The Scion Of Ishvaku - By Amish Tripathi

  The first book in the Ram Chandra Series, The Scion of Ishvaku is a retelling of the Indian epic - Ramayana - by Amish Tripathi. An alumnus of St. Xavier’s, Mumbai and IIM-C, Amish began his career in finance, working his way up through a multitude of top-notch banks, for over 15 years, before he chose writing as a career. The success of his books can be alluded not only to his impeccably well researched and framed stories, but also to phrenic, adroit and ingenious marketing schemes (characterizing the pedagogy of his alma mater), which helped him publicize each book, ensuring its success. Amish Tripathi is the recipient of numerous revered awards, such as the Raymond Crossword Popular Fiction Award for this very book, the Dainik Bhaskar Readers choice award.

  The story begins with King Dasharatha, invincible till his defeat at the hands of Raavan. On the same day, Ram is born, thus casting upon his the grim shadow of misfortune. It follows with Ram and his brothers’ childhood and tutelage, surrounded by politics, him overcoming the dark shadow upon him, and his accession to the throne. Ultimately, the book concludes with Ram’s fourteen year exile and the kidnapping of Sita.

  The salient feature of Amish’s books is that his elucidation sets the epic in an ancient yet surprisingly modern world. All the magic and mystique we’ve known as kids is adduced as science and technology. Case in point is Raavan’s legendary Pushpak Vimaan that is his flying chariot, by which Sita is kidnapped. We imagine it to be a horse carriage, driven by flying horses (often ones with wings, like pegasi), as per our Grandma’s tales. However, Tripathi’s version depicts it as a helicopter, simplifying the picture with logic. Similarly, the famed Brahmastra, an egregious weapon that devastates the target land and its surroundings for seven generations, is basically a nuclear weapon. Our beloved Lord Ganesha, bestowed by Shiva with the head of an elephant, and the talking vulture Jatayu, who lost his life attempting to rescue Sita, are both Nagas, who are people born with genetic mutations and possess cancerous outgrowths, making normal humans look like a mix of animal and man.

  The book makes us realize that all of our latest inventions and discoveries, largely by foreign scientists and researchers, have been an integral part of ancient Indian history. In a sense, it is a lost science, akin to Ayurveda, lost beneath the folds of language and time, setting back the work by millennia.

  It is time for all Indians to jump onto the bandwagon that is Amish’s books, forged in a furnace of knowledge, faith and logic. They’re a reminder of what we have been and where we could be, inspiring us to develop and reach India’s true potential.