Our Ramayanas: The Epic Retold in Ten New Stories

An imaginative tapestry of narratives that offers a bold, contemporary retelling of the Ramayana

In October 2025, ten emerging 'bards' gathered in Satkhol, Uttarakhand, for an extraordinary collaboration between the Himalayan Writing Retreat and HarperCollins Publishers India. Guided by mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik, they set out to explore the vast world of the Ramayana - not through the eyes of its celebrated heroes, but through its lesser-known characters and unfamiliar points of view. Their task was to look again and to listen for the voices on the margins, to step beyond the familiar divide between hero and villain and discover the overlooked characters, hidden conflicts and competing truths that have always lived within the epic.

The result is Our Ramayanas: ten fascinating, inspired mytho-fiction stories that re-examine the Ramayana from unexpected directions, illuminating its moral ambiguities, emotional complexities and enduring questions about duty, power, love, loss and what it means to be human. Introduced and illustrated by Devdutt Pattanaik, Our Ramayanas is an invitation to encounter the epic anew, and to recognize that every story contains many more waiting to be told.