Once again, the story carriers of old gathered at Souti’s place. It was the designated place for this sort of thing, and Souti was a reasonably carefree host. These events had the tendency to get wild, especially once people got into the soma. The stories I could tell you ..another time, perhaps.

But first, there would be discussions. Stories, as they are our vocation, take precedence over other things on the agenda for the event. Contributions, such as mine, come second. Nevertheless, I hope you won’t think me immodest if I tell you that at events like these, even people like me are more or less like the rock stars of your time.

This particular event is one for the palm leaves. It is special for us story carriers. For the first time, in god knows how long, we have been given a commission. 

King Janamejaya is making a sacrifice. And he wants us to compose the epic tale of his ancestors for recitation at the sacrifice.

To be precise, King Janamejaya will have a sacrifice once we finish composing the epic tale of his ancestors for recitation there. Half payment now. Half later.

Souti, the leader of our company, welcomed the king when he arrived, thanked him for choosing us to complete his sacrificial needs, and graciously accepted the commission on our behalf, promising to deliver the epic in roughly six months’ time.

Okay, I won’t lie to you. It took three years just to get the first draft ready.

This event was also special for another, more exciting reason.

Vyasa himself made an appearance.

You know Vyasa, don’t you? Tall, thin, bearded, ferocious looking? (But really, you shouldn’t believe everything you see on that box thing of yours.) He was actually a short, mild-mannered individual with a charming demeanour. His appearance, however, could not be described with the word “fashionable.” Anyway, he joined us after Janamejaya left.

It was Souti’s idea. He was our resident show-off. Our peacock. Our distraction. Fanciful orator too. He convinced us that Vyasa was the best person to write the story of his own dynasty. Vyasa had all the good inside gossip anyway.

“I must tell you that this is not a very good story to begin with,” Vyasa said, in his calm, measured voice.

“How so?” Souti asked. I knew Souti hadn’t bothered reading the story he had committed to.

“Well, a couple of brothers fighting over the issue of cattle isn’t exactly what you call ‘epic,’ is it?”

“THAT’S WHAT THE STORY IS ABOUT?” Souti asked, flabbergasted.

“I can make it longer and add some fanciful mythical elements to make it a bit more devotional. I’ll have to overuse Lord Krishna, but people like that sort of thing these days. I can conjure up some miracles just for show. That should add sufficient material to the story,” Vyasa offered helpfully.

“Sure, you do that,” Souti said, disbelievingly. All hopes of getting a ministership from Janamejaya had evaporated. “Look, we’ll help you with the research. I’ll send my friends to gather material for the story. But in the meantime, do me a favour? Exercise your imagination. We can’t have two brothers fighting for some cows. It needs to be more. Make it a few cousins in-fighting, or better yet, groups of cousins fighting each other. And see if we can make it about land and not cattle.”

“I’ll try, but I won’t promise anything. I don’t like to tamper with such true stories.”

Once Vyasa left, I turned around and asked Souti something I had been dreading. “You gave the king a number, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Souti whimpered.

“How many?” I asked, terrified to know the answer.

“One hundred thousand verses. Enough to last an 18-day sacrificial reading,” Souti said in a voice acknowledging he was doomed.

I didn’t say anything. What could I have said anyway? This business was hard. It was made harder by clients who had an exaggerated opinion of their own past.

–

I was named the editorial coordinator. Souti was the narrator. He had the best voice. I just had to designate story gatherers and send them out into the world for research. Getting interviews with any members of the royal family was out of the question because they were nearly all dead and the king knew nothing but made-up stories of the past. The kings of other countries were not available for comment on account of them being completely dead. They all died in that big war a few years ago.

When the assembly met again roughly six months later, we were still only halfway done. The king was not happy with the request for extension and was threatening to cut our research funding. Half the story gatherers we had sent all over the country were yet to return with the local myths and legends of the exploits of the Kuru families.

Based on the myths we had gathered so far, Vyasa had managed to write only the core of the story.

Souti wasn’t pleased.

“I mean, we promised the king an epic, didn’t we? I don’t want to tell him to hold the sacrifice if at the end of the day. I have to recite the Ramayana again. It’s not even fashionable anymore!” he said.

“I know, I know. But poor Vyasa just doesn’t have enough material to work with,” I said.

“How much has he got to so far?”

“Oh, about eight or nine thousand, give or take a few hundred verses.”

“That’s it? That’s too low.”

“Double-spaced too, the amount of palm leaves …” I said wryly, but Souti was too preoccupied to notice. I added, “I thought he’d crossed a half century at least before he told me the truth.”

“Do you think he’s finished with the draft?” Souti asked.

“Oh, most certainly. With some minor editing, we could –”

“What?” Souti snapped. “Tell the king we have an abridged version of the story at the present time? And then what? Promise him a magical epic at a later date, which will be fully authentic and long?”

“Well …”

“I thought Vyasa was a writer. All that business with splitting the Vedas. I would’ve thought he was imaginative.”

“He’s just a bit slow when it comes to writing. I believe he has never truly held a pen before.”

“Then hire him a ghostwriter! Do I have to think of everything?” Souti said in an exasperated voice.

“Actually, I am in talks with a friend from Kailasa who is visiting me. He has these special nibs made of ivory that have proven to be very smooth on palm leaves. Hardly any pressure on your thumbs while writing. He has agreed to write the epic whenever it is ready. There is a small catch though. He is a procrastinating perfectionist. Once he puts his nibs down, it is difficult for him to get back to the project at hand. So, he insists that the whole story be done in one sitting.”

“Hmm … a hundred thousand verses in one sitting. Well, we’ll just have to ask Vyasa to prepare ahead. Only when he is ready with a large story do we hire the ghostwriter.”

“Oh, this writer insists on understanding anything he writes down before moving on. If Vyasa can make the verses a bit difficult to understand, he’ll have more time to think of the next verses, while our writer makes sense of the verse he has written down,” I said. Then, in a rare epiphanic moment, I added, “Also, difficult verses will make the king think he is getting his money’s worth.”

“I see,” Souti said, looking at me, a little surprised. “I’m impressed. Get to work, then.”

Before I left, Souti turned to me and asked, “By the way, did he ever tell you what he has decided to call this epic?”

“Yes, he calls it Jaya.”

Souti mourned the lack of dramatic flair that writers had those days.

–

“I’m still underwhelmed,” said Souti, nearly three years after we took the project. We had run several successful recitals across the land (none of them complete by a long shot) and were feeling confident enough to approach King Janamejaya with what we wanted to believe was the finished product. But Souti refused to be impressed.

He had so far refused to listen to any of the recitals. Over the years, as Vyasa’s patience with the process grew thin, I took over the narrative. After so long, it sat at a comfortable 24,000 verses – three times what it had originally been but still nowhere near the promised hundred thousand verses. My friend with the ivory nibs was finally hired last month to inscribe the final manuscript. Between Vyasa and I, we managed to do the whole thing in one sitting, as per the condition.

The moment of truth, and Souti let me have it.

“Really, where is the meat?”

“What meat?”

“The essence. There is hardly anything. Where’s the drama, the arguments, the conspiracies? This feels like the characters are killing time between action scenes.”

“Well, it is the story of the Great War.”

“Yes, in excruciating detail,” he countered, voice dripping with sarcasm. “How am I supposed to recite this in front of the king? He is going to expect stories, myths, and more myths, and legends.”

“If I may, I think you should go for creation stories. We have a whole body of myths about creation, the building of the world, etc., etc. We can even talk about the king and his sacrifice. Make him a character in this epic. I’m sure he would love that.”

“Hmm … maybe,” Souti seemed unimpressed, as usual. He continued, “Look, the characters … they need to be more than just warmongering. They need an excuse to wage war.”

“Yes, as per your suggestion. Land.”

“No, no, I mean a better excuse. Like that disrobing incident. Make it a little more dramatic. Draupadi curses the Kauravas, and then, Arjuna or Bhima or someone also curses and vows revenge. Something the audience at Janamejaya’s sacrifice will like, you know?”

“Umm..”

“Also, can we have Draupadi marry all three of the brothers? No, wait, there’s five of them, aren’t there? Who the hell are Nakul and Sahadev again?”

“Souti, are you sure we can do this? We have already changed too much of the story as it is,” I asked, genuinely concerned.

Souti laid a hand on my shoulder and gave me a tired smile. “We are artists, my friend. This is what we do. Haven’t you heard of creative license?”

I wonder if you are familiar with the tale of Nala and Damayanti, dear reader? Well, what would you say if I told you that it was just a filler we put in – one of several, oh, several – to make the story really long. To be honest, we weren’t getting paid by the hour; we were paid by verse. And eight or nine thousand odd verses were not enough to live by.

Do not judge us. Like I said, this business is hard. We have to make impromptu editorial decisions, sometimes without the approval of the author. Sometimes, even with his disapproval.

–

Ultimately, when the sacrifice did take place a few weeks later, Souti recited our second 24,000-verse epic. He took his time with it and went about the whole thing so slow that it took 25 days to finish instead of 18. King Janamejaya was impressed. Payment complete.

The next time we gathered, us storytellers, Souti introduced us to Vaisampayana, a former protégé of Vyasa. Souti was planning a major overhaul of the whole epic in order to raise it finally to the promised hundred thousand verses. Storytellers from all over the land were contributing.

I was asked to step down from the editorial coordinator position. I did so without hesitation. What was about to happen was a gross misuse of Vyasa’s phenomenal work. He would go on to compose the puranas, as I’m sure you are aware, but he will be best known for a work he only had a small part in making.

There were regional versions of the tales of the Kuru families. Eventually, the stories became too much, and Souti had to split the narratives between people. Now, there were multiple epics across the land with minor to major differences. The core story remained the same. But even then, Souti was still making it up on the go, this time with Vaisampayana for company and approval.

“What if Dhritarashtra and Pandu had a third brother who acted as an outside advisor? Better yet, make him the son of a concubine. What if …” Souti rattled on, and Vaisampayana listened with rapt attention, but I had stopped listening some time ago.

I turned around in time to see all the colour drain from Vyasa’s face. He had arrived unnoticed and was watching the seeming barrage of narratives flow in the chaos around him. Those gathered were too deep in the thralls of story making to even notice the original author or composer’s discomfort. Such is the nature of transmitted stories, I suppose. What was never is. It is constantly changing. Stories such as Jaya or Bharata, or whatever it will be called finally in passing from person to person, change shape and size and even content.

Already, the storytellers gathered here from all over the world have taken the liberty of adding compositions of their own. The final story will be one bloated mess of digressions – I am sure of it. Looking at Vyasa’s face, I knew he felt the same.

By the time those gathered were actually finished for the time being, Vyasa was openly weeping. His own epic was gone, replaced by what he told me was a nightmarish, structurally incoherent shell of what it once was. But he had no say in the matter. Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. The audience who listened to this epic would believe it was his own composition. They would believe that he conjured roughly hundred thousand verses out of thin air on his own. It wouldn’t matter if it was right or wrong, true or false; no one would question it.

Yet, someday, he knew someone would. The characters were too loose. For an epic that argued the case for dharma, the actual dharma represented was pretty weak. Why didn’t Krishna do anything? Why was Draupadi blamed? And seriously, who the hell were Nakul and Sahadev?

Vyasa just walked away. I followed him out of the assembly but didn’t chase after him or try to talk to him. What could I have said that would make any difference? His work – Vyasa’s – was done. Like all writers worth their salt, he knew, he knew that once the work was out in the world, the story didn’t belong to him (but he would get credit for it, whether he liked it or not).

Behind me, the voices in the assembly rose and spread out like wildfire. Stories, folktales, myths, legends, anecdotes, you name it, and they were part of the great composition by “Vyasa.”

Of course, it didn’t matter who wrote it. Really. The words flowed freely, just like the soma. In this place or in some future time – what did it matter …

They rose and spread far and wide, in many shapes and many ways. Such was the nature of all these stories.

They told tales that none had heard before.

But all believed were true.