A feminist retelling of ‘The Mahabharata' by K Srilata

The Hindu

07-07-2025

'The Mahabharata contains stories within stories... just when you think you are all caught up, a new tale or an old one differently told resurfaces,' says an excerpt from KSrilata's new book of poems, Footnotes to the Mahabharata, publishedby WestLand.
The book was recently launched at the Goethe Institut, Chennai, in association with the Prakriti Foundation, where the writer- academician engaged in a conversation with theatre artiste V Balakrishna, on what inspired her to write the book, and her view on the feminist retelling of the epic.
Srilata spoke about how she stumbled upon the subject accidentally. 'I am not a Sankritist, I dont work in the space of mythology or epics, it came at a time when I had given up my 20 years of intense career as a full-time professor, ' she says. While dusting her bookshelf she found exactly what she was looking for to write about. 'I discovered a brand-new copy of Parva, SL Bhrappa's Kannada novel based on The Mahabharata and translated into English by Raghavendra Rao.' She found herself completely lost in its pages, which ultimately inspired this collection exploring the lives of the female characters from the epic— Alli, Hidimbi, Draupadi, Gandhari and Kunti.
For Srilata, the female characters are a window to a feminist retelling. 'As somebody who was a working woman and a parent, there are so many things that women go through that remain completely untold. I ask myself, what if I were to slip into the characters of the women from The Mahabharata, what sort of poem would come from there? As I started writing more and more, I was convinced maybe there could be a book there,' says Srilata.
The poem is also a reflection of the local Tamil retelling of the epic, for instance, the poem opens with Alli – a character, 'exclusive to the Tamil, Dravidian tradition, not found in the mainstream Mahabharata,' Srilata mentions in her book.
The poems are steeped in haiku (a Japanese tradition of poetry). 'Around the time that I was working with these poems, I had also been working with another Haiku poet, Geetanjali Rajan. She mentored me, and that was the form I grew extremely fond of, so there was no other way but for that to seep into the writing of these poems,' says Srilata.
In Srilata's poems, Sakhi (used to address a female friend) plays an important role. 'I realised that these women perhaps would have only been able to speak freely to their female friends, the Sakhi listens in silence as the heroine speaks.' Like when Draupadi speaks to her sakhi Nitambini about Krishna.
The event ended with a poetry reading by Srilata and Balakrishna.
Footnotes to the Mahabharata is available in online bookstores.