PVLF 2025

Interview With Srikar Raghavan, Author of “ Rama Bhima Soma”

A multilingual debut on Kannada culture, identity, and memory, Rama Bhima Soma blends history, critique, and rediscovery in powerful ways.
on Jul 08, 2025

Frontlist: Your debut work is remarkably ambitious in scope. What sparked the desire to write Rama Bhima Soma, especially from a place of linguistic and cultural unease?

Srikar: I grew up speaking Kannada, Tamil, and a smattering of Telugu – but hadn’t learned to read well in any of them. I had picked up the Kannada alphabet because I grew up in Mysore, and I found myself quite eager to begin exploring its rich literary and intellectual traditions during my M.A. studies. Writing Rama Bhima Soma was a way of grappling with this belated encounter by throwing myself into an introspective dive into Kannada's cultural history. Of course, I could never hope to reach all its corners in one shot, though the exploratory spirit has given it an expansive feel.

Frontlist: You’ve described the book as an “enterprise of translation and rediscovery.” Could you share what that process looked like, both intellectually and emotionally?

Srikar: I wasn’t a reader of Kannada books until I was doing my M.A., at which point I realized that this was an entire universe unto itself. I armed myself with a dictionary and began making the acquaintance of writers whose names had been hovering around me since childhood. This took a (painstaking) while, but soon, I was reading in Kannada for pleasure and also discovering the rich history encapsulated within it. Most of my interviews were conducted in Kannada, and these helped me sharpen my speaking and thinking skills in Kannada, too, which was deeply satisfying.

Frontlist: Writing this in a small village like Parkala must have brought a unique perspective. How did the setting shape your research and writing journey?

Srikar: It certainly provided a quiet setting to create a cozy space for studying and writing. The unhurriedness of suburban life rubbishes all notions of ‘hustling’ and is serenely conducive to the ‘unproductive’ spacetime of entering a thousand-page novel, say. Geographically, too, it was conveniently placed for my interview travels—both Dharwad and Bengaluru are just eight hours away by road. Apart from that, it was also a matter of financial necessity! It is almost impossible for a full-time writer to make a living while living in a metropolitan city.

Frontlist: The book blends history, biography, reportage, and critique. Did you ever struggle with genre boundaries while telling such a complex story?

Srikar: Yes, it was a constant part of the process, which I often had to resolve by prioritizing what might interest the uninitiated reader over what I found interesting. But transgression has its joys, and it did feel quite liberating to be able to draw on a wide array of themes for the narrative.

Frontlist: From Kuvempu to Kalburgi, you traverse a range of intellectuals. Was there a voice or thinker you felt most influenced or transformed by while writing?

Srikar: "If I had to name one, it would have to be the scholar and critic D.R. Nagaraj, whose reflections on Kannada literature, Indian philosophy, and the Dalit movement I found thoroughly stimulating and enlightening. Nagaraj was responding to both the decline of the Left and the rise of Hindutva, and he was engaged (before his untimely death) in the task of recovering heterodox and inclusive Indian philosophical traditions from the stranglehold of sectarian bigots and supremacists."

Frontlist: What challenges did you face bringing this debut to life, both in terms of publishing and reaching the wider, often English-reading, Indian audience?

Srikar: I was fortunate to be a recipient of the New India Foundation Fellowship, whose generous grant sustained me through the first couple of years of research and writing. I began during the pandemic, so there were obvious challenges in locating books and traveling out of town for interviews. Readers of this book were likely to be unfamiliar with the milieu, so I had to ensure that the narrative was not too dense and provided sufficient introductory space.

Frontlist: There’s a strong undercurrent of “remembering against forgetting” in your narrative. In your view, what are we in danger of forgetting today, and why does it matter?

Srikar: "We are living in times when both politics and the mainstream media are turning increasingly dodgy, and there seems to be a profound lack of empathy in the political and economic discourse that currently dominates. These forces thrive on ignorance and half-knowledge, and we are in danger of forgetting the many struggles that history has repeatedly witnessed—struggles that sought to prevent precisely this outcome.

Frontlist: Now that Rama Bhima Soma is out in the world, what do you hope it stirs in younger readers, particularly Kannadigas navigating cultural and political identity today?

Srikar: I don’t know the statistics, but a good chunk of us are multilingual—and proudly so. A great deal of political mileage is gained by those who seek to pit languages against each other and promote divisive ideas—this runs counter to the linguistic pluralism that many of us cherish. The current Anglophone sphere is witnessing a fresh burst of energy through translations from regional languages, which open up entirely new worlds. English is a wonderful conveyor belt that can bring these worlds together and help bridge our collective (mis)understandings. I hope younger readers are encouraged to spend more time exploring their neighborhoods and to tell us more about life in the khichdi we know as India.