The Immortals of Meluha

I had read a lot about this book, great publicity and when I saw it on the bestsellers list had to check it out . Glad I did because I had a jolly good time reading it.

The book aims to be human version of the Shiva story, pegging the lord himself to be just another human with a twist that his karma makes him into a Lord worth worshiping. Whether this attempt had to made is a question I leave to the serious theists, I for one welcome the attempt for the purely creative exercise it requires. The most challenging tasks would have been to connect the personalities and events as stated by the scriptures and fit it into the current setting. What I enjoyed most was trying to figure out the inspirations the author used make the book come alive.

So then, at the start we have the tribal leader Shiva fighting off enemies from encroaching onto the Manasarovar Lake and from there the journey to uncovering the truth about his destiny is a fascinating story. There is the Harry Potter-esque self-fulfilling prophecy which is the crux of the book, the humanization of Shiva has been handled very carefully with the friendly jibes, the pain of inaction, the meandering self-doubts as well as the rash decisions made when the emotions run high. The caste system has been debated and book proposes the ideal system our generation would agree to, in theory. Then there is the age old saga of good versus evil with the twist of recognizing who is evil and who is good cause its always the winner who writes history.

The writing overall is amateurish , given the fact that its the author's first book it still delivers.Just maybe the oft repeated good vs. evil could have been toned down.
What impressed me was the finer details of the journey , the security and the battle plans that were provided ,this not only shows the effort but also gathers the readers involvement.
On the authenticity part, I gave up judging it when I was still half way through, especially when modern day hindi is used liberally given the fact that the story is set in 1900 B.C and even the jokes used are from 21st century A.D:). The book bases itself on the fact that everybody is god and delivers that message to a certain extent.The ending though in suspended animation which would be fit for a TV episode, but has been applied to a book just leaves me cursing the author:)

All in all an awesome book to chill out with this summer. (if you do not take the mash-up of mythology seriously:))

Ratings:4/5
Genre: Indian Fiction