Kulpralay and post humanism
Translated Extract from the introduction …In Kulpralay, Rajiv Mudgal reimagines a familiar episode from the Mahabharata not as a human tragedy, but as a vast, indifferent reckoning orchestrated by the world itself. The story no longer belongs to kings and warriors alone; it belongs to the City that remembers, the Sea that waits, and the Grass that judges. The narrative voice is no longer merely human—it is post-human, spoken from the perspective of built and natural environments that have watched humanity’s rise and fall with silent, patient agency. Mudgal achieves a rare and seamless synthesis—a deliberate fusion of seemingly opposed worlds. The hard, metallic imagery of science fiction—flying vimanas, psychological warfare, cities suspended in air—merges with the soft, luminous imagery of Bhakti: devotion, stillness, surrender. The result is an atmospheric surrealism that feels both ancient and unnervingly contemporary: a metropolis woven from shadows, a narrator that is the cit...
