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The Immortals of Meluha
In this book, which is the first in a trilogy, the story unfolds in the regime of Meluha, the name by which the Mesopotamians addressed the Indus Valley Civilisation. The hero is Shiva, who is a tribal warrior chief at the foothills of Mount Kailash. The centre stage is occupied by the romance between Shiva and Sati, the daughter of the Meluhan Emperor. In the backdrop is the conflict among three regimes—the Meluhans who are also known as Suryavanshis, the Chandravanshis who reside in the Indo-Gangetic plain, and the Nagas. Very little is mentioned about the Nagas except that they are proficient fighters and "ugly" in appearance. The other two regimes are glorious civilisations that differ in their approaches—the Suryavanshis are disciplined while the Chandravanshis are passionate. Two things that are common between them are their reverence for King Rama, whom both claim as their own, and their search for Neelkanth, the blue-throated deliverer. And the tussle involves the mystical Saraswati river and the elixir of youth Somras. The writer has taken enough liberty with mythology and history. Sati and Parvati are the same woman while Rudra and Shiva are different men; Daksh, Sati’s father, is happy with Sati’s marriage to Shiva; and Rama, the legendary king, appears much before the arrival of Shiva. On history, he spells the Indus Civilisation as Meluha while history books spell it as Meluhha and Harappa becomes Hariyupa. Two features aid you in running through the book: firstly, the language is not too ornate and secondly, the content is not too deep. The simple words make immediate sense and the reader has not much need to stop and ponder over what he is reading. The Immortals of Meluha runs in the reader’s imagination as a film and on its last page, the ardent desire to breeze through the next part and the next (it’s a trilogy) remains.
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THIS
one definitely is a
page-turner. And as it has action, drama, adventure and romance, a
prolific reader can finish its 390-odd pages off in two sittings and
an average one in about five. The writer, after having read Vedic
mythology and ancient Indian history, has let his imagination fly.