Book Review: The Immortals Of Meluha

Mythology and folklore is India’s tour de force and The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi, is an exhilarating cocktail of reality and myth blending them like never before showing how rich indeed they are! Based on the credence that our conduct, deeds and the destiny are the deciding factors in transforming an ordinary man to God, the book talks about Lord Shiva, who through sheer acts of valour and fortune became impregnable, God like!

This epic becomes more enigmatic and fascinating with each turning leaf of the book, which goes on to portray a simple, barbarian, entertaining yet audacious Lord Shiva, the denizen of the mountains of Mount Kailash Mansarovar as a chilled out youthful tribal leader with blue throat, whose favourite pastime is smoking marijuana with his friends, but gradually goes on to become the most sacrosanct, respected, feared, loved and admired legend. Lord Shiva the slayer of vice rises to become the lord of all Gods into Mahadev. The book deals delightfully with the myths surrounding the legend.

The book begins with Shiva in a quandary over a tempting offer from Nandi, hailing from Meluha, who invites Shiva and his tribe of Gunas to relocate to Meluha (roughly Indus Valley circa 1900 BC) and thus follows his passage to the land of pure life, ruled by the descendants of Lord Ram. And in comes out the chronicle of two kingdoms having diverse ethos, which deem each other evil and revolves around the century’s old rift among the Chandravanshis and the Suryavanshis, hell bent on proving each others pre-eminence.

Meluha is a near ideal kingdom created several centuries ago by Lord Ram whose reign was perfect in various ways. But now the kingdom is struggling against many issues - dearth of somras (the drink which reduces the oxidants in the body while increasing longevity of life), slow extermination of sacred Saraswati River and the continuous intimidation from Chandravanshis who purportedly have connived an pact with the Nagas, the dreaded deformed terrorists, for attacks on Suryavanshis,.

The Meluhans resolutely believe in the primeval legend that when evil reaches epic magnitude and the struggle become overwhelming for common men, the man with blue throat -Neelkanth will appear which gives them a gleam of optimism. It turns out that Shiva is the Neelkanth whose throat turns blue on taking the somras.

The Meluhan King of Suryavanshis - Daksh, invites diverse tribes to stay in his country in frantic quest of a sole saviour for them. That is when Shiva, arrives who smokes grass, gets hurt in combats, follows his point of attraction, is ambivalent at times, turns deaf to pleas of assistance, but most vitally is simple. While the onus myth placed on his shoulders in the beginning proves to be a great deal for a tribal leader to stand, Shiva rises to the circumstance when required.

Towards the end, we again find a perplexed Shiva unable to clearly discern between good from evil and finding himself responding to the call of destiny, while finding love of his life, forming brotherly links with some and leading an entire state against evil.

Mythological characters were created or given larger than being aura numerous times by the situations and perspective in the maze of magical realism. Interspersed with nuggets of a way of life the book is delightfully packaged with myriad emotions where Shiva is not a God, but a man whose destiny makes him the Mahadev.

The finest part of the book is that it makes almost all the God legends into potential human beings who achieved prominence and contributed so much to culture that story tellers made them Gods. The tale very wonderfully explains that no one is born a Mahadeva but only moulded into one. Fortune is with folks who believe in themselves.

The meticulous sketch of places and situations will assist the readers in understanding the narrative and moving along with it while interweaving the sub plots of Saptrishis, Vasudevs, short account of Devas and Asura and Rudra in the storyline without puzzling the readers anywhere. Mansarovar, Sati, Nandi, Daksh, Gunas, makes the entire tale very plausible and easy to relate to and well highlighting even the Gods commit mistakes.

The book presents a striking concurrence of the apparent good and evil where evil is a relative expression, just like everything else in this universe. What a single individual or community thinks is vice or bad is perhaps just a different manner of doing things, which they aren't secure with while treading intrepidly on the contours of veracity and myth and thus highlighting the reality that underneath each myth there are manifold layers of realism.

The Immortals of Meluha is indubitably a page turner and this book entirely lives up to the expression, which will keep you hooked till the very end. It is one of those stories which will remain in the readers mind for a long long time. Shiva / Neelkanth / Mahadev, by whatever name you call will be in your hearts eternally and will strike a chord with you while making you feel- what if Lord Shiva was a mortal!

The book cannot be exactly be classified as mythology but it draws greatly from Hindu legends and is astonishingly engaging which has enough twists to keep the reader engrossed. The stimulating change has been the incredible job in treatment of the mythical characters as human characters by Amish. The narrative unfolds to tell us many contemporary practices that were followed even 3000 years past.

It's a fresh genre of sorts with a fine feel good contemporising chronicle on Indian mythology and practices juxtaposed with splendid tales of history, culture, folklore and creed. The radiant rendering of duality of life and of our reality takes the book various notches higher.

Overall, an incredibly splendidly composed tale, that would even tempt agnostics, atheists and even partial believers of God. The writer has fictionalized and simplified the folklore to such an degree that it can simply be followed by all. The narrative is fast paced and fascinating and the writer manages to keep the reader totally absorbed. A totally creative plot brilliantly amalgamating mythology, history and fiction to craft an enthralling saga.