Karna's Alter Ego

Surendra Nath is a 62-year old retired naval officer, who was struck by the desire to write from his school days but could only realize the dream at the age of 54. He retired from the Indian Navy in 2000 and took up a job in an international school in Dubai. There, Surendra Nath realized writing was his second calling and wrote many short stories and articles that were published in a few magazines. After a seven-year stint in Dubai, when he returned to India, he was already fifty. He joined KIIT International School as its Administrative Officer. It was here, he took to serious writing, quite late in life. In 2012, he pioneered and organized a National Level Children's Literary Festival in KIIT, Bhubaneswar with the participation of school students from across the country. The festival continues to be popular and is into its eighth year now. In these literary festivals, he came in close association with renowned authors like Mr. Ruskin Bond, Mr. Manoj Das and Mr. Chandrahas Choudhury, all of whom were great inspirations for him. He chose to quit office-going jobs and settle down to writing in 2016. He has written two books - Karna's Alter Ego and its sequel, Kavach of Surya. Going by the titles, they might appear mythological in genre, but they are not precisely so. They are stories set in the present-day with parallels drawn from the Mahabharata. Karna of Mahabharata somehow turns up in the 21st century to play a central character in these novels. One day, he chanced upon a social media post that had gone viral, about a person clad in dhoti and vest, barefoot, receiving the Padma Shri award from the President of India. He got curious about this man and started following his works. Surendra understood that language was a barrier between Haldhar Nag's rich literature and the rest of the world. He decided to translate HN's poetry into English so that a wider audience may get to read it. Thus, was born Kavyanjali Vol. 1 in October 2016. Most of HN's works are lying with the poet unpublished. Surendra is working on a self-conceived project called Project Kavyanjali with the aim of translating all the works of Padma Shri Haldhar Nag into English and publishing them. So far, he has published four volumes of Kavyanjali.