It has been after a long hiatus that I am back to blogging. I have now shifted to Mumbai, from Bangalore, and shifting is one pain in the ass and time consuming.
The last week was an extended long weekend of holidays, with Wednesday, Thursday being a holiday and again Saturday and Sunday. The smarter ones planned trips for the whole week, and vanished. The dumber ones like me preferred to sit at home and read.
I spent the entire Wednesday and part of Thursday in completing Amish Tripathi’s new book – The secret of the Nagas. (Of course, I did manage to catch up with bodyguard too on Wednesday).
After reading The immortals of meluha, and even suggesting it one of my executives sometime last year, I was quite enthusiastically waiting for this sequel.
If Chetan Bhagat paved the way for indian writing for the masses, Amish has taken it forward and paved the way for imaginative writing among the new crop of Indian writers. He has very cleverly combined mythology and modern day emotions to tell a story of which not much has been spoken or known.
The legend.. picks up from where the Immortals left. While the events in book-1 took place in Meluha, detailing the war and the way of life of the suryavanshis and the chandravanshis, and ended in Swadweep, events in book-2 unfold in Swadweep, details the the different perspectives of life, and ends in Dandak Forest – the Naga territory.
I particularly like the way Amish manages to convince that there are no good or evil ways of life – there are just different ways of life. In the first book, the chandravanshis were tarnished, and the suryavanshi way of living was convinced as THE way of living, having lord Ram’s approval.
In the second book, Amish did manage to convince us that Chandravanshis are not evil, but have a different way of living – mixing pleasure. I would not like to give out more details fearing that I may ed up ruining the reading experience.
The primary forte of Amish seems to be in detailing the fight sequences, and the war scenes in words, that the reader is completely shifted to a parallel world.
The book opens quite well, and raises quite high expectations but does not manage to live up to it completely. A wonderful thought process, it somewhere fails in execution. There is so much scope for adventure and comparison of different philosophies of life but it does not deliver completely.
The climax of the book, and the detailed description of the dandak forest (where the nagas live) does get irritating, and the end does look abrupt with one yearning for more. The way in which the book has developed I fear the third book does not fall into predictable lines and spoil the fun.
All said and done, The secret.. is not a bad book, and the plot holds your attention completely and the urge to keep reading it is alive throughout.
As a final verdict, no doubt book – 1 was better than book – 2, but without any qualms, I can clearly declare that Amish has shown a way for a different kind of writing, catering to a wide audience in indian writing.
A friend read the first book, and didn’t seem to like it. He felt it would have been written better, because the story is similar to a mythological story… Just his thought…
It is an interesting plot.. n it is well written. keeps you hooked. Story is an intelligent adaptation of mythology!!
One Book for Life Success offers so much of wisdom – just awesome