Would a novelistic reimagining of the Mahabharata, set in contemporary Britain, need to be two thousand pages long? Let the plot concern the five sons of King Pan, called the Pandacars, fathered by the elemental forces of the remote and wind-scoured British isles. They embody the varying degrees of Britishness: Dharma-Harma, the martial or belligerent spirit; Yudhishthira/Lud-is-there-a, the tutelary spirit of London; Be(m)art, the spirit of creativity, but also of shopkeeping and trade; Arjuna-Farjuna, the impulse to travel and the twins, the Dioskuroi: the Deep-scored: the principle of repression, depression, the hidden and inaccessible, the marks and scars that all Britains carry upon their hearts. All five marry Draupadi: Drawaparti: the coalescent, or decoalescent, force: the principle that may unify these qualities into a whole, or might set the people squabbling amongst themselves.
You know what: second thoughts say ... no.
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