Every once in a while I look back at my reviews from back when I was just starting to review books, and I sometimes think, “I wouldn’t have rated that book that way now.”

For instance, I recently scrolled past my review of a book I had rated 4 stars a year ago, but thinking back on my remembered experience reading that book, I would probably have rated it 3 stars if I’d reviewed it today. Does anyone else ever feel that way about your old reviews? Have you noticed your review style changing over time, or are you fairly consistent? Do you ever go back and adjust your old reviews, or do you leave them how they are? Just curious!

what is your favourite myth from your culture that you would love to see in a retelling?

Okay, so I just came across a video dissecting the Met Gala look of Doechii, and the person in the video, a South Asian creator, brought up the story of Kannagi. And it honestly opened this floodgate of nostalgia for me, because I used to read Kannagi’s story all the time as a kid. It’s a mythological story from Tamil Nadu. And it made me start thinking about all the mythological stories from your home country that you absolutely love. Because I realised that when I think about the mythological stories from my country that stayed with me — barring the really famous epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata — so many of them came from oral storytelling traditions or from these illustrated books like Amar Chitra Katha. And honestly, I think people in the South Asian diaspora, especially in the West, and people in South Asia too, have so much potential to work with these stories, to do modern retellings, to play with gender and sexuality, because these stories themselves often played with gender and sexuality.

So I’m gonna give a quick rundown of some of my favourite stories.

For context, Kannagi wasn’t exactly my favourite story, but basically, Kannagi is also known as the goddess of chastity and justice in Tamil Nadu. She was married to a man named Kovalan. Kovalan cheated on her, lost all his wealth, and one day decided to sell her anklet. The jeweller saw an opportunity because the anklet looked very similar to the queen’s missing anklet, so he accused Kovalan of stealing it. And the king — without even conducting a trial — ordered Kovalan to be executed. Kannagi was so enraged that she stormed into the court and broke open her anklet. Rubies fell out of it, while the queen’s anklet had pearls inside. And that’s how she proved Kovalan’s innocence. But she was still so furious that she cursed the entire Pandya kingdom to burn to the ground.

And it did. The whole city burned.

And honestly? We love a goddess. We love a woman who enacts revenge. There is no “being the bigger person” here.

Another set of stories I absolutely love are the stories of Mohini. Mohini is one of the avatars of Vishnu, and notably the only female avatar of Vishnu. One of the stories involves the demon Bhasmasura — whose name basically translates to “ash demon.” He worshipped Shiva, and Shiva is famously the kind of god who gets impressed if you worship him with enough sincerity and intensity. So Shiva grants him a boon: anyone Bhasmasura touches on the head will instantly turn to ash. Which, naturally, immediately backfires because Bhasmasura then tries to use the power on Shiva himself.

So Shiva asks Vishnu for help. Vishnu transforms into Mohini, who is impossibly beautiful, and Bhasmasura instantly falls in love with her. He asks her to marry him, and Mohini says she will — but only if he can perfectly imitate all her dance moves. So she starts dancing, and Bhasmasura mirrors every movement. And at one point, Mohini places her hand on top of her own head. Bhasmasura copies her. And immediately turns himself to ash. And what else could you expect from a man lowkey. The level of stupidity y'all.

Another Mohini story that I love comes from the Mahabharata. There’s this character named Aravan, who volunteers to become a human sacrifice to ensure victory in the war. But before he dies, he asks Krishna for three boons. I don’t remember the first two, but the third was that he wanted to be married before his death, because unmarried men were denied certain funeral rites and honours. But no woman wanted to marry someone doomed to die the next day. So Krishna transforms into Mohini, marries Aravan, and after Aravan is sacrificed, Mohini mourns him as a widow: crying, breaking her bangles, beating her chest; all that jazz before transforming back into Krishna. This form is sometimes referred to as Krishna-Mohini. And what’s fascinating is that this story became part of ritual tradition in Tamil Nadu. During a festival, transgender women and hijra communities reenact Mohini’s mourning for Aravan — mourning him as widows after a symbolic marriage ritual. And I just think stories like these are such rich material for reinterpretation. They’re already fluid. They already complicate gender, desire, devotion, embodiment, performance. So whenever people act like queerness or gender fluidity are somehow “Western concepts,” I’m always like… say what now???

But my favourite story is about Kali. Now, remember: all of these stories were orally told to me by my family, so this might not be the most textually accurate version. But this is the version I grew up with. Basically, there’s this demon named Raktabija. And if I’m translating it correctly, Raktabija roughly means “drop of blood.” So Durga — who I personally like to think of as a goddess of war — and her people are trying to kill him. But there’s a problem: every single time Raktabija is wounded and a drop of his blood falls to the ground, another version of him emerges from it. A duplicate. A doppelgänger. So the more they fight him, the more of him there are. And Durga becomes so enraged that she becomes Kali (y'all Kali literally means Black or Dark Skinned One with feminine pronouns and yet the colourism in my country y'all I swear). And Kali is literally the goddess of your nightmares. She’s described with blazing red eyes and this enormous tongue, stretched out to drink every drop of blood Raktabija spills before it can touch the ground and create another demon. She’s depicted wearing a tiger-skin cloak — which is interesting, because Durga rides a tiger, so you could almost interpret it as Kali wearing the skin of Durga’s own mount. And she’s adorned with severed heads of Raktabija’s while literally carrying another one of his heads from her hand. And she kills every version of Raktabija, drinks all the blood, and dances on their corpses.

She's the epitome of female and feminine rage.

But in the version I grew up hearing, Kali becomes so consumed by rage that she loses awareness of everything around her. And that’s when Shiva, her husband, lies down at her feet. and she ends up stepping on him. And the shock of realising she has stepped on someone she loves suddenly pulls her back into herself. It snaps her back into awareness.

There’s just so much material there for modern retellings. Indian authors, South Asian writers, diaspora writers — there are literally centuries of mythology waiting to be reinterpreted. Please. Someone give me more weird, queer, angry, lush mythological retellings.

Thank you for reading this long ass info dump. But this is mainly to ask you: what is your favourite myth from your culture that you would love to see in a retelling?

And a moment later he was telling me how one could sicken a man just by feeding him rhubarb and spinach at the same sitting, sicken him even to death if the portions were sufficient, and never set a bit of poison on the table at all.

Geniuses of PB, is this real?!?!

“This one’s American. From New York.” “I don’t believe such a place exists.”

I… huh? What? Sorry, what? Didn’t know we could just… not believe in the existence of major cities. Or of America, if that’s what he means. That’s… uh… okay? Weird take, man. Real weird.

What are you into playing right now? What is your current read? Do the genres even remotely overlap?

I am so interested in the intersection of gaming and current reads when it comes to preferred genres!