The Ramayana is one of the world's oldest legends. Modern scholars claim that it was first composed around 300 BC. The epic is called Adi Kavya, the world's first poem. Brahma himself is said to have inspired Valmiki to create his classic, in twenty-four thousand slokas. Ramesh Menon's the Ramayana is a novelist's lush, imaginative rendering, rather than a scholar's translation.

Yet, even if his language is modern, his book remains a work of worship, of bhakti. As he wrote and rewrote it for ten years, this was his offering to Rama.