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“On the best of the mountains on which hang multitudes of waterladen clouds, which is inhabited by the lords serpents … in the thickest of the slopes of which … by the lord of the goddess of heroism. Which is adorned with windows, doors, beautiful picture galleries, ledges, statues of nymphs of Indra and the like, which is ornamented with beautiful pillars and stairs and has a temple of the Buddha inside” – Inscription on Cave 16 walls                                History and fiction don’t meet, but what do we do with the genre of historic fiction. Historians obviously would hate it, but to ordinary folks they can be just another story, and at times engrossing and inspiring. I might belong to the last of the generation that read Kalki Krishnamurthy’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ as a serial in the magazine Kalki. When Kalki, t...