Exclusive | Money shouldn't be the priority for a writer: Amish Tripathi

Amish Tripathi is a phenomenon today in every Indian home. He is the author who brought India back to its own roots through his mythological content driven books-the Shiva Trilogy. The first two books of the trilogy “The Immortals of Meluha” and “The Secret of the Nagas” are already a huge success. The concluding part of the trilogy which is named “The Oath of the Vayuputras” will be releasing on 27th February, 2013. The franchisee has such an emotional connection with the readers that they decided to come out with an out of the box never before done thing in publishing. “The Oath of the Vayuputras” prior to its release saw the launch of its music album which is a complete original soundtrack involving musicians such as Bickram Ghosh, Taufiq Qureshi and Sonu Nigam associating with the project.

In an exclusive chat with Amish Tripathi, Adgully talked to him about books, music and much more.

Amish excitedly started off with his passion for history and mythology, “I am passionate about history, mythology and philosophy and I believe that in this world every culture & religion has a meaning. The whole concept of Shiva Trilogy is about the adventures of a man called Shiva who lived 4000 years ago in Kailash Mansarovar in Indus Valley Civilization, but locals call this place as Meluha. The story is about his adventures, the war that he fought and the way he met princess Sati. With my books I am trying to communicate my own understanding of Lord Shiva’s philosophy.”

He added that he concept of Shiva is based on pure philosophy, which got converted into an adventure thriller to convey the trilogy not as a philosophy but as a treat to readers. It later got conceptualized into a series-The Shiva Trilogy as we know.

Amish mentioned that the success of his debut book ‘The Immortals of Meluha’ encouraged him to give up his job and focus on writing. Amish is currently working hard for his forth coming book launch. He had to say the following about the journey called “The Shiva Trilogy”, “With my first book ‘I began my journey to Shiva’s Trilogy and continued with it with ‘The Secret of the Nagas’ and it finally comes to an epic conclusion with ‘The Oath of the Vayuputras’.”

Amish said since his first two books The Immortals of Meluha and The Secret of the Nagas were marketed and promoted innovatively, his third book “The Oath of the Vayuputras had to have a bigger and a better launch. Thus the idea of a music album accompanying the third book came about which ultimately happened to be the first in India.”

The album will have nine songs dedicated to Lord Shiva and is inspired by the different situations in the book. Apart from the content,

Amish feel that apart from the content, marketing strategies are also very important for a book. I believe that an author should be closely involved in marketing as the book is like its baby. The author knows the book in the best way. I don’t want any kind of controversies associated with my book and I feel that if I am selling my books by creating controversies I am insulting myself and others, so an author should keep this in mind that no one should create problems which lead to controversies” 

Personally, Amish  didn’t did any kind of market research for his books, he just wrote the books  as he said, “It’s a good fortune for me that majority of my readers are youths as I didn’t planned anything. I feel one should write from their heart and shouldn’t be dependent on market research.”

Last year, DHARMA production bought the rights for ‘Immortals of Meluha’ and would be made into a film. On this he proudly said, “I am happy and it’s been negotiated by a Hollywood based agent called creative artist agency, its biggest movie agency in the world and I am glad that they represent my movie right.”

In this modern and advanced era, it’s difficult to reach out to your readers, we asked Amish the challenges that he faced and how his works relate to today’s youth, “The biggest problem faced by me was with my first book ‘The Immortals of Meluha’ as everyone rejected it saying that it can’t relate with youngsters. But it was quite fascinating that it sold millions copy and majority of readers were youths. I was not surprised by it as religiosity is very deep rooted in India and in Indians.”

On discussing about today’s generation, he said,” Today’s youth are deeply religious and deeply liberal; they want to understand the religion from modern liberal perspective. So, I hope there would be books which will approach our religion with modern liberal perspective.”

His books are been published in India in Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu and Assamese language, and very soon would be launched in Bengali, Tamil and Malayalam as well. In terms of International languages it would be soon published in Indonesian language, and the first book was launched in London last month.

On asking about distribution front, he discussed that, “Books are not meant for only metro cities but it’s also been sold in 2tier and 3 tier cities and with my upcoming book I strongly feel that we would reach out to all areas in deeper way. There’s an assumption that people in metros are not religious and I disagree with it, I would like to say that people who are truly religious are liberal.”
He believes that, “A writer/ author should believe in himself and shouldn’t think about money as the moment money comes in you start corrupting your book. And if you want to earn, have a side business or job.”

“I am a voracious reader, amongst my own writings I love Har Har Mahadeva speech from my first part, which states that – There’s god in all of us and what we have to do is to discover the god within us, the greatest temple, mosque, church is within us.” Concluded, Amish. | By Rabab Rupawala [rabab(at)adgully.com] & Ranjana Gupta [ranjana(at)adgully.com]