You, Me, and Mythology

Author

Preeti Chhibber
August 14, 2024

A few years ago, I wrote an essay for Elle.com that was about Arthurian lore, Dev Patel, and participating in mainstream mythology as brown people. I had a short story in an anthology that came out that same year, Sword Stone Table that was a collection of Arthurian retellings specifically by and about people from marginalized backgrounds. My story, “Once (Them) & Future (Us)” was about Merlin, Morgana, and a reincarnated Arthur, now named Arjun. I’d started working on the story long before Dev Patel had been cast in The Green Knight but I was delighted by the two pieces being in conversation with one another.  

Now Patel has me thinking about mythology and relatability in a whole different way. I watched his directorial debut, Monkey Man, recently. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but there is something to be said for Patel using Hindu mythology – specifically, the Ramayana – as the influence for his John-Wick-style action thriller set in modern-day India. 

The poster for MONKEY MAN starring Dev Patel. It features the title text, with a saturated image of Patel standing against a red background.

Ten years ago, a movie like Monkey Man could easily have slid into the ‘foreign’ category for western audiences – there was (and continues to be) often an instinct of othering and exoticizing stories like the one Patel created and starred in. Instead, it was produced by one of the most recognizable American filmmakers and production houses today: Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw productions.

Religion and culture inform the stories I tell because they build pieces of me – even in my Arthurian short story, the theme is reincarnation, a central understanding in Hinduism. My first published story was in an anthology called A Thousand Beginnings and Endings (a line taken from my story, natch), a collection of Asian mythological retellings. I chose the tale of Durga via girls celebrating Navratri.

In my piece on Elle, I talked about charting my life through Arthurian adaptations – points in my history connected to various retellings – and that’s true! I can! But my life has flowed on a river of Indian folklore and Hindu mythology. It isn’t points, or something I can chart, because it’s always been a part of me. I grew up watching the Mahabharata and reading collections of folktales from my parents’ country. My moral compass was informed by Yudishtra’s deep commitment to truth, at the cost of his own family. My feminism was influenced by Sita and Draupadi.   

Obviously, we interrogate these stories and don’t accept them as the end-all-be-all of moralism, but I did that interrogation within the context of my parents’ immigrant community, and my diasporic peers. Never in the context of the world at large. Any attempts to bridge the two, my intra-community world with the extra-community society, put me in the position of teacher or foreigner. Monkey Man, or a video game like Raji (which I wrote about for Polygon), hopefully represent a shift towards a wider range of storytelling for all audiences, not just segmented ones.  

The book I have coming out next month is not a fantasy, it is not directly inspired by mythology. It’s a contemporary romantic comedy. But because Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot is a love letter to the diaspora, it is informed by those aspects of my upbringing. It’s about the specific way so many of us move the world. Payal makes her big capital-C-choice in the story, the one that kicks everything off, because she thinks she deserves to have control over how the world sees her – like Draupadi, like Sita. I didn’t think of them specifically while writing, but clearly, they’re present in the prose.  

The cover for Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge Plott

 (I’m suddenly reminded of Hannah Simone’s portrayal of Cece Parekh on New Girl. Genuinely, it is one of my favorite representations of a first-gen Indian kid in modern storytelling. There are jokes that are for us – entirely in Hindi! Un-translated! – but Cece is for everyone. This might be a different essay, so just to say, I love you, Cece Parekh.)  

I’m happy to lean into talking about my diaspora experience and be open about it in a way that should inspire readers outside my community to pick the book up instead of turning them away. I genuinely feel that getting to engage and see pieces of a culture you’re not a part of is a privilege. It’s a gift. And this is a gift I want to share.  

Words, Words, Words

Events!

I will have a few in-person (Atlanta-area) and one online event in the next several weeks to support Payal Mehta’s Romance Revenge Plot. I hope to see you at the launch!

(This one’s a big font because it’s the launch party ok, you should all come if you’re in Georgia.)

If you’ve preordered, or are considering preordering, the campaign continues! I have stickers and book plates to send out — just fill out the form at bit.ly/PayalPreorder to get yours.

A graphic for the Payal Mehta's Romance Revenge plot Preorder Campaign. It shows a copy of the book, as well as a signed bookplate, and a sticker sheet featuring thirteeen stickers. There's also a QR code that will take you to the form. The stickers are as follows: A banner reading, "Payal What is this Behavior?" An indian lady pressing her hands against her cheeks and yelling, "Nahin!" A small rectangle with two hearts in speech bubbles. A cup of chai with the text, "Chai lo" A megaphone that reads, "Overacting" A frowny face & heart A red medal that reads: "Jab tak na ho true-true, just remain delulu" with delulu written in devanagari Two smiling mangoes with a heart above them A brown woman pressing a hand to her forehead surrounded by the text, "Baap re baap" The word "fataak!" A yellow speech bubble thta says, "Ok yaar" A dark brown hand with henna, showing off its nails A light brown hand with henna doing the heart symbol with its fingers

Things I’m Into That You Might Be Into

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is an anime influenced by Dungeons & Dragons (shout out to Delicious in Dungeon, another D&D heavy anime that is worth checking out). But instead of being about the game play, or about the adventuring party, it is (as the title might suggest) about what comes after. Frieren is the title character, and the lives-so-long-she’s-basically-immortal elf mage in her party. The series begins as they’re coming home from defeating the Demon King. The first episode jumps fifty years and we watch as Frieren loses her human hero, Himmel, to old age. That’s when the show really begins. It’s about grieving and living and relationships, and is a beautiful look at how you can be impacted by those around you without even realizing it. Every other episode has made me cry. Cannot recommend it enough.

Cool Things from Cool People

Every month, I’ll turn a corner of the newsletter over to a friend who has a project that you readers might be interested in. This month, my sister Heeral Chhibber, is stopping by to talk about her art!

A busy street of a mystical midnight market, full of supernatural entities casually walking or examining wares. A bored ticketing woman sits waiting for viewers next to a booth boasting Fortunes (for only two eyelashes as the price). An alleyway in the back leads to a dark entrance and on our right a chai booth is open, but the seller is clearly asleep.

Hey I’m Heeral, an Asian-American illustrator and designer. You may know me from that time a meme I worked on went so viral it ended up on John Oliver because ha ha ha it was about a nationwide bank collapse. My specialty is whimsical, dark, and humorous graphics driven by story because I think storytelling is one of the most impactful and important ways to connect people.  My jam is exploring themes of mental health, food, pop-culture, and community via absurdist humor and magical realism (a la my desi roots). If you want to see more, check out www.heeral.org or follow me @chhibblet on instagram or @heeral on Bluesky!

Image 2 (left) and Image 3 (right): Image 2 shows a sleeping or injured crane, lying in a bed of blue flowers dotted with rain. Its pink eye is slightly open, a tear falling down to it's beak. Image 3 shows a woman sitting in a giant bowl of spicy ramen, surrounded by various meats and vegetables. There is a small cartoonish flame on the opposite end from her. above them, it reads "Soooo Spice".

EndorFUNs

I missed this story when Conan first told it, but I have been laughing about it since it popped up on my feed. Stars — they’re just like us, accidentally stumbling into embarrassing scenarios!

Before I sign off, I have to give a huge shout out to Swapna Krishna and Charles Pulliam-Moore for their guidance on the mythology essay at the top of this newsletter.

That’s it for August. I’ll see you next month WHEN MY BOOK COMES OUT. Until the, please remember to check your voter registration and make sure it is current!

❤️!