The Shiva Triology - Immortals of Meluha & The Secret of the Nagas

A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end.  You live several lives while reading it.  ~William Styron

The Shiva Trilogy is one such series which leaves you asking for more. You can't wait to read the next book after you have finished reading one. While reading the trilogy you live the life of the characters. You feel their pain, anger, happiness, doubts. You create a mental picture about something and suddenly you realise there's  more than what meets the eye. The twists and turns of the trilogy makes it a compelling read.

First of all let me tell you how I got my hands on this series. My colleagues literally forced me into buying this book. Though I had a cursory glance of the book in flipkart's bestsellers but I didn't intend to buy it considering this was not my kind of reading. I am not a great fan of mythology or history.

To be frank, I was taken aback a bit at first. A marijuana smoking Shiva uttering words like 'Dammit', and expressing his love for Sati explicitly came in as a surprise. Maybe, what I liked in the book was also the same- a shiva who was more of a human than a mythical God, a Shiva with all the confusions and oddities in behaviour that are characteristic of humans. 

The Immortals of Meluha is the first novel of the Shiva trilogy series. The first book takes you through the concept of ‘idealistically ideal' Meluha kingdom run by King Daksha of ‘Suryavanshi’ community. Meluhans are followers of Lord Ram who staunchly follow rules and ideals set by Lord Ram. Every Meluhan, right from their king to a Vikram, is pinning all their hopes of redemption on the arrival of a blue-throated man from a foreign land. Shiva empathises with Meluhans and support them in their war against the Chandravanshis, who are believed to be helping Nagas, an evil and cursed group. However, in his journey and the resulting war, Shiva learns how his decision actually was not perfectly right in the true sense, and how it led to dire consequences. His definition of ideal or evil way of life takes a beating. He is in a unhappy state when he should be rejoicing his success. This confusion of thoughts act like a precursor to the next book. 

The gritty and heartening style of writing works well, being the page turner that the book is, setting the context, fixing the geography and etching the characters for the next parts of the trilogy. Right from the start, the book is a page turner, gripping you more with every chapter. Every character in the book is properly etched out without ever compromising on the plot. Never ever there is a dull moment when you are reading it. The plot thickens as you reach towards the end. The last page throws a complete surprise at you and you can’t do anything but wait to read the second book. 

Thankfully I didn’t have to wait since I had ordered both the books together :)

 

'The Secret of Nagas' takes off right where the first book left off, landing you in the middle of some serious action. From here the true picture of evil starts getting painted. Amish doesn’t get judgmental about  the typical 'black & white' picturisation of good and evil.  He doesn’t give any clear cut demarcations of good or evil. Just when you decide in your mind that "here comes the bad guy!", the story takes a sharp curve revealing a completely new side of the 'bad guy'. Every coin has two sides – good and evil. Nothing is totally good or bad. Even Shiva is not infallible. He’s vulnerable and prone to uncontrolled and misdirected anger. In ‘The Immortals of Meluha’, you are led to believe that Meluhans are the perfect community who should be saved at any cost. Then in the second book slowly, you get to see their darker side that probably stems  from insane levels of perfection. You also see that Chandravanshis or Nagas are not evil but they merely practice a different style of living. In fact you feel sympathetic towards Nagas since they have been subjected to evil than being evil themselves. And you are suddenly thinking from an entirely different perspective.

There are some gems like

• "the opposite of love is not hate. Hate is just love gone bad. The actual opposite of love is apathy" 
• “A person's ethics and character are not tested in good times. It is only in bad times that a person shows how steadfast he is to his dharma.” 
• “Whether a man is a legend or not is decided by history, not fortune tellers.” 
• “A man becomes a Mahadev, only when he fights for good. A Mahadev is not born from his mother's womb. He is forged in the heat of battle, when he wages a war to destroy evil. Har Har Mahadev - All of us are Mahadev.”

Overall it's a good reading experience. The language is simple and not too flowery therefore it might not appeal to the connoisseurs of language.

However, I give a thumbs up to this book as it is a good dose of mythology wrapped and served  in modern appetizing way.

Happy reading. Can't wait for the third one to come.

Here is a link to the promotional videos of the Shiva Trilogy. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMZmEyDU0xA&feature=related