Description
Rajiv Mudgal
The Courtesan and The Saint is a collection of dramatic poems that reimagines figures from ancient Indian epics—Dushyant, Shakuntala, Draupadi, a Brahmin, a courtesan, a saint—while weaving in the forces of Change and God to reflect on past, present, and future. The opening poems present these characters with unflinching psychological depth: a regretful Dushyant who deliberately betrayed love for power, a wounded Shakuntala scarred by abandonment, and a furious Draupadi demanding justice for a dharma twisted by male desire. The title poem, a novella-length narrative, centers on a tender, revelatory encounter between former lovers Mohini, a worldly and fiercely intelligent courtesan, and Tulsidas, the saint; through her voice, the poem explores desire, freedom, language, illusion, and the body, bridging the sensual and the metaphysical while humanizing renunciation.
At its heart, the collection radically re-examines Dharma by stripping away supernatural excuses—such as the curse that absolves Dushyant in Kalidasa’s original—and insisting on human agency and fallibility. The courtesan emerges not as a cautionary “fallen” woman but as a philosopher claiming her path as a legitimate search for truth. The narrative extends into the future by introducing the “Rakshasa” (Industrial sight arriving as Artificial Intelligence) as the final destroyer of Dharma—not through passionate immorality, but through cold, amoral efficiency. Ultimately, the characters share a profound grief over a fractured moral order, suggesting that while human choices break Dharma, modern technology may erase our very capacity for it.
