Mythology set the mood for the afternoon session Mahabharata: How politically relevant is reinterpreting characters in contemporary light, discussed by writers Anand Neelakantan, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan and B. Jeyamohan. Neelakantan said that he found examples of episodes from the epic being lived out all through history and in the current social scenario.

The writer, though popular for his books Asura: Tale of the Vanquished and the Ajaya series based on the Mahabharata, shot to fame with Baahubali: The Rise of Sivagami, his first in the trilogy as a prequel to the series. Jeyamohan noted that all stories had their roots in the Mahabharata.

Apart from a body of novels, short stories, literary criticisms and biographies, his most critically-acclaimed work is Vishnupuram and his most ambitious yet, Venmurasu, a retelling of Mahabharata. Meenakshi said she was drawn to the lesser known characters in the epic as it proved irresistable as a writer to not tell their tales. Best known for her popular blog Compulsive Confessions, the former journalist entered the genre of mythology with her sixth book The One Who Swam with the Fishes, the first part of a series on women in the Mahabharata. 

Jeyamohan said that his and Neelakantan's works had their base in Socialist thought. If I were to write from my own personal experience my characters would be very limited but the Mahabharata provides a grand collection of images and archetypes that can act as metaphors to the present times, he said, adding that there was always a retelling of the epic in different periods. He quoted C. Subramania Bharathi's groundbreaking Panchali Sabadham as an example.

Neelakantan, who is also a cartoonist, pointed out how over the years philisophy has been used as a political tool but grew in prominence only after British colonisation. I see how Indraprastha came into being when people are dispossessed so that more cities can be built; reading about Gandhi during the partition when Hindus and Muslims found themselves divided, I thought of Balarama who went to the Himalayas when he saw the Pandavas and Kauravas at war. The writers had an interactive session with the audience at the end of the discussion.