Amish Tripathi
Amish Tripathi
Amish Tripathi, is an Indian author, known for his novels The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The Oath of the Vayuputras. The three books collectively comprise the Shiva Trilogy. His debut work The Immortals of Meluha was a bestseller, that broke into the top seller chart within a week of its launch owing to his creative marketing strategies. The Shiva Trilogy has become the fastest selling book series in the history of Indian publishing, with 2.5...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 October 1974
CityMumbai, India
CountryIndia
The youth in India tend to be rebellious, as with everywhere else, and that makes Shiva exciting. He has the rebellious qualities that the youths like.
When I was young, I never thought I was going to be a writer! I was academically orientated and active at sports, but I didn't have one creative bone in my body.
When I was young, I was an academically oriented guy like most academically oriented guys. I graduated in science, did an MBA. My dreams as a young boy were I wanted to be an industrialist, or I wanted to be a scientist.
No disrespect to any other god, but Shiva's an outsider god. He breaks the rules. He's a brilliant musician, a brilliant dancer; he treats his wife as an equal, and she opposes him many times, but he obsessively loves her.
I turned atheist in the '90s when India went through troubled times - communal riots, bomb blasts... Mumbai, where I live, was badly affected. I blamed religion; also, extremists on both sides - right and left.
I think it's a fallacy to say that a good book sells itself. It doesn't happen. I'm a voracious reader and I can give you a long list of books which should have been best sellers but they aren't. How can you buy a book if you haven't heard of it?
I see a sense of unity in the universe. Spirituality is not limited to only one religion. One can experience it across different religions. I am fascinated by philosophy of Advaita and philosophy of unity. We have to get over the illusion that God is different from us.
Myths are part of our DNA. We're a civilisation with a continuous culture. The effort to modernize it keeps it alive. Readers connect with it.
As a writer, it's important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God.
Most educated Indians are bilingual. Amongst the urban elite though, there is a disdain for regional languages. That's unfortunate.
The good news is that a vast majority of Indians from different religions see no contradiction between religiosity and liberalism, keep India stable. We religious liberals don't talk loudly enough.
Writing about our gods in English is unnatural, but I believe language is just a carrier - a means to an end.
I believe if you want to convey a complex philosophy, it's advisable to keep it simple: day-to-day lingo.
In the early '90s, I was disillusioned after the blasts and riots in Mumbai. I was in college and started thinking that religion was the root cause of all these evils. While my father told me not to blame religion because of a few bad people, I wasn't convinced. The faith was restored after I started writing my first book.