Through his series of bestselling books, Amish has reintroduced India’s ancient epics into the cultural mainstream. He speaks to Utpal Kumar about his latest novel, Raavan .

Raavan: Enemy of Aryavarta is his darkest book so far. Ask Amish, who prefers not to use his surname Tripathi and he says matter-of-factly, “It’s obvious when you deal with a dark character like Raavan.” However, push Amish a bit, and he opens up: “While writing this book, I was also in a dark phase, emotionally. The two complemented each other to pull me deeper into the spiral. I am glad the book is over.” The celebrity author, who has consistently said that writing keeps him “together and sane”, reveals how in the past two years there were moments when he was “personally very troubled and had stopped writing altogether”. An old song came to his rescue, almost accidentally. “I was surfing television when a song caught my attention. I soon downloaded it and while on a walk in the evening, I played the song again and again. In addition, all through I cried incessantly, all alone in the park. Or maybe there were a few [people around], but in Mumbai they let you live in solitude,” he recalls.

Coming to the book, Amish says Raavan, in some ways, is a “cautionary” tale. He says, “A brilliant man, a genuine scholar, an outstanding musician and an efficient ruler who turned his kingdom into ‘Sone Ki Lanka’, Raavan was a man of many talents. But his giant ego and temper issues ensured that he went into a negative spiral. If ego can lead to the downfall of someone as talented and powerful as Raavan, then who are we?” Raavan, for Amish, wasn’t a thug or a madman who killed people. “In reality, he was a complex and a deep man. Which is what makes him very fascinating as well as troubling,” the novelist says, adding that he was able to explore these shades because he refuses to see things in black and white. “If you don’t see things in black-and-white terms, then your stories will end up being balanced. The worst thing is when you get stuck in an echo chamber, hearing only what you want to hear.”

In his endeavour to explore different shades of Raavan, Amish is guided by the example of none other than the sage Valmiki, who, through his several books, pursued a “multi-linear narrative in some way”. The novelist explains his fascination with Adbhuta Ramayana, also said to be authored by Valmiki. “Even Ananda Ramayana is said to be written by Valmiki jee, but Adhbhuta Ramayana holds a special place,” he says. “I think the feminism in the book fascinates me to no end. Here it’s Sita maa who kills Raavan. Her strength is quite refreshing.” Valmiki Ramayana is Lord Rama’s version. In fact, the term “Ramayana” means the journey of Rama. “But Adbhuta Ramayana is all about Sita maa. When you see the same story from different perspectives, it gives you different insights,” Amish says, reminding us how Indians are inherently open to “multiple truths” and are not “uncomfortable with contradictions”. The novelist adds, “There are some cultures that are uncomfortable with contradictions; they want to hear just one truth. And anyone who doesn’t follow that truth has to be banished, condemned and even killed. In India, forget about society having multiple truths, even an individual can have multiple truths. This is a fantastic level of maturity.”

Amish invokes modern theoretical physics to validate this point. “One of the theories that is coming up in theoretical physics these days is that your understanding of the universe is impacted by you observer bias. There is, for instance, no explanation for quantum entanglement.”

In quantum physics, entangled particles remain connected so that actions performed on one affect the other, even when separated by great distances. The phenomenon startled Einstein so much that he called it “spooky action at a distance”.

Says Amish, “Science and philosophy might meet again, as they did in ancient times across the world. The divorce between spirituality, philosophy and science happened only in the past 1,500 years.” Kumbhakarna is another character who impresses and holds his own. “In my mind, one of the most intriguing characters in this series is Kumbhakarna. He was fundamentally a good, dharmic person, but he was in love with his erring brother. Which is what makes him a tragic character,” says Amish.

And Kumbhakarna, informs the author, is involved in some of the most pertinent discussions with Raavan, ranging from the Sabarimala controversy to the issue of juvenile crime and the Jallikattu episode. “There are many contemporary social issues that have troubled me. No wonder they find their way in my book,” admits Amish, insisting that the Sabarimala controversy is hardly a gender issue. “It’s actually an issue of the tradition of monkhood. Because that tradition has almost died out in India with the invasions, we are not aware of the practices. There are female monkhood practices, and also male ones. It’s not fair to judge a Sanyasa route through the lens of the Grihastha marga [path].” This is where, Amish believes, the country’s liberal intelligentsia get it wrong, too. “The problem is, we are taught more about Shakespeare and Wordsworth than Kalhana and Kalidasa. If we don’t know what we are talking about, then our views are bound to be erroneous and unwise. That’s the problem with most of my liberal friends,” says the 44-year-old author, who had worked for over a decade in the financial services sector before taking the plunge into full-time writing. “I keep saying that our liberals must read Indian culture. They have a Western paradigm in mind and so they fail to understand this country. In India, religion and liberalism go hand in hand. In fact, the understanding of our ancient texts will only make us more liberal and secular.”

Amish’s books are all about religion and tradition, gods and goddesses, and yet he has never courted controversies. “Maybe I am lucky,” he says with a smile. “On a serious note, however, if you quote correctly from scriptures to build your argument, that makes the difference. Also, the subject must be addressed with respect. I don’t think Indians will get angry even if a contrarian viewpoint is presented with respect. I write with respect. I write with pride in our culture,” explains the author, who, interestingly, was an atheist when he started writing his Meluha series almost a decade ago.

“Even the issue of atheism showcases our ignorance of the past. Our ancestors were quite chilled out about atheism. In fact, of about a dozen major schools of Hindus philosophy, orthodox and otherwise, almost half of them were atheistic, including the Samkhya and Mimamsa schools,” retorts Amish, who was born in a family of Pandits in Varanasi. “As a child, I wasn’t ignorant of Hindu religion and culture. It was just that I, being a rebellious child, needed to experience the divine on my own, something I did while writing The Immortals of Meluha in 2010. “My research for the book made me a Shiva bhakta. For those of us who are rebellious, Shiva holds great appeal. He is the lord of contradictions: a vairagi who is a wonderful husband and a great father; the lord of the commoners who is worshipped by the greatest of the kings; the resident of the samasan ghat, where he loves smearing on his body the ashes of the dead, who is also the lord of the arts… Shiva attracts us and then balances us through his contradictions,” Amish says, signing off with a smile.