Trilogy Of Shiva

        

Author Amish Tripathi or Amish as he prefers to be called is now the stuff of Indian publishing legend. The latest in Shiva Trilogy “The Oath of the Vayuputras” sold five lakh copies within a week of publication and cumulative sales of the Trilogy have clocked Rs 40 crore.

  Amish Tripathi

 About the author of Famous Shiva Trilogy

Amish Tripathi (born on 18 October 1974) is an Indian author. He is known for his novels The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas and The Oath of the Vayuputras. The three books collectively comprise the Shiva Trilogy. Tripathi's debut work The Immortals of Meluha was a surprise bestseller, breaking into the top seller charts within a week of its launch. The Shiva Trilogy has become the fastest selling book series in the history of Indian publishing, with 1.7 million copies in print and over Rs 40 crores in sales. 

ForbesIndia has ranked him #85 in the 2012 Celebrity 100 list. Amish Tripathi is an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Although he originally wanted to be a historian, Tripathi initially chose a career in finance because he couldn't afford the former. He worked for 14 years in the financial services industry, in companies such as Standard Chartered, DBS Bank and IDBI Federal Life Insurance, before starting his writing career. Tripathi says that he’s learnt most of his knowledge of Hindu theology and religion from his grandfather and his very religious parents. Amish quotes from the ancient Hindu scripture Rig Veda to say that ‘Truth is one, but the wise men know it as many; God is one, but we can approach Him in many ways’. He says that he lives this philosophy; in his puja room at home, besides the idols of Lord Shiva and other Hindu Gods, he also regularly worships pictures of the MuslimKaaba, Mother Mary, Jesus Christ, Prophet Zarathustra, Gautam Buddha besides symbols of many other religions. All of Tripathi's books (released and planned) are on religious topics since he is a devoted worshiper of Shiva.

 

About The Books-:

Title: Shiva Trilogy (The Immortals of Meluha, The Secret of the Nagas, The Oath of the Vayuputras)

Publisher: Westland (April 1st 2010, August 12th 2011, February 27th 2013)

Summary: 

1900 BC. In what modern Indians mistakenly call the Indus Valley Civilisation. The inhabitants of that period called it the land of Meluha a near perfect empire created many centuries earlier by Lord Ram, one of the greatest monarchs that ever lived. This once proud empire and its Suryavanshi rulers face severe perils.

The only hope for the Suryavanshis is an ancient legend: When evil reaches epic proportions, when all seems lost, when it appears that your enemies have triumphed, a hero will emerge.

Is the rough-hewn Tibetan immigrant Shiva, really that hero? And does he want to be that hero at all? Drawn suddenly to his destiny, by duty as well as by love, will Shiva lead the Suryavanshi vengeance and destroy evil?

Today, He is a God.

4000 years ago, He was just a man.

In a journey that will take him across the length and breadth of ancient India, Shiva searches for the truth in a land of deadly mysteries only to find that nothing is what it seems.

Only A God Can Stop It.

Shiva is gathering his forces. He reaches the Naga capital, Panchavati, and Evil is finally revealed. The Neelkanth prepares for a holy war against his true enemy, a man whose name instils dread in the fiercest of warriors.

Will he succeed? And what will be the real cost of battling Evil? To India? And to Shiva’s soul?

In “The Immortals of Meluha” Shiva meets the Meluhans who have found immortality. They are Suryavanshis who follow the path set out by Ram. They have order and discipline in their lives and believe in the betterment of the community rather than that of the individual. He fights the Chandravanshis who are the descendants of Ram too and have different beliefs and lifestyles to the Suryavanshis only to realize they aren’t evil.

This realisation leads him to the Nagas in “The Secret of the Nagas”. It’s in meeting them that he learns of Kali, the other half of his wife Sati and has to make peace with Ganesh, the other son of Sati. It is in this book that Karthik makes his appearance growing up faster than a normal boy. The Nagas take him to their city – Panchvati where Shiva again has to confront and revise his idea and understanding of evil.

“The Oath of the Vayuputras” is about Shiva’s confrontation with evil and his fighting the righteous fight. He teams up with the Vasudevs who are the guides of the Rudra avatar to take on evil and meets and understands the previous Mahadev Rudra through his tribe the Vayuputras who are sworn to support the Neelkanth in his war against evil. The book isn’t about whether Shiva will win, that’s a given but rather about how a man becomes so loveable that we still love, fear and worship him to this day.

My Review-:

All three covers have been beautifully designed with vibrant colours and textures. 

The font was fine but print quality kept varying through the books. I’ve been hearing a lot about the series and with my interest in mythology, there’s no way I’d have missed this series. Evil is not a person, it is an idea or belief. This is something Shiva has to learn on his journey through the three books.

The characters of the books are the ones we all grew up hearing about in our grandma’s stories – Shiva, Sati, Kali, Ganesh, Karthik…, they are all there in human believable form. Not gods but human beings like you and me who are flawed and yet loved. And there were some I’d never heard of before like Badhra, Shiva’s best friend, Krittika, Sati best friend, Parvateshwar the amy general after whom Sati is also called Parvati, among others. The characters are well sketched and memorable; each one of them. 

One of the best parts of the book for me was the scientific reasoning behind all that magical technology of those times. This trilogy is great if you like Indian mythology; well written it is an enjoyable read but be warned it does get dreggy as you progress through the books.

Something new to know…..

The authors of our country have great potential and the directors have even more potential to convert their novels into good flicks. Karan Johar was quick enough to grab this opportunity and is all set to make this novel into a big movie. As the grapevines say,Karan Johar is willing to cast ...

Vidya Balan and Hrithik Roshan in the film. The producer and his camp Dharma Production have passionately started looking for a director for their movie who will set down the screenplay.

Ref-http://blog.fatema.in/2013/03/book-review-shiva-trilogy-by-amish-tripathy/

http://www.bolegaindia.com/gossips/Karan_Johar_to_film_The_Immortals_of_Meluha-gid-15971-gc-6.html

With Love

Dipali

“Pygmalion”- a thorough delight

by George Bernard Shaw

Before giving any view about the book I would like to tell you about George Bernard shaw.Pygmalion is a masterpiece of Bernard Shaw.

Born- in Dublin, Ireland 

July 26, 1856

Died- November 02, 1950

Genre-Literature & Fiction, Theater

About the author

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright, socialist, and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama. Over the course of his life he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his plays address prevailing social problems, but each also includes a vein of comedy that makes their stark themes more palatable. In these works Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. He is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and an Oscar (1938). The former for his contributions to literature and the latter for his work on the film "Pygmalion" (adaptation of his play of the same name). Shaw wanted to refuse his Nobel Prize outright, as he had no desire for public honors, but he accepted it at his wife's behest. She considered it a tribute to Ireland. He did reject the monetary award, requesting it be used to finance translation of Swedish books to English.

Shaw died at Shaw's Corner, aged 94, from chronic health problems exacerbated by injuries incurred by falling.

George Bernard Shaw

Masterpiece of Bernard Shaw…………PYGMALION

Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, which was staged in 1912 and it was named after a Greek mythological character. Of all of Shaw's plays,Pygmalion is without the doubt the most beloved and popularly received

Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence.

In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures that came to life and was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story in 1871, called Pygmalion and Galatea. Shaw also would have been familiar with the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the musical My Fair Lady and the film of that name.

SUMMARY

Two old gentlemen meet in the rain one night at Covent Garden. Professor Higgins is a scientist of phonetics, and Colonel Pickering is a linguist of Indian dialects. The first bets the other that he can, with his knowledge of phonetics, convince high London society that, in a matter of months, he will be able to transform the cockney speaking Covent Garden flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a woman as poised and well-spoken as a duchess. The next morning, the girl appears at his laboratory on Wimpole Street to ask for speech lessons, offering to pay a shilling, so that she may speak properly enough to work in a flower shop. Higgins makes merciless fun of her, but is seduced by the idea of working his magic on her. Pickering goads him on by agreeing to cover the costs of the experiment if Higgins can pass Eliza off as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party. The challenge is taken, and Higgins starts by having his housekeeper bathe Eliza and give her new clothes. Then Eliza's father Alfred Doolittle comes to demand the return of his daughter, though his real intention is to hit Higgins up for some money. The professor, amused by Doolittle's unusual rhetoric, gives him five pounds. On his way out, the dustman fails to recognize the now clean, pretty flower girl as his daughter.

For a number of months, Higgins trains Eliza to speak properly. Two trials for Eliza follow. The first occurs at Higgins' mother's home, where Eliza is introduced to the Eynsford Hills, a trio of mother, daughter, and son. The son Freddy is very attracted to her, and further taken with what he thinks is her affected "small talk" when she slips into cockney. Mrs. Higgins worries that the experiment will lead to problems once it is ended, but Higgins and Pickering are too absorbed in their game to take heed. A second trial, which takes place some months later at an ambassador's party (and which is not actually staged), is a resounding success. The wager is definitely won, but Higgins and Pickering are now bored with the project, which causes Eliza to be hurt. She throws Higgins' slippers at him in a rage because she does not know what is to become of her, thereby bewildering him. He suggests she marry somebody. She returns him the hired jewelry, and he accuses her of ingratitude.

The following morning, Higgins rushes to his mother, in a panic because Eliza has run away. On his tail is Eliza's father, now unhappily rich from the trust of a deceased millionaire who took to heart Higgins' recommendation that Doolittle was England's "most original moralist." Mrs. Higgins, who has been hiding Eliza upstairs all along, chides the two of them for playing with the girl's affections. When she enters, Eliza thanks Pickering for always treating her like a lady, but threatens Higgins that she will go work with his rival phonetician, Nepommuck. The outraged Higgins cannot help but start to admire her. As Eliza leaves for her father's wedding, Higgins shouts out a few errands for her to run, assuming that she will return to him at Wimpole Street. Eliza, who has a lovelorn sweetheart in Freddy, and the wherewithal to pass as a duchess, never makes it clear whether she will or not.

I suggest all book lovers to read unabridged form of the book and I assure you that you’ll never wish that this book should be over….you would love to turn the pages …..You’ll be in love with Miss doollite.

This play is one of Shaw's most popular plays. It has been adapted into the award-winning film and stage productions of Lerner and Loewe's musical, "My Fair Lady."

Pygmalion is a 1938 British film based on the George Bernard Shaw play of the same title, and adapted by him for the screen. It stars Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller.

The film was a financial and critical success, and won an Oscar for Best Screenplay and three more nominations. The screenplay was later adapted into the 1956 theatrical musical My Fair Lady, which in turn led to the 1964 film of the same name.

"After a long time of not reading any plays I finally found time to read this one and I can surely say that it's by far the best decision I have made.

Bernard Shaw's 'Pygmalion' portrays a bet made by Henry Higgins, a well-know phonetician with his best friend, in which professor states that he can change a flower girl's entire behavior and manner of speech and in a few months she will look like a true lady. What I found particularly interesting in this play is surely the classic British humor sense which gives life to its characters in a very special way. As a result, the characters become extremely true-to-life and every single phrase fulfills you with joy and excitement. Also, I should mention that the parallel between the ancient Greek's 'Pygmalion and Gallathea ' and this story, gives this play a special appeal, so from a playful story it becomes a meaningful lesson which clearly shows how little habits can change a person's destiny. It's a comedy that's all about class and human relationships."

With Love

Dipali

Ref-http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5217.George_Bernard_Shaw

http://www.guardian.co.uk/childrens-books-site/2013/may/22/review-pygmalion-bernard-shaw

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(play)