Kalidasa

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K.C. Ajayakumar (b.1964), recipient of Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize (2015) and Vishwa Hindi Samman (2018), has authored four novels in Malayalam and four in Hindi. Widely known as a consummate translator from Hindi into Malayalam, his primer on Malayalam grammar for Hindi readers won the Government of India Award (2000-01) for non-Hindi writers writing in Hindi. His doctoral thesis on Indian nationalist novels in Hindi is a pioneering effort. Apart from this novel, three more- Tagore: A Novel, Sankaracharya and Satyavan Savitry-have already been published in English translation.

Geetha Nair, the translator of this novel, has been teaching English, editing several books and translating from Malayalam into English for over three decades. Her translated books include Tagore: A Novel, Sankaracharya and Satyavan Savitry.

The exact time when Kalidasa is said to have lived has always remained inconclusive, but it is largely believed that he composed his works at the close of the first millennium BC. His writings not only recreate glorious Puranic lore, but also epitomize the richness of ancient Indian literature.

In this novel, acclaimed writer K.C. Ajayakumar recreates Kalidasa metamorphosis from a Malva boy to a literary genius. The book offers ingenious insights into the life and works of Kalidasa and also relives Kalidasa's travels all over India.

The reader is taken to the times when Kalidasa's soaring popularity earns him a place in the royal court of King Vikramaditya. Soon, however, he becomes a target of Ujjain's palace politics, and the court's jealous intellectuals and literary gurus have him banished to a remote place called Ramagiri. It is here that his pain and anguish find expression in the form of his literary masterpiece, Meghadutam. Later, as he is set to marry the sister of Vikramaditya, she dies in an accident. Overcome with grief, Kalidasa immerses himself in writing. His enemies feel even more threatened and they instigate people to set Kalidasa's house on fire, in which his parents die. They also manage to poison the mind of Vikramaditya and, as a result, Kalidasa becomes completely unwelcome and unwanted.

This is the tragic story of the greatest writer in Bharatavarsha.