Did you know that the Kurukshetra war was sparked by tensions between the Pandavas and Kauravas long before the Mayasabha was even built?
Or that the popular tale of Draupadi’s laughter provoking Duryodhana and setting him on the warpath was a relatively recent embellishment rather than an ancient truth?
And did you know that there is a scientific explanation for the story of Shikhandi, who was born female but became a male later in life?
Bestselling fiction author Christopher C Doyle shattered several long-held beliefs about the epic and provided scientific explanations for stories from the Mahabharata during an engrossing evening with readers in Chennai on November 2 at Backyard Cafe, Adyar. The conversation, hosted by the book club Broke Bibliophiles — Chennai in association with Westland Books, grabbed the audience with many deep dives into the history, science and storytelling aspects of this text.
“I’ve realised that behind every backstory in the text, there’s another one, and then another. The layers are endless, which is great for me as an author,” Doyle remarked with a smile.
The passion and joy that Doyle has mined in the last decade of spinning his fiction from verified kernels of history and science were evident as the audience smiled along and posed insightful questions through the short exploration of the various parvas, hidden expositions, confabulations, and revisionist history in and of the Mahabharata.
“Christopher’s storytelling is a masterclass in engagement. It makes you lean in and awakens your curiosity. His talk has inspired me to explore the Mahabharata in its original translation, which would be both humbling and illuminating,” said Prashant Kunnath, an IT professional.
Explaining his research process as the free-flowing conversation kicked off, Doyle shared how every story, for him, begins with science. He described how reading about the ‘Bootleg Fire’ in Oregon a few years ago led him to reinterpret the Khandava forest fire, a contrivance of Agni, as a storyteller.
He reeled in the audience with descriptions of pyrocumulonimbus clouds—the towering, thunderous columns formed by raging wildfires—and how their visual similarity to the ‘unquenchable fire’ event expounded in the Mahabharata inspires this and other story arcs connecting real-world phenomena and perceived divine imagery in his books.
“I read a lot of scientific journals and research papers. So, I always start with what science can tell us, and then I see how it connects back to an incident in the epic and take the story from there,” he said.
This methodical approach, weaving together science and history, underpins his distinctive fiction writing style in The Mahabharata Quest and The Pataala Prophecy series. While the former started off as a collection of stories to engage his then-young daughter, all the books have drawn readers of various age groups over the years.
“The conversation was very insightful for this evening’s varied audience of young readers and erudite followers of the epic. Christopher gave us a proper peek into the science of it all by sharing how every book he writes is meticulously researched, vetted by experts and born of deep curiosity. It is a true labour of love,” remarked Solomon Manoj, curator of Broke Bibliophiles – Chennai.
Doyle also held forth on how centuries of oral traditions have shaped the epic. Drawing on authoritative Sanskrit versions, he explained that travelling bards and storytellers may have influenced how many of the shlokas and chapters have been written in looping, repetitive structures, designed for recitation and memory.
He sided with the audience’s perspective that the Mahabharata is not narrated from the perspective of gods but ordinary humans, making it deeply relatable. He outlined how characters like Ashwatthama, who loses his moral balance after his father’s death, and their arcs illustrate that emotion and human frailty are deeply embedded in the text.
“No character’s actions are above reproach. That’s what makes it timeless,” Doyle said.
From these human stories, the author noted, also emerge managerial and leadership lessons on decision-making, ethics and responsibility, entirely relevant in today’s world.
When called to remark on the distinction between the popular genre of mythology and stories in religious texts, Doyle cited the example of Alexander the Great, noting how much of what we believe about him is not backed up by physical or archaeological evidence. He pointed out that the Mahabharata itself is described as an itihasa, a word that loosely translates to “this is what happened”, indicating that it is rooted in history and therefore distinct from pure myth.
This incisive tendency to look beyond the obvious is also reflected in Doyle’s origin story of his The Pataala Prophecy series for young adults. The idea, he shared, took shape after witnessing a literary festival panel a few years ago which pitted its speakers on the possibility of a “desi Harry Potter” ever being written. While the verdict was ‘nay’, Doyle took it as a challenge but with a twist.
“I didn’t want to rehash Harry Potter,” he said. “It would neither translate elegantly nor really be relevant for our readers. I wanted something rooted in our own texts, the Vedas and the Puranas, something uniquely Indian.”
What followed was years of intensive research and collaboration with subject experts, including acclaimed author Shubh Vilas. The result is a series that weaves together ancient wisdom and modern storytelling, much like his explorations of the Mahabharata itself.
And the proof of this potential-turned-premise is in the pudding.
“I have had so many readers writing to me over the years, especially young people, telling me how the series has grabbed them and following up on when the next instalment would be out. One of them even regaled me with this tale of how her mother got hooked by the book immediately after it arrived and how their dinner had been shelved as a result,” laughed Doyle along with the spellbound audience.
The author was speaking at an open book club event in the run-up to the November 13 release of the third book of The Pataala Prophecy series, Sword of Fire.
Published – November 12, 2025 05:45 pm IST
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