The left wing indulgence of 'Savitri shaming' is deeper than we all think. Let me recollect a conversation from past when I was struggling to get my early draft of Abhaya published.

I approached a certain literary agent who tried to influence my book towards 'left'.+

How his left leaning attitude made me dump the plan to traditionally publish it and instead opt for self publishing is a long story.

There is a Savitri episode in this long story .

I had realised that this guy was trying to game my lack of access to publishing world and+

+ use the opportunity to push my story left. So for a few of our sessions, I fought him passively.

In one scene he asked me to think of an 'inspiring' (read rebellious) female character to influence my heroine Abhaya.
I made the father of my heroine tell her story of Savitri+

+ He was shocked. I could tell he was shocked. Then he slowly asked me how on earth I thought of Savitri as an inspiring character.

Pretending innocence, I told him see, Savitri faced Yama Dharma Raja for love. Hers is the only story where the 'hero' is the lad in distress+

+and she is his knight in intellectual armour.

He did not have an answer. He then said your heroine is more of a warrior, so probably some warriorly woman. Such women might not have existed in Mahabharata times. (Seriously dude?) So create one such character and kill her+

I researched rigorously and stumbled upon Vishpala ( She would become the subject if my second novel).

He did not like it.

I pushed it saying the way Shivaji Maharaj was influenced by Mahabharata, my heroine is inspired by Vedic women warriors.

Deal breaker

Of course, he then told me crap like 'if strong women are the norm, then it would challenge the intelligence of the reader and publishers eould not like to publish such a book.

And some more flop advice before I stopped interacting with him.

So there it was+

My tryst with a world that was allergic to publishing any content that showed India's past in a positive light.

This happenned in 2013.
Took me till end of 2015 to shake off the experience, rewrite everything and go-kindle.

There are times when reviews dont come in or sales dont happen like expected when I feel I was probably a fool to have simply battled this.

But then those are passing issues and I could not be happier doing anything else. So write on. Fight on . The battle is a long one.