Indic Chat With Amish Tripathi

Indic Book Club is delighted to host Independence Day special Indic Chat on Zoom with Amish Tripathi on his latest book, Immortal India, on August 13 at 7 pm. The chat can be accessed here.

This chat is unique. Amish will be talking to four women -- Shefali Vaidya -- journalist, blogger and writer; Saiswaroopa Iyer -- author, Abhaya and Avishi; Anjali George, a cultural enthusiast who worships and cherishes the great civilisation of Bharat, and Dimple Kaul -- learner, writer and life enthusiast. Amish, after the success of Sita: Warrior of Mithila, where he unfolds a magnificent dialogue on strength, valour, morality, intellect and gender, will discuss his views on India, independence, his new book, aspects covered in it, culture and women.

Amish, the Indian author and son of Bharat with many skills, is a preserver of Indic values. He is a brave narrator in a constant conversation with self. He is able to walk into the two journeys of Bharat -- the ancient civilisation and a young country celebrating the 70th year of independence -- steadily. He is able to hold a mirror to India's body and soul. He is able to throw his voice into chambers of past and presence, using his own echo to connect 'then' and 'now'. He is able to sculpt, carve, etch, shape and mould with his powerful hand. He is able to install retrospectives, inspired by the forms and faces he creates. He is able to melt brutal fact-driven conversations into soft and warm narratives. He is able to throw, pick, use and reuse material saved over ages in the comforting pillow of Indic bedtime stories. He is able to be the enthusiastic child, parent, grandparent -- over a single appearance -- ready to share what he has to tell in his books, speeches and at conferences. He is able to view the good and evil with equal tenacity and vision. He is able to be distant and intimate with characters born out of the fascinating singularity of head and heart, writer and listener. With this immense toolbox of gold, Amish has turned the pages to India, back and forth, from the middle leaf of his own book of talents.

Perhaps, it is the experience of the touch, feel, turning and tossing the past and present, their countless seen and unseen grains in his fist, that fuels Amish's determination to make India great again.

He mentions in a note, "India, a culture that witnessed the dawn of civilisation. That witnessed the rise of other cultures and watched them turn to dust. It has been celebrated and attacked. Admired and vilified. But through all these millennia, after all the ups and downs of history, it's still here! And now, after a few centuries of decline, it's driving a new dawn once again. Ajanaabhavarsh. Bharat. Hindustan. India. The names may change, but the soul of this great land is immortal."

Amish is a man "on a mission to make tomorrow's India worthy of its ancestors", with love for the country -- non negotiable, hunger for reading -- belly-burning, and an appetite to write -- billowing.

He has worked and reworked on the craft of creating characters in different spaces. In Benaras, where the heritage of shlokas, puranas, stories and legends came to him from his grandfather and other elders, flowing like the immortal Ganges of heritage that washes the ghats of time, worldliness and a personal quest. On the car seat, saddled on work deadlines and meetings, belted, between traffic signals, jams and wheels of success. On the car seat, where he has written the five bestsellers that fly off to readers in 19 languages in India and across the world, in a blink. At his desk, where he moves the powerful cursor of words, lines, plots and characters over the multiplying pages of his fertile memory and imagination. Between piles of his bestsellers and a neat and rich bookshelf, where he stands contained in a business suit, reaching out to his readers with a smile that makes you wonder if he is the same man who opens the door to a very angry Vishwamitra in his work.

Know more about India Immortal, the compilation of articles and speeches covering topics across history, mythology, social issues and religion, in Amish's Indic Chat with the four versatile Indic women.