For us it is old hat. Or as Ashok K. Banker, master of multilingual wordplay, might say, old topi. Or better still, old turban. For it is in the well-worn role of a seer that Banker has hunkered down to rattle his tale of dharma and destiny to a global audience, who may have heard of Rama, the prince of Ayodhya, only now.

PRINCE OF AYODHYA: THE RAMAYANA, BOOK ONE By Ashok K. Banker Time-Warner Books Price: $24.95 Pages: 387

It is a good time for magical mystery tours. If not Harry Potter, who blazed a trail into a marvellously addictive mix of magical mayhem, with hints of terror lurking behind the stone corridors of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, there is Frodo Baggins plodding away onscreen through multiple bogs and mists, pursued by the denizens of darkness as imagined by J.R.R. Tolkien. "Keep it simple," the publishers seem to be saying, "bring back the basics, the battle between good and evil." Or in vulgar parlance, the good guys versus the bad, us against them. The struggle to assert a balance in a bipolar world, it appears, cannot be reiterated often enough.

Banker's qualification to take on an epic of such pervasive power as the Ramayana rests on his tremendous energy to get into print. He is credited with being the first Indian crime fiction writer in English and the first to do an Indian television series in English. The book in question is the first in a series of fictionalised retelling of the Ramayana in the 21st century-again a milestone. Banker brings a magnificent sense of predestination to his task. This confidence allows him to tackle the material with a certain ease that shows a compelling level of competence. He combines sex and sorcery in an irresistible mix with hoary lessons on the Indian caste system, and the comforts of the old patriarchal way of life are extolled yet again.

He uses the lessons he has learnt as a writer of crime and a TV serial. The action alternates between two main characters-Rama, the prince, and Dasaratha, the king who is overweight, old and tired of life (one almost expects his vizier to suggest a bypass operation but he spends a night with his wife instead), keeping the suspense till the next chapter. Banker litters his text with clues. He drops dark hints about the evil that is about to destroy Ayodhya. And as in the best of street plays, when Ravana appears suddenly, he is as thrillingly macabre and multiheaded a monster as to satisfy the most blood-thirsty of the audience's desires. Indeed, Banker does evil rather well and if his pisachas, asuras, rakshasas and rakshasis show a rather modern tendency to morph at the drop of a face from one species to another, that is just to show that even 3,000 years ago we were masters of the art of dissimulation.

Banker, however, is so busy with setting the scene that quite often that is all one gets. For instance, as Rama walks into a forest, Banker tells us: "As Rama passed beneath the fragrant canopy, the gust of wind rustled the maharuk's upper branches. With a sound like crisp silks rubbed together, the tree showered the three of them with gaily coloured flowers. At the same moment, a cluster of butterflies-so similar in colouring to the flowers that he mistook them at first-appeared before him, hovered momentarily above his head, and danced away gaily." Altogether too much gaiety, one murmurs. Instead of special insights, Banker is happy to give us special effects.

This is just the first book. The prince is still just a lad of 16. One can't complain much if he doesn't show much signs of an inner life and is happy to be led along the path of dharma that his creator has decreed for him. Is he going to rebel? Is he going to prove 3,000 years of traditional storytelling wrong? Will he sign a roadmap to peace with Ravana? Watch this space. Banker will return.

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