My stories just “come to me” says Amish in all earnestness. You check again to see if he is being sarcastic or jocular, but no, he is dead serious. The man behind the blockbuster Shiva Trilogy and the Ramchandra series is a genial, affable ‘diplomat-workaholic’, as he calls himself. So many stories ‘come to him’, in fact, that he has now started an ‘Immortal Writers’ Centre’, through which he is working with a team of writers to “get out all the story ideas he has been blessed with”. The first book from this team effort, ‘Suheldev’, an epic tale of a king who takes on the Turks, is out now. Meanwhile, the banker-turned-writer, who has had a large role in making mytho-historicals sexy for Indian millennials, is currently in London working as the Director of the Nehru Centre and missing his 11-year-old son who is in Mumbai with his former wife. Excerpts from an interview:
It is interesting how you have not hesitated to speak openly about religious/caste divides in your new novel Suheldev. Was this deliberate?
The story of King Suheldev intrigued me and I wondered why this tale has been ignored by our historians and storytellers. This is the problem in our history books; they are more about the history of our invaders rather than our own past. The key message of King Suheldev has even more relevance today — if we Indians unite, we are unbeatable. The problem is, our default is infighting.
You have pretty much inspired a whole new genre of Indian writing...what do you have to say about that?
I don’t think I have inspired any new genre. It is just that there was a bias in the publishing industry itself against books on mythology or history. When my book was rejected, I was told the youth are neither interested in my ‘gyaan sessions’ nor do they have the attention span to browse through my tomes. I was asked to write about office politics or college romance instead. Today, the biggest chunk of my readers are the youth and this puts paid to the lie that the youth do not like reading mythology and religion. I feel India’s young are keen to hear modern, liberal messages from their very own, rather than some Westernised speaker who will talk down to them.
The motif of Shiva is very apparent in your works. Is it partly because Lord Shiva, in a sense, is an ‘outlier’, a quiet rebel? Where lies the appeal?
With due respect to all gods of all religions, for someone like me who is by nature rebellious and anti-elitist, Shiva is the coolest god. One of my young readers called him the ‘dude’ of gods! Yes, he is in many ways an outsider; he is detached and he supposedly lives on this very earth unlike Brahma and Vishnu. There is a phrase used often, ‘shivji ki baraat’, which essentially means all are welcome.
Shiva does not know discrimination. And yet, he is the god of the elite as well — he is the source of all arts; he is the Adi Yogi. He is just awesome yaar!
How do you react to criticism that your books are escapist fare?
In my genre of writing, I do not see how I can escape that tag. In my defence, I speak of issues of today through my books, be it caste and religious divides in Suheldev or the debate between law and justice in the Ramchandra series.
What makes a good story?
This is difficult to say for me personally as I write instinctively. That said, a story works only if you feel for the characters; if there is an emotional connect.
The mind is important, the journey of the characters too, but all that is secondary. As for me, my characters are real and I feel they are alive in a parallel universe and I am just recording what I observe.