Delhi, the city of dreams, a cultural potpourri of views, beliefs, rituals and rationals… it all gets a nod of validation through its seamless concurrence. Amid the many minds that make it a prolific ground of creative pursuits is author Anita Shirodkar living her best through words.
As she launches her new book, Ambuj, the third one in the Guardians of the Blue Lotus trilogy, she basks in the richness of the city’s creative orchestration.
“It is a special place for me and for many like me to whom it has shown direction through its diversity and inclusion. May it continue to be one for many in the future,” says Shirodkar.
But for her, the thing about writing is its universality. How thoughts get transcribed into written words and how these words travel across cities to form thoughtful connections with thousands of nameless people. And the beauty of writing fantasy, according to her, is that research need not be a major part of the process, one can rely on imagination.
Having said that, her study of Advaita Vedanta led to the creation of Ishv, The Formless One, who has no shape, form, characteristics or attributes, and is considered the one god of the universe she writes about in the book.
Aryavir, Sitanshu and Ambuj form a trilogy and the story is set in a fictitious world. “The religion, customs and places are invented, yet the story retains the Indian mythological ethos that the Ramayana and the Mahabharata provide.”
The first book is about the Prince of Kamalkund, Aryavir and the kingdom of Indivara (the divine Blue Lotus). The protagonists are Aryavir and Sitanshu, and the first two books follow their coming of age experiences and their battles, against the backdrop of the enmity between the Kamal Akshi clan and the Chandraketus across the border in Kalipura. “In the third book, secrets of the past are revealed, which have a bearing on current events,” shares Shirodkar.
The overarching idea of this book, along with the other two, is one that India’s epics present. Virtues of ambition, love, courage, righteousness, pride, avarice, lust for power and spirituality, but more than anything the ultimate message of the trilogy is unity for the greater good, explains Shirodkar.
For her background study too, she took to the reading of Mahabharata in addition to the plethora of characters and stories within stories that our Indian epics offer.
“I wanted to recreate some of that magic, albeit with a contemporary twist,” she says, adding, “I had been watching The Game of Thrones, and while it’s not mythology in the Indian sense, I loved the detail with which that universe has been created. I was very keen to create a similar world in the Indian context, with characters, values and an ethic that relate to our sensibilities.”