Page - 26 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/02

26 | Amruta Patil www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/2, 15–30 Bornet: We talked earlier about your readership, about the mixed reception of your books because they are difficult to label. Could we return to the question of readership? And also, of language? Who do you have in mind when you write? Patil: The books are critically well received, but they are demanding, so clearly it will always be a niche readership. The reception in Europe and North America has been disappointing but understandable, they are not a 101 Primer for Hindu Stories. They assert their place unapologetically and necessitate some amount of homework from the readers – even Aranya- ka, which I thought was much less daunting, much more linear. In India, the work has never gone out of print, so that’s good. You make peace that you’re not going to be making mega bucks, there’s no other way to get the work done otherwise. Bornet: How about publishing in vernacular versions? Patil: Kari has appeared in Italian, in French. You cannot do a vernacular run of Adi Parva or Sauptik because, full-colour and hardback, they would be way too expensive. With Aranyaka, we made the decision to not spill past a certain page count, to go paperback, so that the book remained accessible. I may think of planning future books in such a way that they remain black- and-white, so they can be ferried across easily into other languages. Bornet: Perhaps to be really subversive by popularising the story you’re telling or to change people’s views, you would have to use the vernacular, because English is already westernised or seen as more liberal? Patil: It’s a delicate territory, Philippe, because one more thing to remem- ber is that traditionalists don’t like my work, it’s too iconoclastic for those who see Hinduism uncritically. Which would also include vast swathes of people in North America! I used to wonder why people in Thailand or Bali are not reading Adi Parva or Sauptik despite the religious connection. They’re not reading them because the books are too weird! My work is queer work in its truest sense, the form is queer, the interpretations are queer. I wouldn’t bet on ever hitting mainstream. Ornella: I’d like to return to the topic of religion again. You don’t draw only on Hindu mythology but also on non-Hindu religious stories. Do you understand them to be part of these grand narratives, what you said earlier, distillations of centuries of experience? Or do you have other reasons for drawing on them? Patil: The primary reason for my drawing on mythologies of all kinds is not so much that I think they are the best stories in the world. I have to explain with a small example. There is this Hindi film song with Manisha Koirala called bāhon ke darmiyān, meaning, “holding in the arms, in em-