It had been nearly six months since I read the first two installments of the Shiva Trilogy by Amish Tripathi. So I wasn't sure I remembered all the details of the story. My first task, upon resuming the library subscription was, therefore, to read The Immortals of Meluha and The Secret Of The Nagas. About two weeks back, I brought home the last novel, with a lot of expectations.
And then I was mightily disappointed.....besides being very sad. Why, oh why, did the author have to kill Sati? Granted, as per the scriptures, Sati is supposed to have thrown herself in the sacrificial fires at her parents' home because her dad insulted her husband, Shiva. And then Mahadev has married Parvati - the daughter of the king of the mountains, Himalaya - who has remained his consort thereafter. But the trilogy has used only parts of the well-known story. I wish the author hadn't stayed true to the part that took her away from Shiva. :-( To be fair, I am glad that he showed her to be a woman with not only a great character but with exceptional fighting skills. But I must also confess that I couldn't make myself read through her last fight. :-(
I didn't understand why Shiva decided to use the Pashupati Astra to destroy Meluha because it housed the backup Somras building factory. Surely, after what happened to Sati, it would have been possible to convince the Meluhans to destroy it willingly and also to punish Daksha through proper judicial means - especially given the fact that the knowledge about the Somras was supposed to be preserved. The author described the destruction of Meluha in vivid details but devoted only a few paragraphs to the revenge that Kali, Ganesh and Kartik exact on her true Egyptian killers.
Having said all that, I liked the way he tied the storyline to the Zoroastrian faith, the battle of the Mahabharata, Lhasa and the Lama, the founding of the North Indian states - like Tripura, Manipur and Nagaland - and the practice of worshiping Ganesh and Kartik in the southern and northern Indian states. But, like a true Indian, who likes to see all loose ends tied up nicely at the end of the story (in a typical Hindi movie 'And They All Lived Happily Thereafter' style!), I expected some sort of closure to the childlessness angle of the Krittika-Veerbhadra storyline.
All in all, the 3rd part of the trilogy disappointed me a great deal! But at the same time, a paragraph provided me with a strange sort of comfort and calm. I quote it here:
Indians believe that the body is a temporary gift from Mother Earth. She lends it to a living being so that one's soul has an instrument with which to carry out its karma. Once the soul's karma is done, the body must be returned, in a pure form, so that the Mother may use it for another purpose. The ashes represent a human body that has been purified by the greatest purifier of them all: Lord Agni, the God of Fire. By immersing the ashes into holy waters, the body is offered back, with respect, to Mother Earth.
Death, when viewed from this perspective, sounds neither terrifying nor random, does it now?
And then I was mightily disappointed.....besides being very sad. Why, oh why, did the author have to kill Sati? Granted, as per the scriptures, Sati is supposed to have thrown herself in the sacrificial fires at her parents' home because her dad insulted her husband, Shiva. And then Mahadev has married Parvati - the daughter of the king of the mountains, Himalaya - who has remained his consort thereafter. But the trilogy has used only parts of the well-known story. I wish the author hadn't stayed true to the part that took her away from Shiva. :-( To be fair, I am glad that he showed her to be a woman with not only a great character but with exceptional fighting skills. But I must also confess that I couldn't make myself read through her last fight. :-(
I didn't understand why Shiva decided to use the Pashupati Astra to destroy Meluha because it housed the backup Somras building factory. Surely, after what happened to Sati, it would have been possible to convince the Meluhans to destroy it willingly and also to punish Daksha through proper judicial means - especially given the fact that the knowledge about the Somras was supposed to be preserved. The author described the destruction of Meluha in vivid details but devoted only a few paragraphs to the revenge that Kali, Ganesh and Kartik exact on her true Egyptian killers.
Having said all that, I liked the way he tied the storyline to the Zoroastrian faith, the battle of the Mahabharata, Lhasa and the Lama, the founding of the North Indian states - like Tripura, Manipur and Nagaland - and the practice of worshiping Ganesh and Kartik in the southern and northern Indian states. But, like a true Indian, who likes to see all loose ends tied up nicely at the end of the story (in a typical Hindi movie 'And They All Lived Happily Thereafter' style!), I expected some sort of closure to the childlessness angle of the Krittika-Veerbhadra storyline.
All in all, the 3rd part of the trilogy disappointed me a great deal! But at the same time, a paragraph provided me with a strange sort of comfort and calm. I quote it here:
Indians believe that the body is a temporary gift from Mother Earth. She lends it to a living being so that one's soul has an instrument with which to carry out its karma. Once the soul's karma is done, the body must be returned, in a pure form, so that the Mother may use it for another purpose. The ashes represent a human body that has been purified by the greatest purifier of them all: Lord Agni, the God of Fire. By immersing the ashes into holy waters, the body is offered back, with respect, to Mother Earth.
Death, when viewed from this perspective, sounds neither terrifying nor random, does it now?
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