Reimagining an epic

Gautam Chikermane’s Tunnel of Varanavat is an ambitious retelling of the Mahabharatha, through the eyes of a lesser known character — a miner named Badri

“Do you know how many lines Vedavyas gave the miner, who helped rescue the Pandavas, in the original Mahabharatha Do you know what his name is ” asks Gautam Chikermane. “Six lines!” he continues — “Vedavyas didn’t think him important enough to even give a name.” That’s what the author addresses in his latest book Tunnel of Varanavat, which is a reimagination of one of India’s greatest epics, where the miner, named Badri, becomes the protagonist, while the warrior clans and other prominent characters take a backseat.

“I have given him form, a back story, a mission and so on. There’s no particular reason why I named him Badri; I went through hundreds of names and it was while writing the book that this one just jumped out. In a way, he named himself!” Gautam says. In the book, Badri, the chief miner of the Kuru empire and a reluctant soldier with a murky past races against time to warn the Pandavas of Prince Duryodhan’s wretched conspiracy to burn the brothers alive!

While a major part of the story revolves around Purochan’s palace of flammable lac (wax and other flammable materials), it also explores many new or unknown characters. “I didn’t want to write another translation. This book is about various subaltern people and my future books will also feature such people in the lead. It was my attempt at recreating ancient India and a lot of research went into studying the food habits, culture, lifestyle, people and so on. First and foremost, I wanted to bring that timeline, that idea to the modern mind or reader,” Gautam says.

Another concept explored in the book is spirituality, more specifically the movements of Badri’s consciousness as he travails various obstacles from his past, battles, love life and more until the climax at Varanavat.

The idea for the book has been cooking in his mind for a long time — for decades in fact.

His fascination with the epic started after a walk with his grandfather at the age of three, and while this is Gautam’s third book, it is his first piece of fiction. A journalist by profession and currently juggling a corporate job, writing this book was one of the most challenging projects in his life. “While my first two books also took a lot of research, this one required detailing of a different kind. Creating a whole new universe isn’t easy and took a lot of time.”

Like a movie playing inside your head — even before you start writing, you can see the characters living in your mind! “Exactly. That’s how it felt,” he exclaims. “I see those characters when I sit down to write, while I created the setting all around me.”