3 things you need to know about Kiran Nagarkar

Kiran Nagarkar's Bedtime Story & Black Tulip is probably one of the most important releases of the year (and it comes in the year that sees releases by Harper Lee, Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh)—so, that's saying a lot. The book features two titles in one—a play (Bedtime Story)and a screenplay (Black Tulip), which will be published together.

Reviving a previously censored work, especially in the current climate of increasing bans and censorship, is a milestone for publishing in India. Bedtime Story was heavily censored back in the 1970s is finally in print and on stands, three decades after it was first written. Nagarkar launched his play and screenplay in the capital this March and will launch the same in Mumbai today.

 
Kiran Nagarkar's Bedtime Story & Black Tulip releases today.

Here are three things Vogue discovered about the prodigious writer.

He has rewritten the Mahabharata (in parts) and it is glorious!

Bedtime Story was written in 1978 and came as a reaction to the Emergency of 1975. It subsequently became a target for fundamentalist Hindu organisations. "No one had the guts to publish my play back then," he adds. Now 36 years later, Bedtime Story's first print edition is on stands, and is as relevant today. The play rewrites some of the most important scenes from the Mahabharata—Eklavya doesn't cut his thumb off and Draupadi makes it clear she isn't a chocolate cake that can be divided among five brothers. It bravely takes on one of India's most dangerous ailments—our collective apathy.

He is one of the most underrated writers of postcolonial India

Nagarkar's work has been met with hostility from various factions—be it extremist groups to writers from regional languages who are reluctant to accept a bilingual writer, and in India we are not very welcoming of literary writers in English without the required ratification from the West—read Booker, Pulitzer, etc. He has, however, won the H.N Apte Award for Best Debut Novel and the Sahitya Akademi Award. His novels Seven Sixes Are Forty Three (1974) Ravan And Eddie (1994) and Cuckold (1997) are masterpieces. The vibrancy of his language, and ability to tackle sex, religion and history with irreverence, black humour and empathy make him one of the most important writers of our time.

 
Ravan And Eddie (1994) and Cuckold (1997) by Kiran Nagarkar.

Cuckold taught him about love 

Nagarkar says that writing Cuckold taught him more about love than anything else. "It is complex, the woman is in love with some one else and refuses to join her husband in bed—but at the end he admits that she was the only woman for him. Love is not just for lovers—it's all kinds of love, it is complex with real dilemmas. Just the fact that you don't even know you love someone and then when you do it comes likes a bloody slap on your face."

Bedtime Story and Black Tulip will be launched today at Gallery MMB, Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai, 6 pm.