No such thing as absolute truth: Anand Neelakantan

Anand Neelakantan burst onto the Indian literary scene with his debut novel Asura: Tale of the Vanquished, which broke into the top seller charts within a week of its launch in 2012. His latest book Vanara: The Legend Of Baali, Sugreeva and Tara is being adapted into a movie in three languages. An excerpt:
There are a lot of lies that have perforated in the society. Do we accept all of them? What is your take on "truth" in the mythological context?
There is nothing called absolute truth.Truth is what you believe to be true. It is your truth and my truth and the real truth maybe somewhere in between or may not exist at all. We have seen many examples of this in our mythological texts too.
Can you give us some examples...
Whether it is the case of Yudhisthira's half-truth about Ashwathama or Vibhishana's betrayal of Ravana and Rama killing Bali and justifying it — in our mythology, lies were often seen as a war strategy. It is human nature that we are seeing. We have modeled our gods on our ethics and way of thinking. So they won’t be different from our society. We have modeled our heroes based on how we perceive our society and not the other way round.
Coming back to the present, how does one deal with the fake news nuisance that has engulfed us. What's your message to the youth?
Keep your mind open, have rational thinking and not blind belief. Rise of the bhakti movement can be only seen during the invasion and subjugation of India. Now we are at the cusp of development so we have to move away from blind belief in any person or god. We have to reconnect with our roots, which guide us to not believe things just because they are written in some books or said by some guru or proposed by a God. Whenever we have gone down that path we have been our weakest. The moment we open up our vision we have been confident.
Your book is being adapted into a movie. How does that make you feel?
I am very elated. This is a love triangle between Bali, Sugreeva and Tara told from one perspective. This is an interesting aspect of mythology that I am dealing with.
Our epics offer a lot of content to be made into films. Yet we don't see a Mahabharata adapted for the big screen. Why is that?
I would say that it is a logistical nightmare. Mahabharata, the movie, would require atleast four sequels spanning over 10 years and would require all the Khans and Kapoors to drop everything and do the film. Even budget could be a major consideration.
Most of your stories are retold from the villain’s perspective. What is the reason?
See, most of our tales focus around protagonists, but I am always fascinated about the perspective of the other. It doesn't mean that I like to tell stories only from the villain’s point of view, I have done TV shows with the "regular" protagonist approach too.
Why did you choose mythology as a genre?
I was born in a place where mythology and temple arts such as kathakali are still living traditions. These art forms, as well as day-to-day debates, were a part of my life. I was always curious about temples and folklore. No wonder that I landed up doing this.
Why do we see so many authors embracing this genre suddenly?
It has been an organic growth. This genre has many youth as takers because I think most youngsters haven't grown up on granny tales. They rely on these books to connect to their roots.