This is not a story of modern people. They talk about a ‘time before history’. This story belongs to that time. Sages, kings and women of those times are the characters here. The main theme of the story is neither ancient nor modern. It is an everlasting theme which has been troubling mankind all along.
Blowing repeatedly on a tiny spark, a small note in our history, and combining it with his imagination, with modernism and mixing them with shocks that jolt us, Venkatraman has given us a small classic.
It is not a common love story, nor is it a story of virginity or loss of
virginity. It depicts a human being’s natural struggle to become a better person using a multitude of strange characters.
The nominal theme is as follows; Vishwamitra’s disciple Kaalavan is a handsome man. After completing his gurukula, he is adamant about giving gurudakshina. Vishwamitra loses his patience and asks him to give eight hundred white horses with one ear black in color as gurudakshina. Kaalavan goes to the king Yayati. Yayati does not have such horses. Instead he gives his daughter Madhavi. She is an eternal virgin. She has the amazing boon of regaining her virginity after childbirth. Kaalavan makes Madhavi marry three kings in turn and obtains six hundred horses. For the rest two hundred horses, Vishwamitra himself marries Madhavi and after a son is born, he frees Kaalavan. Despite all these unfortunate events, they love each other dearly. The novel explores the emotional turmoil Kaalavan and Madhavi go through and tries to find the
reason behind the turmoil.