Sometime in the early ‘90s, I was introduced to Asvin Srivatsangam, then in his teens. Since I was an illustrator of children’s books and a graphic designer, Asvin showed me pencil drawings he had recently done. Being a fan of comicbooks, Asvin had created and drawn a character called ‘Bherek White,’ for a comic he called ‘The Dynast.’ He had set the story in a future when lions and other felines ruled the world and humans were extinct. He had even drawn a highly-detailed map of that world.
Flash forward to the end of the millennium, after Asvin had become a graphic designer himself and I had become a published writer of three books. He was in Sunnyvale, California and I was in Chennai, India. He asked me to write the script for Dynast, a graphic novel of more than a hundred pages. I told him that I preferred to write novels and offered to write the novel version first. He graciously agreed and paid me handsomely, to boot. Almost everyday we had brainstorming sessions over the phone, and discussions over email, till we finally got the novel in shape. ‘The Rise of Bherek White’ is the first of a series of five books and we have started working on the second already.
We finished the graphic novel much later but that happened to be published first. I still feel that the novel version is superior to the comic version, and this year requested Asvin to have the novel published too. So here it is.
Ashok Rajagopalan
