Book review : The Taj Conspiracy by Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

The book revolves around the Taj Mahal as the name suggest. As being Indians we all must have heard two stories about the Taj. First one is well known by the rest of the world too - the story of Mumtaaz & Shajahan. The second is that story in which it is said that the  Taj is a Ancient Hindu Mandir (temple) and there exist a Shivling in the Taj.

Mehrunisa Khosa, a Mughal Scholar came to India. Born to a Persian mother and an Indian father, brought up in Middle East and Europe she came to India not only to do a research on Taj but also in search of her roots and identity.

But in the course when she visited Taj she found the Taj supervisor dead. Then she found the verse of Kuran on the tomb tampered in a way to create a controversy.  A controversy to create tension at Agra between Hindus and Muslims.

Then a complete series of events took place to show that the Taj is indeed a Shiv Temple. Mehrunisa followed them and tried to find out if the Taj really was a ancient Shiv Temple or not.

The author, Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, worked and researched well to make the book interesting. The book is a true thriller with lots of secrets which open up in the end. I can't make the secrets public so go grab your copy of this book.

But there are also few things which I didn't like/understand. The chapters which talk about a terrorist group making plans against India was not needed as I didn't find any connection of them with Taj. Although the book is a well written thriller but it also got boring in-between. Some parts of the story also seem to be filmy as they can't happen in real life.

I will give this book 6/10.

Book review - The Krishna Key by Ashwin Sanghi

Ashwin Sanghi is an author known for connecting the dots from history to the present with his brilliant abilities to do vast research on history, myths & religions. His 3rd book 'The Krishna Key' is his another try to reveal the truth from history/myth.

The story revolves around some researchers from different fields who have found the evidences that the Krishna was a real character and the war of Mahabharata did take place around 5000 years ago in Dwapara Yuga. In the process one of them found an astonishing thing - The Krishna Key - for which a man who consider himself the 10th avatar (incarnation) of Lord Vishnu - Kalki -  starts killing them one by one on orders from a woman - Mata Ji.

Professor Saini, who is one of the five researchers, with his doctoral student Priya started to find out what special there in The Krishna key and many historical truth came out which were considered just myths before.

One by one the history started to reveal its hidden secrets to them. But all those things didn't help to find the answers to the unsolved mysteries. The answer that came out in the end is interesting and enlightening one.

The plot is written brilliantly. All the characters in the story seems to have story of their own. The author did a complete research and then connected the dots. The way he connected the different clans, even from different religions, was interesting and astonishing.

Ashwin Sanghi's previous two books -' The Rozabal Line' and 'Chanakya's Chant' - were one of the best books but, according to me, this book is not up to his level. Some of things are repeating few times in the book. I think there is no need to extend the story with useless data. But still, it is good enough to be in bestsellers list.

I give it 8/10.

Book review - ASURA : tale of the vanquished; the story of Ravana andhis people by Anand Neelakantan

"HISTORY WAS WRITTEN BY WINNERS NOT WARRIORS."

The above phrase is a universal truth. But this book is indeed an untold story of  a warrior and his people who lost the war. The people about whom we are being taught that those were evils and against humans. This is autobiography of anti-hero of Ramayan and his people. This is Ravanayan.

I bought this book because I read about Asuras in The Immortals of Meluha by Amish Tripathi in which he wrote that the Asuras were not evil, they were just different. I wanted to know more about them. Author Anand Neelakantan wrote about them brilliantly.

The story starts with Ravana as a child - a poor child with his mother, two brothers and a sister. They were poor and had to beg to the king (who was his step-brother) for food and money. But his poorness couldn't stop him to saw big dreams of conquering the world. It talks about his journey to India and lesson learned under Mahabali. The logic behind his ten heads is explained brilliantly.

This book talks about the best time of India under Asuras, how the Devas attacked them and killed their people, children and raped their women.

The common man suffered in even the best times. Bhadra - the common man of this story suffered too even though he did everything he could and do for his king. The story of Bhadra is a touching one. He lost his family, his love & everything and remained a looser in the end as his king Ravana. The author also wrote how the caste system of Devas made the common man suffer even though he follow the codes written in Vedas.

The book talks about the winning streak of Ravana throughout India and his changing behavior towards everyone including his family & himself. The author portraited him as a family man as he cares about his family, his brothers, his wife & his children . It is known from Ramayan too about his faith in Shiva and how talented musician he was. We consider he kidnapped Sita because of his lust but this book has different reason for his this act.

The war was fought between Ravana & Rama was last one to be seen by many warriors. The author wrote that the it was Devas who broke the war codes - they attacked at nights, raped women,  killed children.

Many Ravana friends betrayed him and fought against him. In the end when Ravana was dying, he look back to his life and mistakes made by him.

The best line of the book is : "..... I had been born to fulfil someone else's destiny. To allow someone else to become God."

Now coming to some thing I don't like about this book. The book is huge, having 500 pages. I don't mind such huge book but few chapters could be written in a single paragraph.  The Author wrote about the Asuras, good work, but he made the same mistake. He made the opposite side evil (Devas in this case).

Bhadra's story is good and touching one as I wrote earlier. But it gets boring and frustrating some times.

But Overall, I will give it 7 out of 10. It is good read. I will advice that those who are interested in myths should read this.

Book review - The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

First things first, before this book I had never read Mahabharat or never saw it on TV because of its hugeness. Though I had heard lot of stories from it but never got a chance to complete it in any format. And, let me be honest, one of the reasons I didn't read this greatest epic because I never liked the character of Krishna. But this book just did the enlightenment.

Hats off to Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni for writing the most of the story of Mahabharat in just 360 pages. I wrote words "most of the story" in previous line because she missed/skipped some of the stories which I have heard. This is acceptable because this is not the complete Mahabharat but is the story of the Pandavs' wife Draupadi.

Draupadi is a character which is considered as the reason of the war because of her laugh & comment made on Duryodhan and a question she asked Karn. The author wrote brilliantly about Draupadi's birth, her lonely childhood with only his brother and her Dai Ma as her companions, her love, marriage, post-marriage love, her role in war and explain why Draupadi did those things and why she remained helpless though her future was told to her by Sage Vyas. Author explained every aspect of her character. The way she was attached to his brother and their talks about the stories behind their birth and why their father wants revenge from Dron-Acharya. The story of Dron and his son asking for milk is a touching one.

Draupadi's friendship with Krishna is also very beautifully written. As I said earlier, I didn't like Krishna before but after reading this I realized how intelligent and an enlightened one he was. He was there every time when Draupadi needed him. Though, he sometimes made Draupadi's mind spin by confusing her with his words.

One thing I liked most about this book is that it is full of love. Love between brother-sister, love between Draupadi-Krishna, an untold love between Karn-Draupadi, a shared love of five brothers and also love of power of Arjun & Duryodhan.

It also has hateness. The hateness of Draupadi towards her father and his queens. The hateness of Draupadi towards Karn after her cheer-haran. Her hateness towards Yudhistar on putting her on line in a gamble game and loosing her. Her hateness towards her husbands, Bhism-Pitama, Dron-Acharya who stood helplessly when her clothes were being removed in palace. Her hateness towards Kunti- which later turned into sympathy.

The two lucky ones towards whom Draupadi never showed any signs of hateness were Krishna and her palace - The Palace of Illusions.

I didn't remember if there was any boring paragraph. The story keeps on getting interesting with every chapter. I recommend this book to everyone.

In one line I would say that this book is a great mixture of history, love, hate and power.