BOSTON: Amit Dixit, Executive Director of the South Asian Arts Council, hosted an interesting and thought-provoking speech-cum-interview with Indian author Amish Tripathi – deemed “India’s first literary pop star” – at the Boston Public Central Library on Saturday, February 10.
The attendance was thick for this event as many came to know Amish’s journey from banking to writing and his ideas and motivating factors behind pushing liberalism in the age of nationalism through his creative writing.
Amish Tripathi has authored six books so far which have sold over 4 million copies in the India. The Immortals of Meluha (2010), The Secret of the Nagas (2011), and The Oath of the Vayuputras (2013) comprise the Shiva Trilogy, the fastest-selling book series in Indian publishing history. Scion of Ikshvaku (2015) and Sita: Warrior of Mithila (2017) are the one and two in the Ram Chandra series.
The first three books collectively comprise the Shiva Trilogy and the latter two are the first two books of the Ram Chandra series which is going to be a collection of five books. Amish recently launched his first non-fiction book called Immortal India. His fastest selling of Shiva Trilogy has created a record in Indian publishing history.
His novels have been translated into a number of languages, including Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Estonian, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Polish and Odia. The reason for being translated into many languages is that the Indian publishing is increasingly focusing on the Indian cultural sensibilities. Amish said be prepared to witness a situation in few years when other languages would account for higher sale of books than those in English.
Amish Tripathi in his exclusive interview with Kavita Chibber, a prominent journalist, said that he is a happy writer and he does not select the topic of his books. He just goes with the flow of his thoughts and mixes them with facts of history, mythology, ethical theory, technology, and management science. Amish logically answered the questions on Manu Smriti rules, laws, and constitution.
He said that when we look at the past and present societies, some rules are very liberal and some are conservative, and they reflect the mood of the society when these were written. Our society should do what works for us at this point of time. Amish mentioned about scriptural texts that supported the liberal approach towards issues of gender. They reflect high status for women in ancient India because in the Rig Veda, many hymns were written by rishikas or female rishis. He not only touched upon many issues prevailing in the modern world but also answered cleverly all the questions from members of the audience.
Amish Tripathi was born in Mumbai and studied at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He is honored with many awards: Forbes Magazine listed Tripathi amongst the one hundred most influential celebrities in India, and he is the recipient of the Pride of India Award (Literature), the Raymond Crossword Book Award, Dainik Bhaskar Literature Award, and many more. Amish was also selected as an Eisenhower Fellow.
At the end, Amit Dixit thanked Boston Public Library for their support and acknowledged support by Kanchan Banerjee, Co-Founder & President, of New Global Indians for Bharat Vikas (GIBV), Kavita Chibber, a journalist of Boston. He also thanked Amish Tripathi and the enthusiastic audience for making this program a grand success.
Geetha Patil
