When even the ties of blood become shackles, the only way to break free may cost everything. Vasushena was marked for death from the moment he was born, for reasons he doesn't know. Being saved as a baby by a Suta couple who raised him as their own, he longed to be a warrior instead of a charioteer. But in the rigidly casteist society of Aryavarta, a Suta seeking to rise above his station was a challenge to orthodoxy that could never be tolerated. When his path led him to the Kuru prince, Suyodhana, it only linked him more inextricably with the fate of the Kuru dynasty. Suyodhana, for all his open mindedness, has a feud against his cousins, a hatred that is fanned to a conflagration by actions on both sides. Little does Vasushena know that by choosing to stand by his friend has set him firmly against his own blood and Krishna, whose fearsome intelligence is matched only by his ruthlessness. With forces beyond his ken ranged against him, can Vasushena prove that courage can vanquish destiny or will he fail in staving off the sentence of death that had marked him from birth? Jaya! is a low fantasy retelling of the Mahabharata, the Hindu Epic with morally grey characters, political intrigue, generational trauma, hard choices, family and sibling bonds, found families, friendship, duty, and the consequences of actions.
