Past Programmes

Creating Sita's Ramayana

Narrated by Sita, Sita's Ramayana shifts the point of view of the Ramayana to bring a woman's perspective to the epic.
Writer Samhita Arni will talk about the process of collaboration with Patua Artist Moyna Chitrakar to create a graphic novel and the ways in which Sita's Ramayana draws upon a multiplicity of Ramayana retellings and traditions.
Sita's Ramayana reached number seven on the New York Times Bestseller list for Graphic Novels in October 2011.

Samhita Arni

When she was eight, Samhita Arni started writing and illustrating her first book. The Mahabharata - A Child's View, (Tara Books, 1996) went on to be published in seven language editions and sell 50,000 copies worldwide, winning the Elsa Morante Literary Award, and receiving commendations from the German Academy for Youth Literature and Media and The Spanish Ministry of Culture. Samhita's second book, Sita's Ramayana, a graphic novel developed in collaboration with Patua Artist Moyna Chitrakar, was published by Tara Books in 2011. Her third book and first novel, a speculative fiction feminist thriller, also based on the Ramayana, is forthcoming from Zubaan in 2012.