New Delhi, Nov. 15 -- To know if a tale is worth its weight in gold, check if it reveals itself threefold. In your bloodstream. In the town square. In the turning of galaxies," Amruta Patil writes early on in Adi Parva: Churning Of The Ocean (2013), her graphic retelling of the Mahabharata. It is tempting to recall these words as we enter the world of her new work, Aranyaka: Book Of The Forest, in which the story and art are by Patil, based on concepts suggested by best-selling writer and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik.
As the subtitle points out, Aranyaka unfolds in the primal setting of the forest, a remote and dangerous realm in the imagination of most city-dwellers. But contemporary readers will feel the pulse of the story in their bloo...