Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my first storyteller, my mother’s mother, Ponni, who died many years ago, for the addictive hours of storytelling that I looked forward to eagerly as a child and pre-teen in Calcutta, Bombay and Baroda. This latter-day Scheherazade, born in the early twentieth century, was the daughter of a policeman who sent her to school wherever he was posted in the old Madras Presidency. Quite often she was the only girl in class and her desk was all by itself at a right angle to the teacher’s. She hid in storybooks during breaks. She was a language fiend, fluent in Tamil, Hindi and English, and told me stories from many things that she had read and enjoyed herself: the myths of Greece and Rome, European fairy tales, long chunks of The Arabian Nights and naturally, many stories from India. She was my first bridge between old and new India, between home and the world.

Very particularly, I’d like to thank Vaishali Mathur, my editor at Penguin Random House India, who made me write this book. She chose the title and the theme and nudged me out of my sleepy calm, for having just written another book, a Madrasi memoir, I was content to close my eyes and dream away the yugas and kalpas like Mahavishnu, or perhaps Kumbhkaran would be a more respectful and appropriate comparison. Once I got going, though, it was hard to stop. Names that I was carelessly familiar with or had had only a passing interest in became filled-out and dynamic and ‘made me tell their story’, a phrase I may have wrinkled my nose at once but cannot now, having danced to their tune when they chose themselves. Of course, I like them all very much but I may as well confess that I am secretly partial to Pingala, Satyakama, Barbarika, Manohra, Adhik Maas, the yaksha in the lake and the old curmudgeon in the tsunami story. It was good fun, moreover, to snoop about in old texts for ancient atmosphere. I’d like it very much if you drop me a mail about them all at jltyouknow@gmail.com.