A new face to Indian mythology

Author Shatrujeet Nath has come a long way from managing odd jobs to reporting on business as a journalist and assistant editor at The Economic Times. In 2009, he quit journalism to become a full-time writer. After penning his first book, The Karachi Deception, Nath is now dedicating his time to write the Vikramaditya trilogy. Here, dna talks to Nath about his journey so far.

King Vikramaditya has always intrigued me as a character. Here is a human king who was famous for his wisdom and valour, a king who supposedly had the navratnas—nine of the greatest literary and scientific luminaries of the time—in his court. Vikramaditya's legends include the Vikram and Vetal stories as well as the Simhasan Battisi tales, and his name is often associated with Indra, depending on which legend or folktale you read. In fact, it is this constant referencing between Indra and Vikramaditya that really got me excited, which is why I cast them as the chief protagonist and antagonist respectively. To my mind, Vikramaditya is the Indian version of the Arthurian legend, a hero from our folklore. When I started exploring the possibility of writing a story based on our mythology, I was clear about two things. The first was that I did not want to retell an existing legend or myth. The second was not having a God as the hero. I wanted to cast a human being as the hero. I could have picked an Arjuna or a Bheema, but again that would have meant retelling their stories. With Vikramaditya, I had a clean slate and complete freedom to tell an original tale.

If I were to compare it to the extent of research that went into The Karachi Deception, I'd say, relatively very little. But that's because the two books are very different. The Karachi Deception is a contemporary spy thriller where the accent is on authenticity. The idea there was to create an atmosphere where the reader starts believing that everything in the book has to be factually correct. The amount of research that went in there was tremendous. With the Vikramaditya trilogy, the need to be factually correct doesn't really arise as the series is anyway, a fantasy. As long as I can get readers to suspend disbelief, I am on stable ground. Having said that, I did have to dig quite a bit into Hindu mythology and legend to familiarise myself with the different versions of our myths. I must confess that despite being reasonably well versed with Hindu mythology, I quickly realised that there are many obscure aspects to our myths that I knew nothing about. Given the scale and scope of the series, this research has helped me find many new dramatic possibilities to carry the narrative forward.

The story of Shiva and the Halahala initially had nothing to do with Vikramaditya. When the idea of Halahala first struck me, I wanted to write it as a thriller set in the backdrop of World War II, where the Nazis are looking for the remaining Halahala so they can change the course of the war and history. I even wrote a three-page synopsis of this story, but I didn't find it compelling enough. Meanwhile, I was also thinking about writing a story on King Vikramaditya and one day, it just dawned on me that I could merge these two ideas. The moment I did that, I virtually had the whole story for the trilogy in my head.

What interests me is the story, not the genre. That applies to my reading as well as my writing. After The Karachi Deception, I was exploring ideas in all genres. The one that appealed to me most was a fantasy.
For the past few years, Indian mythology is being seen in a new light as more books are being published in this genre...
Fantasy is one of the most popular genres the world over. In the West, the genre has been sustained by the vampire-zombie-Apocalypse tradition, the Greek and Norse sagas and the narratives inspired by Dark Age and medieval European politics. Every culture borrows from its past to recreate fantasy, so it is natural that Indian authors tell fantasies anchored in their own mythology. Because of the familiarity it affords, readers also connect very well with these tales. I think it is wonderful that we have such a deep well of stories to draw from.

The biggest challenge about writing a trilogy is that one has to plan for not just one, but all three books. It is exciting to put every idea one gets onto paper but, what you write in the first book has to stay consistent in the ones that follow. If you decide that a character suffers a fear of heights in the first book, that character can't suddenly climb a vertical cliff to rescue someone in the second book. Again, you can't suddenly have a character showing signs of amnesia in the second book just because it is convenient for your story. If you want your character having amnesia in the second book, you have to plant evidence of this in the first book itself. So, maintaining continuity in plotting is a nightmare. Every little thing you do in the first book can come back to bite you if you're not careful.

Yes, I am writing the second book in the series, which I think will have a lot of readers perched on the edge of their seats.
pooja.patel@dnaindia.net