From Chariots to Local Trains: A Look at Characters and Stories Inspired by the Mahabharata and Ramayana in Animation Series and Video Games

Abstract

The paper explores the reimagining of epic narratives from ancient India into the contemporary milieu in children’s animation series and mobile video games, be it Shiva fighting with guns or Chhota Bheem chasing thieves in a Mumbai local train. It can be said that through multiple interpolations, retellings and translations across languages and media, the Mahabharata and Ramayana have remained living epic traditions in India. These narratives have simultaneously been kept alive through oral and folk-theatre performances (Jatra, Ram Lila, Ras Lila etc), through televised versions like B. R. Chopra’s Mahabharata and parallelly, through literary retellings like Tulsidas’ Ramcharitmanas, Kamban Ramayana, Kaliprassana Sinha’s Mahabharata or more recently Ashok Banker’s Mahabharata Series and Amish Tripathi’s Shiva Trilogy among many others. Thus, re-telling or re-thinking the epic narratives is nothing new.

The paper, however, preoccupies itself with the transformations that digitality and interactive systems can bring to the re-telling of these primary epics. The paper also questions how the games that summarily adapt popular runner game formats like Subway Surfers, infuse a distinct Indian-ness into the visuality of these narratives, even if not the gameplay format.  When seen in the context of the sacrality of the texts, these gameplay forays seem transgressive and perhaps profane the paper argues that these Interactive Narratives have the potential to realise the interpolatory and oratory nature that these inherently multifarious epic narratives embody.