Saptarshi Basu's Blog, page 12

REVIEWS ON RUDRA TRILOGY

REVIEWS done truthfully and in a positive sense give a clear picture of the book.

Some reviews, though are made intentionally just to hamper the sales.

But if a book is of true worth, nothing can stop it.



Some good and bad reviews on RUDRA TRILOGY-BOOK 1- THE SECRET OF IMMORTAL CODE

- Great Mythological fantasy , expertly narrated by Author.
I gave four star to this Book because on details mentioned it is easy to absorb the story as a factual one whereas it is fantastically narrated novel

- Good read! Language should be more polished and updated. The theme is excellent. 

- Some one who has not read ancient Indian scriptures can find this book a little bit interesting, but one can easily understand that author has made an failed and cheap attempt to sensationalize the story.Mr Author , Lord Shiva `s original story is much more interesting and thrilling.
One should not distort the great scriptures in order to make money. ( ONE OF THE FUNNIEST REVIEWS)

- Nice work, moving script, gripping , hope to read more , awaiting eagerly the arrival of the curse of nagas, complete edition.

ATTENTION TO ALL BLOGGERS & MEDIA PERSONS

ATTENTION TO ALL BLOGGERS & MEDIA PERSONS :

The story can motivate many new authors who are still struggling to publish their work.Will request you to take it up in your blogs, online papers, newspapers etc.







We all know how difficult it is to get a publisher in India, and that too a good Publisher who doesn't manipulate the authors and doesn't charge a hefty amount to get the book published.

My earlier novel,Autumn in my Heart was published by Times group ( times of India ) and I know how difficult it is for authors to get a good publisher in India.

I first self-published Rudra trilogy book 1-THE SECRET OF IMMORTAL CODE on Amazon as an e-book and it sold more than 5000 copies in 6 months....then big publishers themselves contacted me on facebook, Harper collins, Rupa etc....I finally signed with Leadstart publishing who had taken up the rights of RUDRA TRILOGY with an Advance royalty .



So, I think you can publish this story in your blog in an attractive way....this will help and encourage a lot of authors ,new and old ones.

Suryavanshis and the Chandravanshis- Pandavas against Lord Rama's Clan

The Suryavanshis and the Chandravanshis

The Ikshwaku Dynasty Vs Kuru Dynasty

Lord Rama belonged to Ikshwaku Dynasty ( Suryavanshis) whereas the Pandavas belonged to Kuru Dynasty ( Chandravanshis).

Takshak- the great Naga warrior king, who lead the Naga clan after Vasuki.

According to Shrimad-Bhagavatam, Takshak- the great Naga King belonged to the Ikshwaku Dynasty. He was a descendent of Shri Rama. The name of Takshaka's son was Brihadbala, who was killed in battle by Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna.




Cursed by Lord Shiva, the Nagas, led by Vasuki move down to Khandava forest.

Arjuna and Sri Krishna burns down the Khandava forest where the Nagas are living. 
A lot of nagas are killed in the fire. 

Takshak’s wife dies.

Then starts the CURSE !

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A7DDI54

AMAZON BEST-SELLERS

THIS IS WONDERFUL....
# 4 in AMAZON BEST-SELLER in MYTHOLOGY....with the TOP INDIAN BEST-SELLERS... 
# 26 in KINDLE TOP 100....
http://www.amazon.in/RUDRA-TRILOGY-SECRET-IMMORTAL-ebook/dp/B00A7DDI54

RUDRA TRILOGY CONTEST 3

RUDRA TRILOGY CONTEST 3 - ANSWER

HERE IS THE ANSWER TO RUDRA TRILOGY CONTEST 3

‘Ah...Ahi....Ahi Upala...’ strange, he said in his mind. Bhadraka couldn’t make a single meaning out of it. The crumbled words assembled together read a strange message when translated –

Ahi Upala holds the key.

Bhadraka had never heard any such thing in his entire life. He tried to remember. But nothing reflected in his mind. No, it was something strange. Very strange. A blue mountain, Lord Shiva looking down, serpents entwined and lastly the word- Ahi Upala holds the key.

(EXCERPT FROM BOOK1- THE SECRET OF IMMORTAL CODE)


QUESTION : What is ' AHI-UPALA'

CLUE : This is a real thing/object which can be seen even now in India. THINK NAGAS


ANSWER : 

AHI in sanskrit symbolises serpent and UPALA means precious stone in sanksrit. AHI-UPALA stands for serpent stone . This are called NAGALKALS. Nagalkals are stone tablets with an entwined serpent pair,the below picture belongs to one such found in Mysore




You can read the first 4 chapters free here :

http://saptak-firsttry.blogspot.in/2012/12/rudra-trilogy-1-read-first-4-chapters.html

RUDRA TRILOGY TRAILER

THIS HOLI....WATCH THE RUDRA TRILOGY TRAILER

http://youtu.be/aBcFkPESU9c




NOW AT A SPECIAL DISCOUNTED PRICE IN AMAZON...ONLY FOR TODAY

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A7DDI54

RUDRA TRILOGY 1 - ANSWER TO SYMBOL CONTEST

ANSWER TO RUDRA TRILOGY SYMBOL CONTEST 


QUESTION :  What significance does the below symbol holds in Hindu Mythology


CLUE : This was there in  the novel DA VINCI CODE ,used in a different way.

ANSWER : 

            The downward-pointing triangle is a female symbol called ‘ Shakti’
        The upward-pointing triangle is the male symbol called ‘ Vahni ’
        The vahni-triangle denote the male essence of the God and the shakti-triangle            the female essence of his consort.
      The symbol signifies the continuous process of creation
This is the Hieros Gamos ( which was depicted in DA VINCI CODE)  Or  "Mystical Marriage " Represented  by this abstract symbol.

Religions, although different, carries the same essence of God.


                      READ THE FIRST 4 CHAPTERS OF RUDRA TRILOGY FREE BELOW
http://saptak-firsttry.blogspot.in/2012/12/rudra-trilogy-1-read-first-4-chapters.html

FEATURED in Creative Non-fiction section of CHA : An Asian Literary Journal

On Rabindranath Tagore-The Man Inside My Head: Of Love, Longing, Loathing and Hating the Bearded Man in the Month of May



by Saptarshi Basu - FEATURED in Creative Non-fiction section of CHA : An Asian Literary Journal













READ THE ARTICLE HERE :

http://www.asiancha.com/content/view/1327/386/

MY GRANDFATHER’S GENE

MY
GRANDFATHER’S GENE

-        
Saptarshi Basu










Man
is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible
for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning




―
Jean-Paul Sartre



















TORMENTED
SOULS










The nature of mankind has a striking similarity in one respect
– that we all love to destroy what we had once loved. Bitterly and madly. How
could you better explain the hindu-muslim riot as fallout of the partition. Innocent
people, irrespective of their religion had continued peacefully for thousands
of years. How come the nature of relationship was painfully dissected on the
table of Bengal’s soil on a single day?




My grandmother never had any answer to it. My grandfather
whom I had never met was forced to leave everything and search for a new home.
Home indeed is a peculiar word. The love, the patience, the effort and the time
invested building it up might be all destroyed in a single second. And then, as
Rudyard Kipling has famously said in his ‘IF’ poem –




And
risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And
lose, and start again at your beginnings

And
never breathe a word about your loss




I wonder if my grandfather had the endeavor of risking
anything. Or did have anything to risk at all. The complexities of Gandhian
politics were quite tough for his docile mind, I believe. And so, when the
great deluge began, though there was no Noah, only millions of hapless people
wandering for a new home. Home indeed is a peculiar word.




It was that time that the wander-bug had bitten my ancestor.
For I had heard scintillating stories from my Granma that my grandfather
absconded for his family life quite often. After he had set up something called
‘home’ in west Bengal, preferably Kolkata.




Marcel Proust once said ‘The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes, but in having new eyes’. Perhaps, the great deluge had offered him, I mean my
grandfather a boundless ‘new eye’.




With the advent of my youth, which is a form of chemical
madness as per F. Scott Fitzgerald I had been bitten by that same wander-bug.
Somewhere, deep inside my hearts of heart I believe it was in my grandfather’s gene.
The pangs of being a writer came much later accompanied by the usual remorse of
nothingness and solitude. As Gogol once said in his Dead Souls –




and
that a whole abyss separates it from the antics of the street-fair clown! This
contemporary judgment does not recognize; and will turn it all into a reproach
and abuse of the unrecognized writer; with no sharing, no response, no
sympathy, like a familyless wayfarer, he will be left alone in the middle of
the road. Grim is his path, and bitterly he will feel his solitude.







-        
 TO BE
CONTINUED ( this is a copyrighted material)




About the Author:




Saptarshi Basu is the writer of AUTUMN IN MY HEART (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009D6PJTY)
published last December by Times Group.

BTW, who is Naipaul?

BTW,
who is Naipaul?

-Saptarshi
Basu




Year 2002. 2nd year into the dreaded chase
called Engineering.

I was sitting in a smoky, ghostly room with fellow Mech-ies
enjoying rather a strong brew. Tranced into the ocean of Bengali renaissance songs,
we hovered in a make-believe happy little world. All sorts of topic, ranging
from girls in the ladies hostel to the ever increasing price of liquors were
being seriously discussed. I really don’t know how that name came to my mind.
It just came .Perhaps I was a bit high. And I started.

‘It seems…’ there was a pause. All looked at me with utter
disinterest. ‘The chaos in the world is perennial. And as per Naipaul… .’ I was
unable to complete my sentence when one of my friends popped up.

‘Chandrapaul’s brother?’ he looked at me with hazy eyes. ‘Did
he also play for West Indies?’ .I… somewhat felt being in midst of a curfew .No
one was there except for the burning flames which was lapping me up internally.
‘Hmm…I know re’ said another intelligent fella. ‘He played for Trinidad and Tobacco’.
Trinidad and Tobacco… Trinidad and Tobacco…it echoed quite some time inside my
alcohol-ed head till I went up. I left the room. The brew tasted bitter by now.

                                 

                                                                          
Many years later while reading Sashti brata’s my god died young (kind of his autobiography written at mere age of
28-29) I read of a similar situation.

S.B. (another S.B. mind it!) writes:

We
were at dinner round the marble table, some dozen faces in all. In between all
the inane chatter I managed to scatter my pearls. ‘We no longer live in
Wasteland,’ I said. ‘The ground is rich once again and Eliot’s voice is weak
with fatigue…..’

At
this point I was rudely halted by my eldest brother.

‘Who
is Eliot’ he queried.

I
felt stung. My orations ceased. I looked blank and cold.




I felt nothing much has changed. In all these years. My god died young was first
published in 1968. It was 2002 for me.                           

                                                         Life went on. Chandrapaul did
hit a few centuries after that and Naipaul was hit by a few controversies. The world
mostly remained the same. We completed our engineering with bruises and burns.
Jobs were rarer than girls. Slowly Naipaul retired temporarily to the dug-out
and Bill Gates appeared with his word (MS Word man!). I somehow crash-landed in
one of the country’s most esteemed software dressing room, oops! I mean
Software Company.

       There by
heaven’s virtue and God’s grace I met an IT engineer cum Bengali Renaissance poet.
I was extremely proud to share our rented apartment with him. Off course others
were there, but he was the most intellectual artiste. Different he was in all ways. Our beloved cook who cooked
snakes and ladders provided vital information about the great soul. In those
troubled and poverty stricken times, the sole television set was the Kohinoor of
our flat. It helped us blue-ing our weekends with cheap source of entertainment.
I told you, troubled times it was! Now, this great soul and intellectual artiste never cultivated in blues .We
acknowledged it also. With his renaissance motive on high, it might falter him in
the path. Our respect increased manifold. Till it got punctured .Our snakes and
ladder cook had watched our respected friend to carry our Kohinoor to his room
and make the whole room blue. I felt it was his need of the hour and dismissed
it as a minor pimple in the face of our moon-ish friend.

   Life went on. On
one such boring night I asked him about his best English novel (The beeest Eenglish
Novel, mind it!). I was waiting eagerly you know. It was like stealing some
diamonds from his ocean of intellect. When he scratched his French-cut and said
‘Hmm…there’s plenty…But…recently I liked…’ . ‘Which one?’ I shouted in my
excitement.

                         ‘There’s a book called I too had a lovely story…nice
but one problem’. I felt stung. My orations ceased. I looked blank and cold. ‘What
problem’ I meekly asked. ‘The name you know…It should have been… I too had a dog story…so
much like our life…’. ‘True’ I said somewhat absent-minded.

From then I loved dogs. Still I love them. Whenever the
bar-man ask me, I have one constant reply. ‘Black Dog, 8 years’. Not a very old
dog you see, just 8 years. Couple of days back with my Dog on my table I was
unhappily shouting a few lines (Metallica was on their full pitch) to one of my
office colleague. ‘You know…Philip Roth is retiring…Sad...Isn’t it?’. He looked
at me surprised. ‘What has happened to you, Basu???…why are you lamenting for
an English cricketer…Is Philip in the recent India-England series?’

I felt stung. My orations ceased. I looked blank and cold. Life
went on. Chandrapaul did hit a few more centuries after that and Naipaul… perhaps
had retired in Trinidad and Tobacco.







- Saptarshi Basu