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| Image Courtesy: Google |
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| Image Courtesy: Google |
Are you a
lover of thrillers? Have your senses adapted enough to understand the line
where characters and plot become one and where characters trace their
trajectories straight into the readers’ hearts? This second question is
especially complicated, since even some writers cannot point out where this
line is. The best demonstrative strategy is to take you to some of the books as
instances that unsettled the world and left it on the mercy of imaginative
survival; The Da Vinci Code for
example or Hunger Games. We loved
their story line, their plot and of course, Robert Langdon or Katniss Everdeen,
they are vulnerable and their pain is intimate for us.
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The Krishna Key is based on conspiracy theories
that suggest that the Vedic civilization is the mother of all civilizations. Aswin
Sanghy compares the idea of a supreme and extremely developed civilization to the
lost city of Atlantis
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The Krishna Key is Aswin Sanghi’s third book, his
first two being The Rozabal Line and Chanakya’s Chant. Published by Westland Krishna , the yadava chief. Although at the start of the
novel, this powerful object seems to be
a weapon, later, as the novel progresses, Sanghi tell his readers that
this object is not a weapon, instead something else with immense potential to
transform things. More comments on this regard might spoil the plot for future
readers. Even the book begins with a warning that looking into diagrams and the
pages to come might spoil the plot. On many occasions the progress of the story
is not natural, but from the author’s hidden squeeze to the plot.
Ravi
Mohan Saini has three friends, one of which was murdered in the start of the
novel. The murders continue until the end of the book, and even Ravi himself was fatally wounded once and locked up to
die towards the end of the story. But murders or blood do not grab the
attention as much the historic and mythical connection Sanghi unearths among
these characters and their lives, crossed at the chaotic juncture in the
present day India
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Through
out the plot of the novel, Sanghi also investigates the concept of Vish and
Shiv, asserting the vedantic
principle that they both are one and the same. Vishnu is the Supreme Being and Krishna being Vishnu’s avatar had brought to the earth
with him some secret powers. The Krishna
Key is the search for this power, hidden somewhere in India Ravi from Kalki.
The story
begins from the finding of four clay tablets from the ancient Dwaraka submerged
under the sea somewhere near Gujrat(a theme Sanghi apparently borrowed from the
History Channel documentary “Ancient Aliens”) and ends at supposedly showing
reader what the legacy of Krishna to mankind
was. Although at the end of the book a reader might wonder what his legacy
actually is—the message delivered by a couple of saints in a mysteriously esoteric
manner, “The Philosopher is important not the stone,” or the mysterious object itself.
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According
to Sanghy, the Vedic civilization possessed occult as well as scientific
advancements such as nuclear weapons, one of which is well know as the ‘brahmastra’
used during the battle of Kurukshetra. Even though the characters are
disappointingly flat and stereotypic in their attempts to do be unique, such as
Radhika Singh who recites the name of Hari all the time in her mind and counts
the beads in her rosary or Ravi who appears to be a mere mouth piece of the
author eager to tell readers what all material he had researched to write this
book. In fact The Krishna Key robs Krishna of
his godly image and leaves him human and political. “…replied Saini; “Krishna was a great statesman and strategist. He probably
led a rather series life.” (320-321)
Ideas
such as India is the cradle
of all civilization and that all the modern technological advancements
including, airplanes, computers and the internet were developed in India
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The
technique of Aswin Sanghi in this novel very much resembles his previous one,
Chanakya’s Chant, which juxtaposed the Mauryan age story (which was again ‘inspired’
or lifted as they say, apparently, as Sanghi himself acknowledges in the works
cited page of his book) with the story of a political upheaval in the centre of
Indian democracy. In Krishna Kay, Sanghi pastes the summarized version of
Mahabarata in the beginning of each chapter. This doesn’t necessarily appear a
hindrance to any sort of aesthetic appreciation of the novel. On the other hand
it gives the readers a fairly good informative background in Mahabarata. This
along with the works cited list at the back of the book provides information
plus entertainment. As a novel The
Krishna Key with all the hypotheses and conspiracies cramped together, forgets
about the human beings that live within its fictional and cultural space. It
acknowledges the history but forgets the lives on which it had been written.
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If anyone
feels inclined to find in The Krishna Key
a similarity with The Da Vinci Code
or Angels and Demons by Dan Brown in
its ambition, it’s not merely a coincidence, but intentional. The novel is
ambitious but never rises from the bottom level in delivering it. If The Da Vinci Code reminds us of The Krishna Key in some ways, it will be
as an incomparable dupe.
