Meluha, Naga and Vayuputras

The blog title may sound unfamiliar, but those words will be something you will not forget after reading the Shiva Trilogy books by Amish Tripati. What the book is all about and what impressed me with those books is this blog. Don't expect too much for I'm not going to reveal any part of the story or break any suspense, but will just state my experience of reading such a wonderful novel.

To start with, its a fictional novel released in three parts (trilogy). Title

1. The Immortals of Meluha

2. The Secret of Nagas

3. The Oath of the Vayuputras

Last year, for one of my colleagues birthday, we planned to gift him a book. While snooping through the best sellers in  flipkart, the cover photo of one book immediately caught my attention. The cover showcased a well-built man standing in front of a river facing us backside, with war-wounds on his shoulders, bearing Jadamudi and a Trishul resting on his spine. As I did, anyone could guess that Trishul and Jadamudi are symbolic representations of Lord Shiva, but the Title of book was something different. It read "The Immortals of Meluha". I never heard about the word "MELUHA", so I thought it could be some other language book, possibly translated to English. After going through the summary of the book, I felt it a worth read. Caption for this book read "THE STORY OF SHIVA. THE SIMPLE MAN WHOSE KARMA RECAST HIM AS OUR MAHADEV, THE GOD OF GODS". In Hindu culture, the clan-god (kula deivam) will sometimes be our ancestors who lived a noble life long ago, protecting our clan (kulam) through their deeds, there by getting the respect of being worshiped as clan god. What if Lord Shiva falls under such cadre, but of higher magnitude to be called Mahadev? SJV usually mentions that Shiva is just another man who lived flesh and blood, invented Yoga techniques and became a Aadhi-Yogi (The First Yogi). 

Not sure my colleague will be interested in reading such fictional books, that too when it touch-bases God. Now-a-days many people don't show interest in reading and understanding the concept of God - not mystically but even scientifically. Its always easy for anyone to say "nothing such exist".. :).. Anyhow, not to take chance, we ordered him the biography of Steve Jobs, but I personally couldn't resist ordering the Part 1 and Part 2 of the Shiva Trilogy. (It was around June/2012. Part 3 wasn't released by then. It got released only in March/2013).

Flipkart delivered the two books the next day, perfectly packed. More than the books, it was the cover photo that impressed a lot. Excellent creativity. With great that hope the books wont disappoint me, I started reading.  There is one very good thing about reading books. Your mind will start creating the ambiance and the characters as described in the book. If you watch the same thing in  movie, your imagination will be restricted to what is just shown. In that way, even the cover photo of this book was intelligently designed not the spoil my imagination about the main character of the novel. In the cover photo of all the three books, only the body of a well built man appearing with blue throat will be depicted. The face of him is left for us to imagine. Very excellent thinking...

In the first few pages of the book, the main character gets introduced, set in backdrop of 1900 BC, in the land of Tibet - A man sitting with his friend sharing the chillum - it was more than a perfect start for me.. Next few pages, the book caught me like a magnet. I couldn't keep it down. My mind has already created the required environment to journey with the book further. It didn't want to come out of it. Next few pages, other characters we know as part of the Hindu culture gets introduced - The Nandi, Veerabadra and others... Further reading, I lost myself in the world of Shiva.

Most of us know the Shiva Puraanam, atleast about Shiva, Sati, Nandi, Ganesh, Karthik and other gods with some stories surrounding them. Amish Tripathi intelligently uses the family of Shiva, the stories said around them, but adds his own imagination to knit the stories and present you a wonderful tale to read.

In India, its always a bit risky to write new stories using Gods, let it be any God. We are driven by centuries old faith, and are limited to accept any new thinking. You can always create your own new god, but specifying a new dimension to any existing god is a problem. But this story directly puts Shiva as common man, trying to fulfill his karma like any other character. But this book, I say will fascinate even a hard-core devotee of Lord Shiva. Though its a fiction story, I'm sure the respect we have for Lord Shiva will increase multi-fold after reading this book. Such a wonderful character definition.

Though fictional, this book has the perfect mix of action, romance and sentiment stuff. I would specifically say that Amish has a extra nerve for romance. The love scenes (not the English love, its the real love)  between Shiva and Sati - I was almost into it. Let it be the scene where Sati proposes to Shiva or during the last few moments between them, it created a lump in my throat. I went into such emotional state when reading two books in my life time - One is the biography of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (where he suffers throat cancer and couldn't eat) and other is the biography of Ramana Maharishi (his first entry to Thiruvannamalai). Atleast the incidents in Ramakrishna/Ramana Maharishi books are facts, but this is only a fictional story. But literally it blew me away.

Not only tearful moments, few other scenes where Lord Shiva will perform a dance for Sati - the way its narrated - and the visuals that my mind projected - Marvelous - Nothing more to say. I can quote many incidents from this book like that - example - in the last part during Shiva's encounter with Parvateshwar who wants to serve Meluha, and Sati's braveness in challenging her enemies till last breath - Spell bound.

The last book was like 560 pages, and when I was reading around 300 pages, I thought to stop reading further. The remaining 350 pages, I could breeze through quickly, but that will end the story right? I really don't want it to end. The beauty is, I could guess how the story will end, because the complete novel is based on existing Shiva stories, but couldn't stop reading to see how the author progresses his imagination to reach the end.

Let it be the suspenses, war strategies, the rise of Neelkanth, Shiva-Sati love, brotherhood between Ganesh-Karthik, the love between Sati and her sons, Kali character, Shiva's anger, Meluhan's novelty,  Daksha's foolishness, Bhrigu's master mind, the Vasudev's, the Vayuputras - I still couldn't believe that an Indian writer can have such a highest amount of creativity and imagination to visualize and present a book like this. Far as I know, Mahabharatha is the only epic that had such a wonderful story telling. I'm nowhere comparing Mahabharatha-Shiva Trilogy, but once you read these books, you can understand why I mentioned the last statement. 

The author should have done extensive research to make sure he uses the right prevailing stories to make up his fiction - for example, Surapadman gets killed by Karthik, but not the way as we have seen in "Kandhan Karunai" movie, where Surapadman imprisons all Devas, while Karthik kills him and frees them up. Amish takes only the core incident here "Surapadman gets killed by Karthik", but throws a different version of story surrounding it. That makes the novel far more interesting.

Does that mean there are no contradictions in the novel? Yes, there are, but not worth considering. For example, Shiva in this novel gets depicted after Lord Ram's period, whereas Ramayana states that Lord Ram himself  has consecrated and worshiped Shivalingam at Rameshwaram. This appears to be contradicting. However the author states a fair assumption that the "Shiva" before Lord Ram's age could be "Lord Rudra", one other Avator like Shiva to destroy the evil of that time. Another good character definition is that he makes Sati a widow, before marrying Shiva. This is completely contradicting with the original Sati (Dakshayini) story we saw in "Thiruvilayadal" movie, however, to justify the birth of Ganesh and Karthik (not through Shiva), he makes this intelligent choice. Also with the flood pace the story moves, the negatives are completely swept.

I stop my nonsense here. Overall, its a DONT-MISS story to be read. I strictly recommend purchasing a hard-copy pack of these books for your reading, for the hard-copy itself will add value to reading, and its definitely worth spending few hundred bucks for such a wonderful fiction. For why-to-spend folks, pirated pdf copy of all the three books are available in Net. Ask Google.

Buzz is that, Bollywood film maker Karan Johar has already started the ground work for making this wonderful story into a movie. If he can recreate this story as-is on screen without any commercial compromise, it could surely smash the box-office. Even if it comes in three parts, like the book, its worth a watch.