Special Interview : "Aghori" writer spills some beans!

All right folks! The wait is over... We have been teasing you with hints of an inside scoop about Holy Cow Entertainment’s (a.k.a HCE) next Magnum Opus – “Aghori” - and now your wait is ended!

For those of you not familiar with the basics of how this came to be : HCE was started by super-star artist Vivek Goel to be a creator owned and run publishing house, a rare feat anywhere in the world, with emphasis on always having excellent art and a style all it's own. They kicked off with the release of the horror/fantasy/therianthropy based Werehouse : Home of Monsters v1 which introduced them with a bang featuring three unique stories with different writers. This success was followed closely by the current fan-favourite re-telling of one of India's greatest saga's (from the other side of the fight) – Ravanayan. You should check this stuff out to whet your appetite before this new series that's going to be one of the flagship titles from HCE, hits the bookshelves and stands!

Read ahead now as we bring to you an exlusive rapid-fire interview with the writer of the series – Ram V. – and start to peel away the layers of mystery around the project.

[Editors Note : And make sure to come back next week for Part-2 of this exclusive, as we speak to Vivek Goel, the artist behind Aghori, in the meanwhile happy reading. ALL THIS EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW ARTWORK CAN BE CLICKED TO ENJOY AT HIGH-RES!]

So Ram, now that we have you here, lets dive straight into the Q & A. First up, describe Aghori in your own words for our readers

Thanks for having us here. I would describe Aghori as a comic series that would fall into the supernatural / dark fantasy / horror genre. A genre that I think is very under-explored or severely cliched in most Indian forms of story telling. So I am enjoying writing this series approaching the dark facets of Indian mythology in a more interesting way. It will have all sorts of elements to it, from your classic ghost story to pulp-zombie horror and much more!.

HCE has been best known recently for their epic mythlogical take on Ravana. Are we going to see more mythological explorations in Aghori?

Actually we're trying to stay away from the "mythology" genre as far as we can. Simply because we wanted to do something different with HCE's flagship title. Too many gods and demigods and pseudo religious fables around - we thought we'd tell a story closer to home.

This sounds like you guys have really thought this project through! So what can we expect to see in the pages Aghori then?

I wanted to explore modern settings and tell magical stories but set in a time and place we can relate to. So expect to see a lot of very familiar or very interesting places in India. I hope the readers will have as much fun exploring these places through the comic.

You are such a tease. Tell us any more little bits about the project that you can, our readers (and we!) are dying to know more about it.

I can’t divulge too many details at the moment but I can tell you this, all my stories tend to have a human element and an emotional quotient. So the story is about more than super powers and action and magic. It's also a story about a father trying to protect his child, its a story about a man's determination, his fears, his guilt, his anger. So it's as much about the character as about what he does.

Wow sounds complex and just the kind of project that the Indian comic audiences need. Thanks for spending time with us Ram.

Tune in next week folks, same Aghori time, same Aghori channel as artist-extraordinaire Vivek Goel writes a special guest-column for Comic Addicts and talks about how Aghori materialized.
His article promises to bring you an interesting insight into materializing your comic creating dreams! We know because we've seen it!