is one the best examples in the twentieth century of a leader taking a company from merely good to truly great. And yet few people—even ardent students of business history—have heard of Darwin Smith. He probably would have liked it that way. Smith is a classic example of a Level 5 leader—an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will. According to our five-year research study, executives who possess this paradoxical combination of traits are catalysts for the statistically rare event of transforming a good company into a great one. (The research is described in the sidebar “One Question, Five Years, 11 Companies.”)
“Level 5” refers to the highest level in a hierarchy of executive capabilities that we identified during our research. Leaders at the other four levels in the hierarchy can produce high degrees of success but not enough to elevate companies from mediocrity to sustained excellence. (For more details about this concept, see the exhibit “The Level 5 Hierarchy.”) And while Level 5 leadership is not the only requirement for transforming a good company into a great one— other factors include getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and creating a culture of discipline—our research shows it to be essential. Good-to-great transformations don’t happen without Level 5 leaders at the helm. They just don’t.
Not What You Would Expect
Our discovery of Level 5 leadership is counterintuitive. Indeed, it is countercultural. People generally assume that transforming companies from good to great requires larger-than-life leaders—big personalities like Lee Iacocca, Al Dunlap, Jack Welch, and Stanley Gault, who make headlines and become celebrities.
Compared with those CEOs, Darwin Smith seems to have come from Mars. Shy, unpretentious, even awkward, Smith shunned attention. When a journalist asked him to describe his management style, Smith just stared back at the scribe from the other side of his thick black-rimmed glasses. He was dressed unfashionably, like a farm boy wearing his first J.C. Penney suit. Finally, after a long and uncomfortable silence, he said, “Eccentric.” Needless to say, the Wall Street Journal did not publish a splashy feature on Darwin Smith.
But if you were to consider Smith soft or meek, you would be terribly mistaken. His lack of pretense was coupled with a fierce, even stoic, resolve toward life. Smith grew up on an Indiana farm and put himself through night school at Indiana University by working the day shift at International Harvester. One day, he lost a finger on the job. The story goes that he went to class that evening and returned to work the very next day. Eventually, this poor but determined Indiana farm boy earned admission to Harvard Law School.
He showed the same iron will when he was at the helm of Kimberly-Clark. Indeed, two months after Smith became CEO, doctors diagnosed him with nose and throat cancer and told him he had less than a year to live. He duly informed the board of his illness but said he had no plans to die anytime soon. Smith held to his demanding work schedule while commuting weekly from Wisconsin to Houston for radiation therapy. He lived 25 more years, 20 of them as CEO. Smith’s ferocious resolve was crucial to the rebuilding of Kimberly-Clark, especially when he made the most dramatic decision in the company’s history: selling the mills.
This is an excerpt from HBR’s 10 Must Reads (On Leadership). Get your copy here.
Credit: Abhishek Singh
7 Quotes by Novoneel That Will Leave a Chill Down Your Spine
Novoneel Chakraborty is a master when it comes to romance thrillers. His books A Thing beyond Forever and That Kiss in the Rain have been appreciated by thousands all over the country. They have also appeared in numerous bestsellers’ lists at different points in time since their releases.
Novoneel is back with another beguiling tale of dark romance and thrill, Forever is a Lie.
Here are seven quotes from the book that will send a chill down your spine.
Intrigued? Get your copy of Novoneel Chakraborty’s Forever is a Lie right now!
Ten Priorities India Should Focus On
Bimal Jalan had a close view of financial governance while he served as Union Finance Secretary and Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. Drawing on his vast experience he compares two distinct periods: 1980–2000 and 2000–15, and examines the transition India has made in the last four decades from a strictly regulated, slow-growth state enterprise to one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
In his latest book, India: Priorities for the future he lists out few areas India needs to pay attention to.
Here is a list of ten of those priorities:
One of the foremost priorities regarding financial governance
Priority for the banking sector
Another reform in the financial sector that the India has to bring about
The RBI has to keep working with financial experts to develop procedure for the debt markets to grow
The outcomes of the present schemes in terms of actual benefits is pretty low
Performance reviews of a ministry will lead to better execution of policies
Red tapism needs to be done away with
Outsourcing to different agencies reduces petty corruption and delays
An urgent political reform is to speed up investigations of persons who are in political parties
An utmost priority lies in making the states accountable for policy execution than the Centre
Which priority according to you should be the India’s topmost priority? Tell us.
In Conversation with Osama Siddique
Osama Siddique has been a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, a lawyer in New York and Lahore, a policy instructor in various countries. He is also a legal scholar, university teacher and reform consultant in Pakistan, and a successful doctoral candidate and visiting professor at Harvard Law School. His most recent book is an acclaimed and multiple award-winning critical legal history of postcolonial justice systems. We spoke to him about his debut novel Snuffing Out the Moon.
Below are the questions we asked him.
You are and have been a very successful lawyer and legal scholar. Why did you decide to write a novel?
There are many kinds of legal discourses of course that allow much room for critical expression. Quite apart from more conventional work, as a lawyer and an academic I have always been particularly intrigued by how law can be and is manipulated by the powerful against the disempowered. Regardless of which era we speak about what goes by the name of law has always been a strong weapon for those who can use it – for better or for worse. Indeed I have explored this theme in my legal scholarship. There are, however, certain limits on expression imposed by extant conventions of style, structure and methodology. Fiction on the other hand is a very vast, rich and multifarious terrain that provides tremendous flexibility and license to explore this and various additional themes that I dwell on in my novel – themes that I had always wanted to write about. Themes ranging, for instance, from ancient political landscapes to omens of impending evil to lives of petty criminality to literature as a weapon of protest to social media as a medium for hate mongering to environmental apartheids of the near future. Only fiction allows engagement with all this in one book. Such is its largesse. Hence the novel.
Why did you situate the book in these particular six epochs of time?
In large part because having blessed access to their archaeological sites and cultural artifacts I have been greatly fascinated by them since childhood. I continue to fondly visit them, read about them, live amidst them. Mohenjodaro also because it continues to be such an enticing enigma and unsolved mystery. The Gandharan civilization because it has left such an exquisite artistic and architectural imprint on the Pakistani landscape. Lahore – my beloved city – appears in three contiguous eras, which are all reflected in its hybrid culture and built heritage. And the near future is of course the source of tremendous curiosity and indeed concern to all of us – given the highly troubling times and the various political, environmental and civilizational crises that we currently face as humankind.
Somewhere in the book you say something like: “all eras are driven by the same hopes and fears and passions and we continue to make the same mistakes.” — Could you elaborate on this and also your concept of “time.”?
While one can surely detect evolution in various spheres of human endeavor – political structures, organized religion, modes of technology – it does occur to me that across the ages our fundamental aspirations and imperatives remain very closely aligned, if not identical. It is fascinating to think, for instance, how hope, fear, love, hate, dissent and the resulting conflicts drive people to act in such similar ways, regardless of whether we speak of today’s milieu or one of four thousand years ago, from whatever we know of that distant era. Naturally, it causes one to wonder whether we are caught up in a constant cycle of repetition. Civilizations come, flourish, decline and ultimately vanish. Whether time is linear or cyclical. Whether we are headed somewhere or will the wheel of time continue to turn and turn till one day our kind will simply be no more. That we will simply vanish. Without even a whimper, let alone a bang. Without any explanation, let alone an apology.
What are your thoughts on the concept of “evil”?
Evil is such a vital and fascinating concept in every religious and cultural tradition as well as manifest, however you define it, in so many human catastrophes through the ages. One of the most compelling questions remains whether evil is just another name for our baser instincts, distinct external influences that corrupt and corrode us and compel us to do abhorrable things, or an actual physical embodiment – a virtual devil. What causes us to indulge in devilry and why has humankind failed in putting a stop to murders, pogroms, genocides, travesties and wars. These questions provide a vital undercurrent to my overall narrative and evil manifests itself mysteriously and multifariously in the lives of the different characters. Quite apart from the more analytical dimensions there is also something very emotive, something very sinister and forbidding about the concept that impacts our senses in a remarkable manner. The fear and foreboding evoked by the concept of evil has been depicted so powerfully in many great pieces of literature and it has always been something that I also wanted to write about.
Your protagonists are non-conformists who dissent and then pay a price for it. Can you tell us more about choosing protagonists who are dissenters and the importance of dissent in human history?
Arguably, as critically as ever before in out history we face the challenges of curtailment and censorship of free thought and speech. What is also obvious is a globe-wide shift to harder governments, to despots, officially sanctioned histories, blind dogma and also now, alternative facts. The present epoch is as Orwellian as it can get. Meaningful dissent, therefore, is a precious but also much maligned virtue and hence all the more worthy of preservation. Mine is just one modest endeavor to underline how vital dissent is for societal sustenance and integrity. Even otherwise, dissenters make much more compelling and effective protagonists than conformists. Dissent has contributed tremendously to history and brought about significant turning points and breakthroughs in human thought and achievement. And yet the dissenters have often paid a tremendous personal price, which makes their entire endeavor all the more heroic. There is thus no way that I would have been tempted to choose protagonists who are not dissenters. Having said that those who habitually conform and capitulate are also curious in their own way. Perhaps in my next book if there is one.
