The power of a good story multiplies when it's Twice Told. You think you know how the story goes when you read it. But then you hear it again and it's fresh! TwiceTold is proud to host a discussion with Srikar Raghavan and his debut non-fiction book, Rama Bhima Soma.

Part cultural inquiry and part literary exploration, Rama Bhima Soma is a history of political activism and sociocultural movements. The book is a complex, nuanced and open-minded exploration into modern Karnataka.

Karnataka is one of India’s most diverse states, as rich in literary and cultural traditions as it is in democratic struggles and political churns. The twentieth century witnessed the birth of a modern Kannada renaissance, accompanied by the emergence of a powerful social conscience. One young man’s desire to explore this vibrant historical backyard, born out of a feeling of being linguistically unmoored, compounded by worries over an increasingly opaque political direction, leads to an ambitious—no, audacious—attempt to unpack the region’s social and cultural histories. 

Rama Bhima Soma is an enterprise of translation and rediscovery, packed with stories and conversations. The life and times of legends like Kuvempu and Shivaram Karanth; the fall of Socialism and the rise of the Hindu Right; the intellectual ruminations of U.R. Ananthamurthy, D.R. Nagaraj and M.M. Kalburgi; the wildly popular television serials of T.N. Seetharam and the community-centred one-woman theatre shows of Du Saraswathi; a brief history of Naxalism in Karnataka and glimpses of other complicated legacies of the 1970s’ Left—the book explores a dizzyingly wide sweep of Karnataka’s contemporary history, seeking, above all, to forge new connections and begin fresh conversations.

Marshalling a diverse range of literary and scholarly resources, framed through biographical sketches and immersive reportage, Srikar Raghavan’s genre-bending work of narrative non-fiction reanimates some pivotal moments in the making of modern Karnataka. The result is a sizzling dish of ideas rescued from the deep freeze of historical amnesia.‌

The discussion will be led and chaired by Gopal MS, also known as Mumbai Paused. Gopal MS is a photographer and writer who has been documenting life on the streets of Mumbai at mumbaipaused.com for the last 10 years. He loves the city and the stories that spill out on to the streets with limited space. He is also the author of several photobooks based on his documentation of the city.

Born in Bangalore and brought up in Mysore, Srikar wrote this book while living in a small village named Parkala in South Canara. Something of that inward trajectory has permeated these pages, he believes. An inveterate bookworm, Srikar fancies himself more of a reader than a writer. He also loves to trek, travel and fiddle around on a guitar.