Revisiting Sexy Apsaras And Fisher Queens

Hello! Chats With Kavita Kane, Author of the Best-selling Novel Karna’s Wife: the Outcast Queen, Which Led to a Series of Myth-inspired Tales. Joining the Firmament of Indian Writers Creating New 3d Sagas Out of Ancient Narratives. Her Forte Is Entering the Lives of Barely There Female Characters and Re-imagining Their Personalities and Choices
 

The recent and ongoing controversy over the cinematic rendition of the tale of Rajput queen Padmavati, does not deter her. She has fashion designers dedicating collections to the mythical characters from her stories. Kavita Kane felt she had quite enough of journalism and decided fiction – that too a genre of fiction that dipped into the well of India’s vast repository of myth and sacred stories – would be a far more engaging métier.

She made her first leap of faith with her debut book, Karna’s Wife: The Outcast Queen, and went on to deliver many other sparkling revisitations, mostly around female protagonists – Sita’s Sister, , Menaka’s Choice, Lanka’s Princess and most recently, Fisherman’s Wife. HELLO! met with the author in her hometown, Pune.

How did you choose to focus on the retelling of myths?

I was a journalist, an Editor for the Mirror in Pune, and I always had this deep desire to write a book. I was mostly writing non-fiction books, the last creative writing I did were school essays! My mother always used to say, ‘you read so much, why don’t you try to write creatively?’ We had a personal collection of 10,000 books in my home when I was growing up, so I said chalo, let me try it. That time I was working for DNA and took a break. It took me a year to write Karna’s Wife, then I sent it to all the publishers. It became sort of a ‘sleeper hit.’ An unexpected super success. Usually debut authors don’t make it to bestseller status. And because it did so well I took up writing novels seriously.