From banking to books
View(s):Known for his characterisation of strong women and liberal views on religious themes, Amish Tripathi, who shot to fame in India with his self-published debut novel, the Shiva trilogy, has audiences at the Jaipur Festival all agog with the announcement of his next book, ‘Scion of Ikshvaku’.
Smriti Daniel reports from Jaipur
When Amish Tripathi visited Sri Lanka in 2009, his life was unimaginably different. Then the head of marketing at an insurance firm, he had been recruited to hand out trophies at a cricket match. A history buff, he also took the time to visit Kandy and tour the sites. A year later, Amish would self-publish his debut novel, the first in a trilogy that would become the fastest selling Indian series of all time, revolutionise the way the local publishing industry thought about marketing and bring him here, to the Jaipur Literary Festival 2015, where he has just announced that his next book ‘Scion of Ikshvaku’ will feature Lord Ram.
The announcement came on the back of headlines that the author had received an impressive advance of INR 5,00,00,000 – touted as the largest by any Indian publisher for a book’s South Asian rights alone. In the days before, Twitter went into overdrive imagining #whatnextamish as journalists and fans poured over the inscrutable contents of mystery boxes delivered to their doorsteps – a bottle of soil, an amulet and a banyan tree. When Amish confirmed many fans’ hopes that he would explore the world of the Ramayana, he simultaneously released a dramatic trailer on YouTube that promised readers they would discover how ‘a tortured prince turned into a great king and then into a god.’
Amish Tripathi
In the meantime, the Shiva Trilogy which has sold over two million copies to date, is still very much in the news – the Indian film rights were claimed by director Karan Johar, who promised the books would be made into the biggest budget films the sub-continent had ever produced. Now at the festival, speculation is rife, facts are few, and the only person who could tell you more isn’t talking.
Amish, like Madonna, is known to his fans by his first name.Dressed in a suit, a scarf draped around his neck, he sits on the press terrace, taking interview after interview – I am not his first and am far from his last. He seldom falters, displaying an easy charm and professionalism that likely has as much to do with his success as the plot of his novels.
Having just made the big announcement the day before, Amish is already aware not every fan is wild about Lord Ram – in particular, the Hindu deity is criticised often for his treatment of his wife Sita, whose virtue he doubted after her imprisonment by Ravana and who he later abandoned over aspersions cast by one of his subjects. According to the narrative in the Ramayana, she was pregnant with twins at the time. For fans, who relished Amish’s characterisation of Shiva’s wife Sati as a fierce warrior and a woman of intellect and courage, the idea that he would make a hero of a chauvinist is a trying one. Though Amish isn’t revealing how he will handle such
His bet-selling trilogy
thorny plot points, he does say it’s part of why he chose to write this new series in the first place.
Amish is dedicated to writing strong women into being, in part because he has been surrounded by them all his life. He says firstly he grew up in a household where his parents insisted on the same set of rules for their three boys and one girl, and that today the women in his family play key roles: his wife is the marketing genius behind some of their most daring moves, and his sister is his most trusted sounding board for story ideas. “Secondly, if you look in our ancient scriptures, women were treated with respect, what exists today is a corruption,” he says, noting that the Rig Veda, one of the most revered of the ancient texts features hymns by no less than 30 rishikas. “And that’s perhaps one of the messages I’m trying to get across, that by treating women badly, frankly we are insulting our ancestors.”
Though his subjects are the stuff of a Hindu fundamentalist’s dream, Amish is known for a very liberal, modern outlook that casts his heroes as spiritual leaders, accepting of other faiths, admiring of strong, accomplished women and distrustful of fundamentalists and violence. Describing how he has found fans among followers of many different religions he says: “It is our country’s misfortune that religious debate in India has been monopolised by secular extremists on the one hand and religious extremists of all religions on the other,” he says, identifying those like himself who are “deeply religious and deeply liberal,” as actually being in the majority.
He fends off a question about what he thinks of Ravana – vilified in India, revered in Sri Lanka – and what role the Lankan king will have in the new series. Even if he isn’t talking, based on his previous work, it is safe to assume the new trilogy will sell briskly. Amish and others like Chetan Bhagat may not qualify for the same adulation from the literary world that Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth inspire, but they don’t seem to care. Amish doesn’t think novels that call for you to keep a “dictionary by your table” resonate with the vast Indian market. India’s people, he believes, want to hear stories about themselves, about the call centre generation or the myths that speak to their roots and national pride.
Though he seems to have tapped into this zeitgeist effortlessly, Amish is determined that his writing will always be heartfelt, flowing from a spirituality that feels deeply meaningful to him. To cope with the pressures of fame, he reminds himself of Krishna’s philosophy, and paraphrases it for me: “If you’re detached from success or failure, you are unstoppable, because failure will not fill demotivation in your heart, success will not fill pride in your head, and both of them are equally dangerous.” Either way, he has a plan B. “I do not come from a privileged family. If my next book flops, I will just go back to banking. After all, I did that for 14 years.”