QUEEN’S ROAD: He is only 15-years-old and his avid love for reading and writing has placed him in the list of the world’s youngest authors. Abhishek Roy’s interest in ancient history, mythology, quantum physics and mathematics made him amalgamate seemingly disparate concepts in a debut novel.
Excerpts from a chat:
What inspired you to be an author?
From a very tender age, I had a passion for writing. I used to write essays when I was nine and my teachers lauded me for the quality of the essays. As I roamed around the world with my parents and visited many museums, I started wondering about our role in the larger scheme of things and about the concept of God.
I grew up to love physics and mathematics and was able to tie mythical events with modern theories. A story was already forming in my mind. After I visited Britain and found an ideal setting to locate my book in, I decided to take my passion further. I started writing the novel.
What made you choose science, mythology, physics and history as your subjects for the novel?
Well, all these subjects are pretty varied as you can see. I love ancient mythology and history. Along with that, I enjoy reading about quantum physics, astrophysics, mathematics especially calculus and trigonometry and cosmology. What I had always wanted to do was to connect these subjects. Show that they are not different.
Thanks to my parents, I have been able to travel to 24 countries. I have visited the British National Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, the Topkapi Museum, Istanbul, Turkey to the Smithsonian, Washington DC including the Holocaust Museum and the Air and Space Museum. I have also been to the Natural History Museum in New York and the Rijiksmuseum in Amsterdam. Oh, not to forget the Louvre Museum in Paris.
All the information in my book is from these visits. So I have been able to describe the streets and corridors too. Slowly, connections started clicking in my head and I simply moulded all of that into an action-packed thriller.
How was the journey of writing this novel?
Writing a novel isn’t easy, especially not when it’s a well-researched one. I started when I was 13 and I have gone through a lot of changes in the past two-and-a-half years. The way I saw the world when I was 13 was different from how I see the world now. My writing style has changed too. So I have had to edit some of the parts which I wrote when I was 13 as they didn’t match my present taste.
I have taken information from my vast collection of encyclopedias and used my knowledge to make the novel as visual as possible. I have used a few websites to supplement the encyclopedias and my knowledge.
Which author do you think has had an influence on you?
Dan Brown! I have read The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Inferno. The way he shows an event in the beginning of the novel itself, grabs the attention of the reader. It then pervades the novel, like something ominous. You know the killer, the villain is there but everything is revealed in the end. The hero, Robert Langdon comes out of impossible situations and the revelations are staggering. I just love his novels!
Also, I love reading Amish Tripathi’s novels. I have read the entire Shiva trilogy and have thoroughly enjoyed it. He creates an entire society in the mythical past.
The way he develops his story line and the characters is amazing. His novels are intense and I couldn’t keep his books down before I had finished them.
What would you want to tell us about your book?
My book is about two 17-year-old protagonists, Mathias and Ram who lead a normal life in an orphanage in London. After a traumatic event, they escape and follow clues in India, Japan and Central Asia. The grief of losing their loved ones nudges at them continuously.
Mathias and Ram battle otherworldly people on their quest to find their fathers and the Father of the Gods, the ultimate saviour of mankind who is there in every mythology but is not spoken of.
What would you like to say to young budding authors?
Write about what you want to! Your writing should represent you. One should not follow the herd and write about the same boring stuff.
At times, writers lose the fervour to write and their story stays unfinished. This is the worst crime. Keep writing. If there is a block, leave some space but keep writing. I feel it’s the best way of expressing yourself.