Gods Behaving Badly

I came across this really creative book written by Marie Phillips.

It puts all the Greek Gods in 21st century London. All of them live together in a dilapidated old house and each of them has a day job. Aphrodite works as a phone-sex operator. Dionysus works as a bartender and a DJ. Artemis, the Goddess of hunting works as a professional dog walker!

They all are fed up living in the same house together and conserving their powers ( because they are no longer as powerful as they used to be in the olden times). Apollo , the Sun God, works as a substandard TV star and tries to entice mortal women (unsuccessfully) to change his painfully boring sex life. ( Apparently he is sad about the fact that Aphrodite is flawlessly beautiful for over three hundred years and making love is like recurring de ja vu!)

When Apollo's advances are turned down by mortals, he uses his powers to turn them into trees. When the other Gods find out about this, they make him swear on Styx that he will not use his powers to get even with sexual insults for a decade and the story takes a very funny turn when he actually breaks it and the Sun goes out.

Although it sounds somewhat like "Harry Potter for Adults" and it gets progressively predictable towards the end I was genuinely amused by the central idea.

It is crisp in places and I think it is really well researched as well. It comes with a British sense of humor so it is really hilarious in places.

It got me thinking, what if someone writes a book like this on Indian Gods. All the cities would be closed down at the same time.

There would be black flags outside the writer's house and a few Shiv Sainiks would beat the hell out of him when he goes out to get milk one morning. There would be a row over how the sentiments of Indian people have been hurt because of the contents of the book. Aaj-Tak would get lot of material for their "Breaking news" and they would leave Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan alone for a while.

Historians would protest because one group of historians would disagree with the order of Lord Krishna's 15886th wife.

The Shaivs and Vaishnavs would start fighting with each other because each one claims that their God was insulted more than the other's. There would be riots in some parts of Mumbai and a few buses would be burnt down.

The writer would be kept under house arrest with about fifty jobless protesters posted outside his house at any given moment.

All of this would get him on the best selling list and all his relatives reaching to his unborn great grandchildren would be ensured enough money to squander without getting a serious job ever in their lives.

With 33 billion Gods available to write about, it is a really juicy option!!