The Oath of the Vayuputras

At the very beginning of 'The Oath of the Vayuputras' , Amish raises a very pertinent question of what is the tipping point when good becomes evil and vice versa and how does one come to a conclusion about it. This is in line with his earlier 2 books where Amish/Shiva are constantly looking at the concept of good/evil and trying to make sense of it. In a brave move, Amish shows his most important card right the beginning (i.e) the crux of the entire series which is the mythical 'Somras' unlike the earlier 2 where there was an air of mystery maintained throughout and carried over to the next part. The Somras is supposed to have such bad side effects on people consuming them that Shiva has to stop its production and the novel is about whether he succeeds in it. The powers high up are willing to consider the side effects of the Somras as collateral damage as long as it benefits them and this begs the question of how much power the state can wield in deciding what is good for it's people and that too in a sneaky manner by withholding information from the people and thereby depriving them of an opportunity to make a considered choice of what is good for them. I find it relevant in this age of Nuclear power, it's potential to cause disaster to the very people whom it is supposed to help improve their lives and how the state uses the media and other resources to drum up support for it's actions while discrediting those who oppose it by any means like branding them as traitors, having hidden agendas etc. Amish may not have meant it to be a commentary on current times, but I found the crux of the novel similar to what's happening now and more so as I am from Tamil Nadu where I have more opportunities to read/see what's happening.

All these happen right the beginning and one sits back in anticipation of how this is going to progress. But this intriguing set up devolves into a meandering read for most of the remaining part, with a rousing finale but the ultimate result is an underwhelming novel which promises much but doesn't deliver it. There are two reasons for this and they are linked too. The earlier books in the series were driven not by the sheer narrative power, but by the air of mystery and the plot twists/revelations that Amish kept revealing little by little to keep the reader's interest intact. But here the mystery is shown in the very beginning and hence Amish has to bank on his narrative force which lets the novel down. Like for instance the battle scenes, which are supposed to be between forces of huge size (hundreds of thousands literally) and the fact that the whole of India (though the blurb and the book states that India is at war, actually its only the Northern part, as the South is pretty much ignored as usual, more on that later) is at war. There is a tackiness in how the battles scenes are staged and we never get a sense that such a huge battle is in progress, rather it looks more like a skirmish between 2 small groups than a war that is ravaging India. The pop philosophizing about good/evil gets repetitive after a point to the point of causing ennui. Even the revelations that Amish throws up are like "duh, okay". The worst was the one about Shiva's antecedents, which is a throwback to the  the novels/movies where a person from the oppressed group fights for their rights and finally it turns out that he himself is of noble lineage (got lost as a kid, brought up by others etc) and belongs to the same group he is opposing, the implication here being that those who are oppressed cannot fight for themselves and it requires someone from outside (with a perceived royal lineage) to make them come together and fight for their rights. This was the worst cop out done by Amish in the novel.

Amish's persistence with duality continues in this novel too. Along with good/evil, he maps Rudra/Rama(Vishnu), the Vasudev/Vayuputra clan and establishes both the sides with clarity.  But the Vayuputras are so under represented in the novel that one wonders why the novel was titled 'The Oath Of the Vayuputras'. In the case of those who oppose Shiva, he doesn't paint them as all black. Along with those who oppose Shiva for their personal gain, there are characters who have their own convictions/ideologies and oppose Shiva based on that rather than for any individual gain. This doesn't make their actions correct, but credit to Amish for not giving one dimensional characters always.These are some the better parts of the novel. But once Amish has established the characters/motives and moves on the action, the narrative becomes sluggish again. At the half way point most characters are introduced and established, so even that relief is lost to the reader in the second part of the novel.

Other than the narrative, another problem I had with the novel was the ideas Amish postulates in it. After Dan Brown, it has become a fad in the novels about ancient times to glorify their advancements to the point of incredulity.In any era/epoch there would have been advancements made over the previous one, but to posit that the ancients had knowledge of practically everything can only serve as either an outlet for someone's weariness at modern life or raise the nationalistic fervor of incredulous minds, they do not have any relevance to the actual novel. In this work, the ancients refer to binary values, differences between Nuclear fission /fusion, have very advanced war contraptions and in general seem to be aware of pretty much everything. If you are a Tolkien or even J.K Rowling, it is very clear that a completely new world is being created from ground up, there is always a sense of disassociation in the reader and the authors as Gods can let their imagination run amok. But in this novel certain basic facts/beliefs are taken as the base from where the author progresses and when such theories creep in, a susceptible reader will start wondering where does reality end and where does the author take over and may tend to believe that such things really existed in the old times. The ancients may well have used thermonuclear weapons, but based on what we know about their lifestyles from various sources (historians/anthropology/oral history etc), I tend to believe that these references to astras and other advancements are the product of an hugely imaginative mind of those times. My grouse on this may seem to be overreacting, Amish may not have seen it like this and he was probably following a template established by Dan Brown, but this book (and series) could be used by right wing nuts as some kind of propaganda for 'Bharat'. It's not as far fetched as it seems.

Lets take the geography covered in the novel and the references to various gods. In a novel which is supposed to be about India as a whole there is very little reference to the southern part. Muruga is referred to as a God/Person originally from the north who gained great following in the South. Ganesha is referred to as someone who was venerated all over India. I am neither a historian nor a  mythographer , but even from the little I have read these statements by Amish are indicative of the tendency (maybe subconsciously) to group India as a monolithic whole, where everything started from a single point and progressed to the other parts of the country, with no regard for the culture of those parts. That's why Shiva has been revealed as a native of India. Yes, Kalidasa wrote about Kumarasambhava, but Muruga was primarily a Tamil god who was then brought into the Hindu/Indian pantheon. And the cult of Ganesha gained favor only after Tilak.  There's even a mention of Hindu monks who settled in Lhasa (Tibet) and that the Tibetans helped them protect their secrets. I was reminded of 'The Return Of The Aryans' which postulated that the Aryans migrated from India, conquered the world and came back again, the implication being that we Indians were the birthplace of pretty much everything good.  To Amish's credit he also shows the other side of the life in that period, but fringe lunatics have a way of assimilating only what is useful to them, conveniently ignoring the other things.

Towards the last part there is a set piece action involving Sati in single combat and the novel picks up again at this point. This single combat is more hard hitting, violent, with in your face brutality and the battles described earlier. Not just that, the emotional quotient of the novel too is elevated several notches at this point and never lets up till the end which is moving. But it comes too late to entirely salvage the novel. Amish has made an ambitious attempt in this finale (not just in length of the novel but in the content too) and though he doesn't succeed totally, its good to see him not take the easy way out and try to push himself, results notwithstanding. With the success of his novels, books on Ancient India have become a cash cow and there seems to be no end to authors milking it dry. Amish himself refers to 'Mahabharata' at the end stating that he may write about it too someday. Amish should be praised for being the trendsetter in this genre in India but it's still a long way till we get a novel of the likes of 'The Historian'.