Amish at Deccan Chronicle office

Many may think that humanising a God may make him or her fallible, but that exact philosophy is what author Amish Tripathi believes makes his books and, in turn, Hinduism relatable and is the reason for his success. After selling 2.3 million copies of his Shiva Trilogy of books, the best selling author’s newest book,

Scion Of Ikshvaku, focuses its narrative on Lord Ram. “It’s in a way a prequel to the Shiva Trilogy, as to how Meluha was created,” Amish says, “Once I’ve written all the books that exist in my head over the next 20-25 years, you’ll find that all of them are linked. And I’ve left clues for all those books in the Shiva Trilogy.”

Speaking at the Deccan Chronicle office, Amish said that the idea of writing about Ram came to him as a rebuttal to someone who had criticised Ram while talking to him. “There’s nothing wrong with criticising Lord Ram,” he said. "No one is beyond question, not even God. What really upset me was the kind of words the person used,” he said.

The author, dressed casually in a black shirt and jeans has had a very busy weekend in Hyderabad but kept up his humour. “Oh, Hyderabad... I have visited this city very often. In fact, I have family here, my elder brother’s wife and her family.” The author also found the Godavari Pushkaralu fascinating. “The legend behind the event is interesting indeed. Who knows, maybe it could be part of my next book,” he said.

The conversation, invariably went towards Lord Ram. “Lord Shiva, Lord Krishna... they’re all role models for a different way of life,” Amish explained further, “Lord Ram is a role model for a life of laws. He’s called Mariyada Purushottam, which is often erroneously translated as ‘perfect man’, but the correct translation is ‘the ideal follower of laws’. Such leaders are good for the societies they lead, but normally they’re not good for their own families or personal habits. Even Gautam Buddha, 2,000 years later, he’s still helping hundreds of millions of people. He abandoned his wife and child, whom he named ‘Rahul’ which means chains you tie on your feet; that’s how he was with his own son!”

It’s this reasoning that also forms the basis for his books as well as his own personal life. A former atheist, Amish’s religious upbringing as a child was turned upside down after seeing the city he grew up in, Mumbai, experience terrorism. “Many of my friends turned against faith because we started seeing religion as the cause of these fights,” he revealed, “My father tried to speak to me, saying that when there are extremists doing nonsensical things, it’s the duty of us religious liberals to speak even louder.”

This advice proved to be the foundation for his journey back to faith. “In my atheist phase I  refused to enter temples,” he said, “My wife would go to temples. I love her a lot, so I would walk up with her to the gate, but I would wait outside. It was silly and stupid, frankly. But I think that phase was needed for me, because when I rediscovered my faith I was looking at it from a different perspective. Shiva was the ideal god to pull me back to faith. He is the god of the rebels; rule breaker, brilliant dancer, brilliant musician and obsessively in love with his wife.”

The writing part of it, he believes, is nothing more than a gift from god. “My father and elder brother write Urdu poetry. My school friends still call and ask, ‘Yaar, sach bataa, kisne likha hai yeh, actually’. I still cannot explain how these stories come to me. It’s like I sit in front of a laptop, I’m in a parallel universe and I just describe what I see.” And does he think his writing can help change the way religion is looked at in today’s world? “There used to be a lot of intermingling of castes earlier, genetic science has proved that,” Amish said, “Today, sadly, it has become rigid. The Rig Veda was written by a lot of women too, but today you have idiots saying women can’t study the scriptures. There are corruptions that have come in, certainly. The point is what to do now. Women’s oppression is in my opinion the biggest issue India needs to deal with. The best way to do this is to quote examples from our own Indian scriptures to make our case.”

Amish also believes that Indians are innately liberal, which is why his books haven’t garnered controversy as of now. “Ninety-five per cent of controversies are fabricated,” he says, “Authors, filmmakers... they sometimes do it themselves to create publicity. In India, the worst that can happen if someone doesn’t like your story, they’ll just sue you or burn copies of your book. (In Mumbai they’ll try to force feed vada pav.)” The law however, he says, doesn’t reflect that. “The worst thing is the First Amendment of 1951. The original constitution was liberally drafted, but the Amendment put ‘reasonable restrictions’ on the right to free speech.”

About Ram, Amish also says there’s one important lesson we as Indians can learn from him: “I think that his message has some role to play. Maybe Indians should learn that it’s a cool thing to follow rules.”