'Nagas and Garudas, Dreams and Stars', a guest post by Shveta Thakrar

I’m delighted to welcome for the second time to my blog the author Shveta Thakrar, whose second YA novel The Dream Runners was published by HarperCollins last year. I thoroughly enjoyed her debut novel Star Daughter and this one's even better. Shveta weaves into her YA fantasies all kinds of mystical beings from Hindu legends and sacred texts, and Holly Black describes her writing as ‘beautiful as starlight’. In this post, Shveta retells the story of the enmity between the nagas and garudas, describes the creative thinking behind her novel, and challenges us to consider ways to turn old enmities into friendships.  

 

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We all know about faerie courts. Night Courts and Bright Courts, Seelie and Unseelie. But what of nagas and garudas?

          The Dream Runners, the second in my Night Market triptych of YA fantasy novels based on various aspects of Hindu mythology, started out as an answer to that question. I’d finished all work on Star Daughter, and my editor reached out to ask me what was next. I took some time to ponder that. I knew I loved changelings and faerie courts, but I wasn’t ready to stop writing about Hindu mythology and folklore when I’d really only just begun.

Garuda devouring a naga

          Then it struck me: I already knew of a similar scenario, that of the ancient mythical war between the nagas—serpent shape-shifters—and their cousins and mortal enemies, the garudas—eagle shape-shifters. With such sharp lines of division, these two groups might as well be two opposing courts. In fact, since I am a storyteller, allow me now to tell you their tale.

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(There are, of course, different variations and even different narratives, but this is the version I learned as a child. And if you enjoy it, I highly recommend seeking out a series of comic books called Amar Chitra Katha, which recount many Indian myths and legends.)

          Long, long ago, in the time of the Mahabharata, there were two sisters, the elder called Vinata and the younger Kadru, daughters of Lord Daksha. Wed to the same rishi—sage—Kashyapa, both sisters bore children by him after requesting that boon: Vinata gave birth to two eggs, which contained Arun, who later became Lord Surya’s charioteer, and Garuda, while Kadru gave birth to a thousand eggs, from which emerged the first nagas.

          One day, Kadru, known for her wily nature, challenged Vinata to name the color of the tail of Uchchaihshravas, the divine horse born from Samudra Manthan, the churning of the Cosmic Ocean of Milk. However, the wager came with a cost: should Vinata answer incorrectly, she and her son would then become enslaved to Kadru and her brood. If she answered correctly, the reverse would be true. The question seemed simple enough, and as the seven-headed horse was radiantly white from head to toe, Vinata guessed that his equine tail was white.

 

          But Kadru had been scheming. She sent her children, the nagas, to cover Uchchaihshravas’s tail, then brought her sister to see him. “Black,” she pronounced, and her unfortunate sister had no choice but to agree.

          The humiliation of being proven wrong would have been unpleasant but bearable, had that been the only consequence. Of course, it was not, and so Vinata and Garuda began their indenture, waiting upon her sister and her nieces and nephews. Watching his mother endure their abuse was an indignity Garuda could not accept, and from that day forward, he nursed a grudge against his cousins, stoking the fires of his hatred.  

          At last, having grown mighty, with a wingspan that could block the sun, he demanded of Kadru that she free Vinata. Kadru, naturally, would do no such thing without a price: the amrit from the heavenly realm of Svargalok. Garuda then fought all the gods in the realm, even Lord Indra, and came away with the nectar. Kadru freed her sister and instructed Garuda to distribute the amrit amidst her children.

Garuda returns with the vase of Amrita

However, Lord Indra had beseeched him not to grant it to the nagas, so instead, Garuda commanded them to wash and purify themselves before they could imbibe. While they did so, Indra’s son, Jayanta, stole the vessel back. When the nagas returned, Garuda consumed them all.

(Yet in the contradictory way of mythology, there are still more nagas and later a race of garudas, who continue this enmity forever more.)

          And that, gentle reader, is why eagles eat snakes.

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I’ve always been fascinated by this story—and the antics people get up to when they have no true purpose driving them—so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I had initially used it in my first attempt at a novel, now trunked. But when my editor came calling, it occurred to me that I could cannibalize elements from that trunked novel and incorporate them into what became The Dream Runners. By then, I had become a skilled enough writer to do the myth justice.

That original attempt featured a human main character named Sameer, who became relegated to a tertiary character in The Dream Runners, while his girlfriend, the delightful and audacious nagini Princess Asha, now took on a greater role as a secondary character. I also—of course—resurrected the magical bar with its enchanted libations such as silver wine (distilled moonlight) and set it in the Night Market from Star Daughter, thus connecting the two books.

          Meanwhile, two new characters, Tanvi, a dream runner who starts waking up, and Venkat, the dreamsmith she previously sold her harvested dreams to in return for a beloved bracelet, ran away with the story of boons and dreams and arranged marriages between naga clans, all set against the backdrop of the mythological war between the garudas and the nagas.

          And so, The Dream Runners became my loving fanfiction of the original myth.

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Myths exist for many reasons, one of which is to reflect our lives back to us. I cannot help but see the connections between things, and I think a lot about interpersonal communication, empathy, and what plays out on the world stage when we forget that we’re connected and view others as our rivals, if not as our enemies. When we forget that, as the Sanskrit saying goes, we are all one world family: वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम (vasudhaiva kutumbakam), we harm both others and ourselves.

As in the myth, that fundamental truth gets dismissed again and again in a dog-eat-dog global society focused on greed for the few at the cost of the rest. Though I didn’t intend it, there’s definitely an anticapitalist slant to The Dream Runners. I might not have realized that’s what I was writing in Tanvi and her harvesting, but I stand by it.

So, returning to the matter at hand: What do you do once a war has calcified into what appears to be inevitability, and seemingly unmovable, unbreachable lines have been drawn? When you hurt me, so now I must hurt you, and because I hurt you, you will now hurt me?

          How do we break old cycles of violence and hatred?

I won’t spoil how my characters choose to solve that problem, but I personally believe that we need to find answers to these questions. Our world depends on it. I wrote The Dream Runners to be a magical escape for my readers, to celebrate Hindu mythology and shine a spotlight on the beings lesser known in the West, but also to get us to consider if there might be alternatives to the way it’s always been. If we can write a new ending to an old story.

I invite you to start writing yours.

Picture credits

The Dream Runners by Shveta Thakrar, HarperTeen. Cover art by Charlie Bowater

Garuda devouring a naga: Painting at the Temple of the Emerald Buddha, Bangkok, Wikipedia

Uchchaihshavras: origin unknown: https://www.quora.com/What-is-known-about-Uchchaihshravas

Garuda returns with the vase of Amrita: V&A collections 

 

'Star Daughter' - Guest Post by Shveta Thakrar

Pausing for a week my series on strong fairy tale heroines, I am delighted to welcome Shveta Thakrar to the blog. Her own words will introduce her better than I can, but having read and loved some of her short stories, I'm very much looking forward to her debut novel 'Star Daughter', which will be published in the USA on August 11th. (If like me you live in the UK, we have to wait until September 3^rd.) Shveta weaves wonderful fairy tales and legends into her work, and as Holly Black has said of her writing, it’s “as beautiful as starlight”. I can't wait to meet her new heroine, Sheetal - who is bound to be another strong, inspiring and magical young woman.

When, in my mid-twenties, I committed to becoming a professional author, I decided to focus solely on desi characters and their adventures. I would write first and foremost for the girl I had been, I promised myself, the lonely, confused, self-doubting girl who’d needed the Hindu and Indian heritage she’d grown up with to be given equal footing with all the modern Western stories she and everyone around her were steeped in. That desire has never wavered; in fact, it’s only gotten stronger as I move forward in my career.

            I have a whole catalog of published short stories and poems making good on this pledge, and now, as my debut young adult fantasy novel, Star Daughter, makes its way into the world, I’m thinking about the various flavors of mythology that appear in its pages. I’ve said elsewhere that it was pitched as Neil Gaiman’s and Charles Vess’s Stardust, an illustrated novel, meets Tanuja Desai Hidier’s Born Confused, a contemporary young adult novel, but the intersection of those two was really just the starting point.

            Over the course of many drafts and almost as many years, I layered in references to stories from ancient texts such as the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Purana, like the love story of Nala and Damayanti and the tale of Gajendra and the crocodile. I mentioned legendary characters from Hindu lore, like Urvashi the apsara and her erstwhile lover, mortal King Pururavas. Inspired by this vibrant source material, I even invented mythology of my own, like Sheetal’s mother’s tale of the origin of diamonds.

            In my eyes, to craft fantasy narratives that draw on the mythology—or sacred stories—of my faith is to write a love letter to it. Fan fiction about and for the gods. You could argue that mythology itself is fan fiction in a sense, the first works celebrating notions and beings greater than we can otherwise conceptualize, always tweaking details as necessary (just look at how mythological “givens” shift from region to region and from era to era). Oral storytellers have always done this, embellishing and reworking their source material to meet their audience’s expectations and the messages they themselves wish to convey.

From that angle, when I weave these old stories into Star Daughter, I’m merely adding my voice to a long and complex lineage, the great chorus that has been singing since the beginning of human history. (An apt metaphor, as starsong flows from the beginning of the novel to the end.) No mythology is without dubious and sometimes even problematic aspects and contradictions, of course, but you can say the same thing about human progress; the stories we choose to tell and the way we tell them are a reflection of us. As we change, so do our stories and the lens through which we view them.

            Mythology is not only mutable but timeless, too. No, you’re probably not going to wake up and find yourself an impossibly beautiful, mischievous, seductive apsara from the heavens—though with reincarnation, anything’s possible, right?—but who among us can’t understand pining after someone or something we can’t have? Pururavas and Urvashi undergo great trials for their love—including Urvashi being turned into a vine!—and while not all people seek out romantic relationships, I think it’s safe to say everyone yearns to love and be loved, whatever shape that takes.

Pururavas and Urvashi

 

            Another fabled couple, Nala and Damayanti, is named in the novel as one of Sheetal’s favorites. The two of them, though husband and wife, are separated for years by jealous would-be suitors and forced to endure terrible hardships, but through their steadfast devotion, they eventually overcome all obstacles and find their way back to each other. It’s a story about never giving up, about having faith and acting from a pure heart despite the treachery and selfishness of others. Ultimately, we can only be responsible for our own actions—but we must be.

            Speaking of faith, the story of Gajendra the elephant has always stuck with me. One morning when he makes his daily pilgrimage to the lake where he picks lotuses as an offering for Lord Vishnu, a wily crocodile surfaces in the water and closes his powerful jaws on poor Gajendra’s leg. The two of them, predator and prey, are trapped in that stalemate for a thousand years, during which time Gajendra’s entire herd gives up and leaves him for dead. Finally, with his last breath, Gajendra calls upon Lord Vishnu for help while holding up the lotus he never released, and Lord Vishnu kills the crocodile, freeing Gajendra. If that’s not a lesson in having faith and trusting that help will arrive when one truly needs it, then I don’t know what is.

Gajendra is rescued by Vishnu

 

            Now that I’m thinking about it, each of these themes comes through in Star Daughter. That’s no surprise, really; the stories from my heritage are like a warm, fuzzy blanket I’ve taken comfort in since my childhood. They resonate in my bones and connect me to my ancestors, even if I never knew most of them, a garland of lotus blossoms leading from the distant past to now. I couldn’t imagine writing a fantasy and not incorporating them in some manner.

And best of all, they’re fun. They’re fun to dust off and delight in and grumble at and reexamine and retell. To play with and use to create something new. After all, the power of a story rests squarely in the act of its being told, and so remembered. By giving these stories to Sheetal, I hope readers of my background will feel seen. For readers from different backgrounds, I invite them to explore these and other tales from the rich treasure trove of Hindu mythology.

From Sheetal and me, a blessing: may you, dear reader, burn bold in the deepest night. 

Shveta Thakrar

 

Shveta Thakrar is a part-time nagini and full-time believer in magic. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies including Enchanted Living, Uncanny Magazine, A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, and Toil & Trouble. Her debut young adult fantasy novel, Star Daughter, is out now from HarperTeen. When not spinning stories about spider silk and shadows, magic and marauders, and courageous girls illuminated by dancing rainbow flames, Shveta crafts, devours books, daydreams, travels, bakes, and occasionally even plays her harp.


Picture credits:
Pururavas and Urvashi by Raja Ravi Varma
Vishnu rescues Gajendra, India, mid-eighteenth century, Brooklyn Museum website
Shveta Thakrar, copyright