What makes this work stand apart is in the way the author has steered away from the mythological setting, and in the masterstroke of casting the characters as mere mortals, a stark contrast from the divine and godly setting portrayed in the epic. Randamoozham is a retelling of the Indian epic Mahabharata from the view point of the second Pandava, Bhima. This work, which was first, published in 1984, won the Vayalar award for the best literary work in Malayalam of the year. Hence ‘ Randamoozham’ or The Second Turn penned by Jnanpith award winner M.T.Vasudevan Nair, one of the living legends of Kerala literature, has to be held in high esteem. Though an honest attempt, the novel defied logic and sensibilities of the readers and was marred with erratic storytelling. The only recent Indian book I can think of in this vein must be ‘Asura’ by Anant Neelakantan, who tried to portray a different image of Ravana through his book. There have never been many champions who thought ‘what if a certain story of old was not how it actually happened?’ and tried to look at the same story from a different perspective. Revisionism is not a popular style when it comes to Indian Literature.
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