Srilata Krishnan

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Productions will lead to the creation of sixty poems based on the interior lives of key women characters from the epic - the Mahabharata. Srilata Krishnan is the Coordinator for this project. 

Chennai-based Srilata Krishnan is an independent scholar, poet, translator and columnist with a strong interest in the intersections between culture, mythology and gender. She has taught a range of courses from Creative Writing to Indian Literatures in Translation at the IIT Madras. She has co-curated the Chennai Mathematical Institute’s arts initiative and writing residency. She has been writer-in-residence at Sangam House in India, the Yeonhui Art Space in Seoul, and at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Her novel Table for Four was long listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2009. She has published five collections of poetry and her poems have found place in anthologies such as The Penguin Book of Indian Poets, The BloodAxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, A Poem a Day and The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry. Given her experience she is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

Attributed to Vyasa and often described as the longest poem ever written, the Mahabharata is an infinite series of retellings that ultimately overturn any sense of a singular, originary linguistic or cultural text. In its longest version, the epic is a narrative pastiche made up of prose passages and a hundred thousand couplets spread over 18 cantos. It is nearly impossible to ascertain how many manuscripts of the epic are in existence and no complete list of these manuscripts has ever been compiled. Between the years 1919 and 1966, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) in Pune produced what is known as the critical edition of the Mahabharata, in an attempt to unify the texts across its various regional variations. But the fact remains that the Mahabharata canon is fluid and complex, comprising many different versions, created on and over earlier forms across centuries.

Srilata's fascination with the Mahabharata arises not merely from the richness of its stories, but also from their openness to interpretative possibilities and a multitude of retellings in diverse forms - many of which are often at odds with each other. This project will attempt a retelling of the stories in poetic form, drawing from a range of oral, performative and textual sources. Anchored in the interior lives of the epic's key women characters, the project seeks to take bold and playful leaps, probing into what has remained invisible and unexamined within extant interpretations of these characters. The women characters that Srilata is considering are Draupadi, Gandhari, Kunti, Hidimbi and Alli. 

In terms of form, the poems will use the quasi-dramatic monologue, with the sakhi or the heroine's friend as the silent listener. Although the sakhi remains in the shadows, her presence is crucial for the heroine to reveal herself fully. And it is in the revealing of this self that a retelling becomes possible. Like in the champu kavya tradition, these poems will be preceded by narrative prose that gesture to the source texts, with which the present text will enter into an imaginative and intellectual engagement. While the prose passage will set up an expansive narrative frame, the poetry will be atmospheric, and will be a testimony to the inner dialogue and the negotiations between the self and the world, shifting along a gamut of tonalities. Srilata also plans to experiment with the Japanese poetic form of the haibun. 

A manuscript containing the narrative prose and the 60 poems will be the outcome of this project. The same will also be the Project Coordinator's deliverables to IFA, along with the final report. On completion of this project, Srilata hopes to approach publishers to publish the work. 

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Practice programme in the manner in which it envisages a new body of imaginative poetic literature that creatively dialogues with existing tellings and retellings of the Mahabharata. Thereby, we see this project contribute significantly to the fluidity and vitality of the epic's oral, textual and performative traditions.      

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.