New Delhi: Have you ever tried writing a novel on Twitter? No? Who would take the pain of writing more than 3000 tweets?
Following the trend of the tech-savvy novelists, British lecturer retold the entire Mahabharata in just 2,700 tweets.
Chindu Sreedharan began retelling the Mahabharata on the micro-blogging social networking website in 2009, taking more than four years and nearly 2,700 tweets to finish ‘Epic Retold’, published in December as a book touted as India’s first Twitter fiction.
Sreedharan’s Twitter version is written from the point of view of Bhima, the strongest of the five Pandava warriors.
Now, the 41-year-old academic is working up on Bhima’s cousin Duryodhana to present a shorter Twitter narrative from his point of view, turning the antagonist into an anti-hero.
The Mahabharata is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Ramayana. Besides its epic narrative of the Kurukshetra War and the fates of the Kaurava and the Pandava princes, the Mahabharata contains philosophical and devotional material – discussion of the four “goals of life” or purusharthas.
Earlier, Devdutt Pattanaik retold the entire Mahabharata in just 36 tweets.
Originally, story of Mahabharata has been penned in 18 chapters (parvas) and over 1 lakh verses. Devdutt has retold the entire Sanskrit epic in just 36 tweets.
Pattanaik is a mythologist and has written a number of books related to Hindu mythology including Myth = Mithya: A Handbook of Hindu Mythology; The Pregnant King and Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata (2010); Shikhandi: And Other Tales They Don’t Tell You and India is not chaotic.
Devdutt worked for 14 years in the pharma & healthcare industry before he decided to start authoring books.