“Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man,” wrote 18-year-old Fyodor Dostoevsky to his brother in 1839, according to Konstantin Mochulsky in the Introduction to The Brothers Karamazov (Bantam Classic).

 Renown Malayalam novelist M.T.Vasudevan Nair , who in his Randamoozham (Bhima: Lone Warrior, Translated by Gita Krishnankutty) ventured into retelling Mahabharata from the perspective of Bhima agrees with Dostoevsky when he says, ’The human being is a writer’s sole theme.’