Writing is my salvation: Ashwin Sanghi

DNA's Daniel Pinto talks to Ashwin Sanghi, the writer of The Rozabal Line, a thriller that is based on the conspiracy theory that Jesus Christ came to India. Sanghi talks about his recent novel Chanakya's Chant among other things.

Tell us a little about yourself. What made you turn from management to fiction?
I was born in a Marwari business family. Circumstances meant that my life was mapped out for me before I was born. It was expected that I would start working for the family business at an early age (I started at 16); it was expected that I would complete an MBA (I did, from Yale, in 1993). At times, this predictability can be a source of security, but it can also mean a life of boredom. I was always a creative person but I had been thrust into the mould of a baniya. The first reaction was to be creative at work. Unfortunately, business is one of those things where money is involved and there are limits to the creativity that one can exhibit when it comes to hard-earned family assets.

I soon realised that I would need to compartmentalise my life. Business was the means to feed my family, but I also needed to have a parallel life that would feed my soul! Writing is my salvation, my means to place myself in an imaginary world and conjure up fantastic stories... it is my path to escape boredom. Some journalists ask me "Why not write books on management or business?" and I find that so very funny. The very reason for writing is to escape from what I do in my ordinary less-exciting avatar, why in heaven's name would I want to write about it?

What is like to have a best-seller (2007's The Rozabal Line) under your belt? 
The Rozabal Line gave me much more satisfaction than Chanakya's Chant even though the latter has been a much bigger success. The Rozabal Line was a chance for me to prove to myself that I had what it took to write a hundred thousand words of a novel. It was also my chance to struggle to find a niche in the publishing world and to do it without the usual advantages that I enjoy as a businessman. The fact that The Rozabal Line remained a bestseller for several months after its release by Tata-Westland was a personal vindication of sorts.

Full interview here DNA

The chameleon called karma

During the reign of 17th century emperor Jehangir, gold coins were minted for the king’s beloved wife Nur Jahan. She became the only empress to have her own coinage without ascending the throne. One of the biggest Mughal coins, the 1,000-mohur, weighing around 12 kilograms was also minted in this period.

This coin found its way to the coffers of the Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali, and is now locked away in a Swiss vault. It is one such coin that becomes the karma leash of Harihar Arora in Man of a Thousand Chances.

Weighing two kilograms and worth millions, the coin is in a Chennai museum where Harihar works and hatches the plan to “borrow” it. As Harihar’s colleagues watch mahouts trying to control an enraged elephant, he steals the Jahangir coin and rushes straight to the pawnbroker.

'My wife told me to quit moping'

To balance 27 years of security in a mundane career, selling cars, entrepreneur Ashwin Sanghi sought excitement with a parallel profession, as a versatile writer. He tells Shana Maria Verghis that his second book, a political saga is being scripted into a film by UTV

Born in the Baniya community, whose profession has them worship at the altar of the God of business, Ashwin Sanghi was baptised in the workings of his family’s automobile dealership, when sixteen years. While still at school, he was learning intricacies of managing debit and credit for the firm.

Reflecting over how his life panned out since, this author of two books brooded, “Things were predetermined in a way. It was decided I’d go to a certain college for MBA. And I would marry at a certain age. Even who I would marry was almost foreknowledge.” He added, “My future was mapped out. Pardon my French. This gave one plenty of security. But the trade-off was, boredom also followed.”

UTV recently traded with Sanghi over his second book, Chanakya’s Chant (by Westland), which is being scripted for a movie. So how did this entrepreneur wind up writing a best-seller set across two time-zones? One is in ancient India, involving Chandragupta Maurya and his canny PM Chanakya. The other is in modern India, where a neo-Chanakya mentors a young girl into state craft.

Full report here Pioneer

It needs more than love to write about India

Stepping into the soul of India is not easy for a foreign writer; the journey needs more than mere love for the country. The process requires an identification with history, facts at fingertips and an uncanny nose for immediate socio-political contexts, show landmark books written over the years.

When Belgian corporate executive-cum historian Dirk Collier decided to walk into the mind of 16th century Muslim visionary, emperor Akbar, for instance, he nearly adopted an Indian identity for himself.

Collier, who made at least 50 trips to India over 10 years and took seven years to write the book, said he was inspired to write a book after seeing a painting commissioned by Akbar's son Jahangir in which the latter was shown holding his father's portrait.

Full report here Times of India

‘Akbar was master of his emotions’

“Fictional autobiography is arguably the most challenging, certainly the most ambitious, but in my opinion, definitely the most authentic genre in historical fiction,” says Belgian writer Dirk Collier, author of the enchanting The Emperor’s Writings, a fictionalised biography of the greatest of Mughal emperors, Akbar.
“Such a noble endeavour will always be, to a certain extent at least, doomed to failure. Complete self-effacement is impossible; the author’s character and personal experience will inevitably influence his or her perception of the facts at hand. Historical fiction can, of course, never replace history, but it attempts to contribute to historical understanding: It aspires to bring history back to life, and in this attempt, it starts where real history leaves off,” says Collier, in an email interview.Excerpts from the interview:

How difficult was it to get the voice of (or, as you mention in the book, reading into the mind of) Akbar right in this fictionalised biography that relies heavily on facts? Did you want this one to be an authentic account of Akbar’s life even though it’s a work of fiction?
I wanted to empathise with Emperor Akbar; I wanted to portray, as faithfully as possible, the kind of man he was and wanted to be (which, incidentally, is a quite important distinction, in every person’s life); I wanted to read into his mind, describe his feelings, the things he wanted for himself and “his” Hindustan, his joys, regrets, hopes and disappointments. Did I succeed in this ambitious goal? I guess only Akbar himself has the right to corroborate this, but as pretentious as it may sound, and as incomplete as any book necessarily will be: I am confident that he would have been quite pleased with The Emperor’s Writings.

Full interview here Asian Age

Smoke on the water

In the second of his ‘Ibis’ trilogy, Ghosh is at the pinnacle of his prowess. It’s a triumph, a truly global novel

We’re just halfway into the year, but if there’s one novel in 2011 that will make the pulse race and the mind wonder with sweep, scale, power and a riveting, multi-threaded story, it is Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke. Coming three years after Sea of Poppies, which was the first volume in the Ibis trilogy, the middle panel of the triptych is even vaster, denser with action and richer in backdrop.

Poppies was set primarily in the Calcutta of 1838—the fulcrum of the British empire in the east, where trade was the lubricating agent of colonization—and on board the Ibis, transporting indentured workers to Mauritius, along with convicts. But River of Smoke abandons this centre, for the most part, stretching its action from Mauritius in the West to Canton in the East, with passing cameos by other parts of the world, such as the island of St Helena where Napoleon is exiled after losing the Battle of Waterloo, which puts in an appearance in the novel.

Much of the action continues to take place on board merchant ships—either in mid-voyage, or anchored off the coast of China, as events come to a slow boil in the world’s largest market for the opium that British and Indian traders make a killing on. The line from the poppy fields of eastern India is thus drawn all the way to Canton. Here, local opium dealers supplying a willing population of addicts not only help reverse the trade deficit of the British empire with China—while adding to the wealth of individual opium traders from all countries who’ve joined the gold rush—they also lead the Chinese empire to clamp down on opium imports. The outcome, of course, will be the Opium Wars, in not one but two editions.

Full review here Mint 

Dirty, sexy politics

Italian traveller and writer Niccolao Manucci, known for his work Storia do Mogor, worked for Dara Shukoh, emperor Shah Jahan’s eldest son and chosen heir, and thus had first-hand knowledge of the Mughal court. He is one of the two narrators of Kakar’s book. The other is François Bernier, a French physician and traveller, who for 12 years was attached to Aurangzeb, who killed elder brother Dara to become emperor. Bernier is credited with writing the first published post-Classical classification of humans into distinct races. He also wrote Travels in the Mughal Empire, which is mainly about Dara and Aurangzeb.

Kakar’s triumph is in choosing his two narrators, who speak to the reader in alternate chapters. It’s also his undoing.

The book is set in the dying years of Shah Jahan’s reign. The monarch indulges in the pleasures of the flesh to divert himself from the travails of an aging body. A fratricidal battle is brewing among his sons — Dara, Shuja, Aurangzeb and Murad — for the Peacock Throne, which epitomises the splendour of Shah Jahan’s rule.

This may not be the best period of the Mughal rule, but it is certainly the most intriguing. The chief contenders to the throne, Dara and Aurangzeb, are the dream-come-true for a fiction writer weaving a tale of two warring protagonists. Dara is the charismatic heir, the emperor’s favourite son, who is full of tolerance for diverse religious beliefs. He has written much on the Oneness of God and Man, the immanence of the Divine and the consequent assertion that there is no difference between various religions. He also writes about a dream in which he saw Vashishtha and Rama and Rama embracing him.

Full report here Business Standard

Little dum in this nawabi pulao

To be honest, if you so much as dangle the carrot of Lucknow in front of me, my senses tingle. I think there are few town-cities in the world more magical than Lucknow. Something in the air there smells of history. And it isn’t a musty history: the language rings with poetry, the parks are lush, interesting spaces that fill your mind with pictures and stories, the streets are doused in aromas of food, and, creeping up on the Bara Imambara on a quiet, rainy night conjures up romance like it does nowhere else. Above all, though, is that the history compels you, draws you in — unlike other old cities where you often just have the sense of being on the fringes of a time far, far away.

The Begum's Secret
AK Srikumar
Penguin
Rs 299

So when I got hold of a book that claimed to set out a canvas as vast and busy, as spicy and complex, expectations were high indeed. The Begum’s Secret wasn’t just a novel about Lucknow — it’s a novel that claims to draw you into Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula’s palace: The famine and poverty of the fading Awadhi state, the court intrigues, the smoke and politics stirred up by the visit of Viceroy Warren Hastings; stories inside the harem, the relationships between the Nawab and his wives, the relationships his wives have with others, the way these relationships are played by others in the palace and outside. And more — the poetry and the food, the language and the lifestyle, and the evocation of a most significant moment in a princely capital.

Full review here Deccan Chronicle

History makes for compelling books because they offer insights into our lives, says MP and writer Shashi Tharoor, who would love to write a historical fiction himself in future.

'Historical fictions are very important because they depict a different time period and throw fresh insight into our lives. They show how our lives derive from that time period. Reading historical fiction is a method of reconnecting,' Tharoor said, releasing writer and psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar's new book, 'The Crimson Throne', at the French ambassador's residence in the capital.
The book, Kakar's fifth novel, is a window to the decadence of Mughal India during 30 years of emperor Shah Jahan's reign and the war of succession to the Peacock Throne between the emperor's tolerant eldest son Dara Shukoh and his astute sibling Aurangzeb.

It is a dispassionate study of the first clash within the spiritual mosaic of Islam - a war precipitated by Dara's religious inclusiveness and Aurangzeb's bigotry told by two European travellers.
 
Full report here Sify