Seeing Shiva, Seeing Ram: Visual representations of deities in the genre of mythology-inspired fiction, an analysis of the book covers of Amish Tripathi’s novels

ABSTRACT

This article examines the manner in which Lord Shiva and Sri Ram are represented visually on the book covers of Amish Tripathi’s commercially successful Indian mythology-inspired novels. Through its focus on the ‘Shiva Trilogy’ book covers and the first novel in the ‘Ram Chandra’ series, I argue that despite the presence of the deity on each cover, the opportunity for darśan to be performed is prevented from taking place. The article makes a connection between this non-performance of darśan and the genre of mythology-inspired fiction, arguing that the latter is itself a textual portrayal of the former in that both the visual (of the book cover design) and the narrative content (of the mythology-inspired fiction) connect to and yet break from cultural and aesthetic traditions. The article considers in conclusion how such new modes of portraying deities talk to (and of) visuality and Indianness within the post-millennial Indian moment.

KEYWORDS:

• Darśan
• New India
• Indian visuality
• mythology-inspired fiction
• Amish Tripathi
• Indian book cover design
• Indian genre fiction

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The name ‘Amish’ appears as the author’s name on the front cover of his novels. His full name is ‘Amish Tripathi’. In this article, I refer to him by his surname ‘Tripathi’ as well as ‘Amish’ in accordance with how his name appears on the book covers.

2. Although other Indian epic (lyrical) texts and folkloric narratives are also used as inspiration.

3. See fn 5.

4. Personal communication with a Sanskrit scholar (January 2016).

5. The Immortals of Meluha English edition 2010; Hindi 2011; Gujarati 2012; Marathi 2012; Telugu 2012; Assamese 2012; Bengali 2013; Kannada 2013; Malayalam 2013; Tamil 2013; Oriya 2016.

6. See ‘mythology’ as a mythology here at Westland Ltd, Web, ‹http://67.227.154.115/~westlandbooks/product-category/mythology/› [accessed July 2017].

7. Usually pronounced as ‘my-thology’ in Indian Englishes.

8. Moreover, a mock sticker on the front cover of The Secret of the Nagas reads: ‘Sequel to The Immortals of Meluha’.

9. Each of Amish’s books carries in its front matter the standard copyright disclaimer: ‘This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.’ (The Immortals of Meluha, front matter).

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E. Dawson Varughese

E. Dawson Varughese is a global cultural studies scholar and her specialism is post-millennial Indian literary and visual cultures. She is the author of Beyond The Postcolonial (Palgrave, 2012) and Reading New India (Bloomsbury, 2013) and is a co-author of Indian Writing in English and Issues of Visual Representation (Palgrave, 2015). In 2016, Genre Fiction of New India: post-millennial receptions of ‘weird’ narratives was published by Routledge and in 2017, Visuality and Identity in Post-millennial Indian Graphic Narratives was published by Palgrave. Her work has appeared in Contemporary South Asia, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics and South Asia amongst others. An independent scholar, she divides her time between the UK and India, and in 2017 and 2018 she was a Visiting Fellow at the University of Delhi. See her work at: www.beyondthepostcolonial.com