Tradition and Contemporaneity in Anand Neelakantan’s Nala Damayanti: An Eternal Tale from the Mahabharata

ABSTRACT

The two central epics of India, The Ramayana and The Mahabharata, are considered to have major impact on the formation of Indian knowledge systems, its moral, philosophical, ethical, social, political philosophy and contemporary educational structures to impart ethical lessons and cultural literacy (Chakrabarti, 2010). Its teachings are considered to have a universal impact that can be observed in the daily activities of people of India. The recent surge in narrative techniques reveal an attempt to revive and retelling of the mythological stories from the perspective of present generation to make its teachings, morals, ethics, and philosophy comprehensible for the contemporary tech generation. The basic principle behind the Indian Knowledge System as a policy, is to revive the knowledge of the past that somehow gets ignored by various forces and make available the vast knowledge that exists. Anand Neelakantan has emerged to be such a figure who, to convey message to the present generation, retells the mythological tales from the perspective of present undertone to make it easily understood and identifiable by the present generation. He borrows the structures from various mythologies and transforms them according to present situations, issues and predicaments faced by present generation and attempts to find a solution. Digital_Object_Identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14054750

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