Page - 24 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

24 | Amruta Patil www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 15–30 Ornella: You said that mythologies are distillations of the human condition, but they have been distilled in these hierarchical contexts. Would you say that there is still value in these stories or mythologies? After all, you could also say: let’s get rid of them, and let’s create new stories. You’re doing some heavy lifting here by looking at the underdog in them and shifting the perspectives. What value do you see in these mythologies with all the positives they have, but also with all the flaws that they might also have? Patil: Right now, “people like us” in India aren’t able to separate their anger at politically motivated fundamentalism, their anger at versions of the stories they received from family. I have friends who resented my working on epic lore because they had been traumatised by some bigoted version of the Mahābhārat or some misogynistic telling of the Rāmāyaṇa they received. It’s a huge collective loss. And, back in 2009, I saw it as my responsibility to do my bit with not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It’s like what Anant Pai set out to do with Amar Chitra Katha [ACK]. Does ACK stand the test of time? Sometimes not. Was Pai’s effort stagger- ing nonetheless? Without doubt! Should ACK be cancelled because it toes some regressive-uncle line now and then? No. It merely needs to be seen in context, as a product of its time and context, marked by the attendant blind spots in its creator, Anant Pai. I guess I’m just against cancel culture and pretensions of any kind of purity. I have friends with whom I do not agree politically, who are prob- lematic to my other friends, and I’m alright with that. I’ll take what is good in them, and it’s the same with this material. Ours is a living tradition. There are innumerable versions of the Mahāb- hārat and Rāmāyaṇa and the Puranic stories, which I’ve been told in very different ways in folksy traditions continually. If there is something ossi- fied and problematic about a story, fix it. This is not apologist behaviour, it’s the process of keeping a living tradition aerated and alive! People are getting wedded to hard-line, binary stances, though. I have been accused of being an apologist for the epics, an apologist for Brah- min men. People are out gleefully setting up cultural bonfires, discarding and disowning stuff, so the only people talking about sanātan will soon be the lunatics. If you read my work carefully, for all its flaws, there is more that’s iconoclast there than apologist [fig. 3]! But my role with this is nearing its end. I gave all my fertile years to this stuff that sells 5,000 to 10,000 copies. Maybe I should write shows for Netflix after this. [smiles]