Jagannath’s Story Has To Be Told: Author Ashwin Sanghi

Bhubaneswar: The concluding day of Odisha Literary Festival kicked off with one of India’s renowned and honoured authors, Ashwin Sanghi, who has had our mind blown with his phenomenal blend of history, mythology and heritage with the logics too rational to not believe.

The 49-year-old author spoke about connecting the dots and how he has brought all different connections in his books, from ‘Krishna Key’ to ‘Keepers of Kalachakra’. He believes, ‘History’ and ‘Mythology’ are no different and when brought together, they become a ‘Mystery’. Odisha Bytes caught up with him for a brief chat where he spoke about mythology, books and Odisha.

Bhubaneswar Love-Lit Affair
Of all the places I go, I really love coming here because people welcome me with open arms and everyone wants autographs and selfies. The crowd here is amazing. It’s my second or third visit to the lit fest, the excitement I see here is like nowhere else. People listen and ask questions with such interest. Besides, the temples here are quite an attraction.

Truth, Notions, Reality, Mythology
No one has ever been able to answer the truth. We believe, truth and fact are the same while they are entirely different. There’s a saying, Philosophy is questions that can never be answered and religion is the answer that can never be questioned. We can go on seeking the answer but we won’t really find it. However, it’s about the journey. One has to keep moving.

Essential Ingredients Of Ashwin Sanghi’s Book
Question – What if? What if this was real, or was the truth, or what if the story you heard of was not this. Ashwin Sanghi book is about this question. No book is complete without this particular question.

The Solo Tale Of Shawn Haigins
The first book faced a lot of rejection so I self published the book in 2007 using a pen name with help of an American publishing firm and by then, I had genuinely begun to feel that I probably have an unlucky name. Also, I didn’t want an American publisher to have a book with an Indian name to deal with. I was quite interested in scrabble back then, so I put my name on a scrabble, jumbled them and created a name out of the letters. I picked the first name in which all the letters were used, Shawn Haigins. The next year, the book was picked by Tata Westland and they wanted me to use my real name because it would have been a cultural shock looking at an Indian face while the name suggested otherwise.

Introduction to mythology
It actually came from my grandfather because he would tell me lots and lots of stories. He would talk about mythology and that is what happens in all of our homes where you either have a parent or a grandparent and then you had Amar Chitra Katha that instills that inquisitiveness for mythology. Since we are into nuclear families these days, commercial fiction is picking up more.

Presentation matters
You cannot present Ramayana to the youngsters the way it was portrayed 25 years ago and expect mordern-day readers to accept that story in its entirety. If I tell you about Mahabharata, I have to tell you why I believe it is real or if I tell you that post Lanka battle, people returned to Ayodhya in a pushpak vimaan, I have to tell you why I believe it could have been possible at that time. This generation asks a lot of questions so, you have to package the story in a way where it is easily digested.

Odisha: Jagannath And More
Everything begins and ends at Jagannath, I think. This is again among hundreds of ideas in my list waiting to be explored. If you take just Krishna stories and look at the regional variations, it is absolutely phenomenal. At some point in future, I would actually like to do a non-fiction story on how the Krishna story developed regionally around the world. Jagannath’s is a story I cannot avoid telling. It has to be told!

The Book Secrets
Last book read: Being mortal by Atul Gawande.

Favourite book: Autobiography of an Yogi by Swami Paramhansa Yogananda. In his words, “it is a single book of tonnes and tonnes of wisdom.”

Amid the session, he also shared some one-liners that speak more about him than anything else.

“Entertain, Educate, Enlighten” (On how mythology and history should be taught)

“Everyone has great ideas, not everyone captures it”

“The truth is, we will never know the truth”