Apophis: Into the Folds of Darkness
He is
a writer, architect, professor, father, and a long-distance runner with a
wanderlust to explore and write stories that traverse diverse cultures.
Inspired by his then 18-month-old-daughter when she quoted Socrates-while they
together sat in a children’s bookshop in Bangalore, he has finished his first
book as she turns 7-years-old.
Q.1
Tell us something about yourself not many people know?
A. I
wake up at 3:30 am to read, write, and design my architectural projects. I have
followed this regimen for more than 20 years.
I had
heart surgery when I was 29 years-old to fix an electrical problem (ventricular
tachycardia). I watched as the cardiologist made an incision into my heart,
insert a catheter, and then felt the tip of the catheter as it traveled through
my heart and then burn the faulty nerve.
As an
Architect, I have designed over 400 projects across India, including homes,
offices, industrial projects, exhibitions, and even a Tibetan Nunnery near
Dharamshala, in North India. And ironically, I still live in a rented
accommodation-and dream about designing my own home one day. Such is life!
I
once worked to document a far-off Buddhist Monastery (Hemis), located in the
frigid, silent mountains of Ladakh for nearly two months along with twelve other
Architects. Since our cook ran away at the end of the first day, besides doing
my Architecture work, I also became the chief cook for the entire duration of
the project (and secretly added vodka to everything, which went down very well
with everyone!).
I was Captain of the Cross-country team in my senior year in high school in New York and led my team to their best (unbeaten) record in the school's 80-year history.
Q.2 When are we going to read the
next book in Kleos Chronicles?
A. I
have already begun working on it and hope to have it published in the first
half of 2023.
Q.3
What inspired you to write Apophis: Into the Folds of Darkness? What kind of research you did for this book?
A. “Sophie,
this looks like a good book.” I suggested to my 18-month-old daughter while we
together sat on the floor of a children’s bookstore in Bangalore in India, one
afternoon in January 2015.
“Papa, what is GOOD?”
The ever-inquisitive Sophie inquired, and I could only recall and picture
Socrates standing in the middle of Athens while he pondered over a similar
question. “What is Good? What is the nature of Good? What is the meaning of
Good?”
I turned to the bookstore owner and asked if she had any books on children's
ethics and philosophy. “Why would you want to teach philosophy to children?”
The lady wondered and affirmed that to the best of her knowledge-no, such book
existed. In that prescient moment, I became certain of the book that I was
meant to write.
‘Philosophy and Children!’ Those two words haunted me for months as I began to
randomly explore various subjects, including philosophy, time, and space
travel. I made a list of philosophers across most cultures, histories, and
geographies that I could gather. Until one day, I chanced upon what anthropologists
and historians call THE AXIAL AGE. A moment in human history less than 150
years across, several ancient philosophers including Socrates, Plato, Buddha,
Confucius, Lao Tzu, and several others began to question life and its very
meaning.
To re-examine the original premise by removing these musty layers of dogma to
discover the fountainhead of this seed-the beginning-became a part of my
obsession and promise of this book. As an attempt to contemporize the ancient
philosophical precepts and experience them from nine-year-old children’s
perspective and their explorations.
Over five years of research and writing this book, I was presented with a
veritable set of challenges, including:
· the ability to coalesce various ancient philosophical precepts and characters
into a single unified story.
· address the gender and race biases still prevalent.
· seamlessly integrate time travel and the need to travel beyond earth.
· and address the existential crisis of ecological degradation that we face
today
To collate the above into a coherent narrative as well as a compelling story.
That was the challenge of writing APOPHIS – now complete.
Q.4
How do you see the future of science fiction literature? Will sci-fi maintains
its independence or intertwines with other literary genres?
A. I
think these genres' segregations are artificial and false, done to separate
stories to simplify the storytelling medium. I doubt if APOPHIS falls into a
single genre, it is certainly a mixture of Science Fiction, Historical Fiction,
Magical Realism & Young Adult genres - perhaps a few more.
Q.5 How do you see the relationship between science fiction and culture? How
about the boundaries between science fiction and reality? Is it right to say
that science fiction can change what human life looks like in the future?
A. Science Fiction is a way to imagine another world, an alternate
reality. If we could? How would we live in another world, amidst other
philosophical precepts and technologies? If we can accept and imagine a wider
arc to the question of time, then Science Fiction continuously imagines an
immediately imminent future, and it lays down an imagined world of new
technologies that others can work towards.
Q.6 Is classic science fiction literature different from modern science
fiction literature? Have the key aims of the genre changed considerably or
not?
A. I don’t think the key aims have changed, but Science Fiction has
certainly evolved as we learn more about our Solar System and the Universe
beyond. Therefore the more recent additions are scientifically accurate and
correct the gender, cultural, race, and sexual biases embedded in our
societies.
Q.7
What do you think are the main reasons for the popularity of science fiction?
To what extent has the film industry helped in popularizing the genre?
A. As a listener to stories, you
always want to be transported to another world, and Science Fiction certainly
fills that need. Films certainly help bring a writer's imagination to the
screen and make it real, shorter, easier to absorb, and certainly entertaining.
Unfortunately, some of the Science Fiction movies are shallow in ideas and
really do not follow the essential and universal precepts of science, which is
disappointing.
Q.8
For a long, humans have been looking for immortality at all costs. Do you think
this will lead to our eventual dehumanization?
A. We
imagine different outcomes in scientific research. Some of us would like to
live forever, but that has been an unnecessary human endeavor that has plagued
more than one tyrant across the earth. Immortality? Why? Every story has an
end… as it should. Even the sun and the universe have a definitive end date –
that is an unchangeable truth.
Q.9
Science fiction has a long history. Which era do you consider the most
effective period in the whole history of the genre?
A. I
don’t know enough about the history of the genre to answer this question, as I
don’t write or am cocooned only in this genre.
Q.10
In many science fiction stories, the existence of God is denied. Could we call
science fiction, an atheist literary genre?
A. I
believe that creating the idea of an ambiguous God that lives in the sky was
when humans separated themselves from the magical natural world that we are
only but a small part of. Once this idea was created and embedded in our lives - artificial tiers and caste segregations followed. God above us, the
all-conquering humans in the middle and the rest of the natural world beneath.
And it is due to this fallacy that we have plundered and continued to destroy
the mother spaceship that carries us along and across the milky way galaxy and
further beyond into the Universe. Once we can accept this unchanging truth,
that we are but a small part of the magical realm of a conscious universe. That
is the day our respect for the gift that has been given to us will arrive,
appear. What is God? It is this conscious and ethical universe.
Q.11
Do you have any unique and quirky writing habits?
A. Unique
and quirky? I am not sure. But I do know that as a writer, you must read - all
the time! But I read for the simple joy of reading, not to copy a style or
mannerism. Some admittedly may seep in and then be added to the layers of one’s
very being, and that - is completely okay. And, I am reminded of a quote by a
neuro-scientist, Nancy Andreasen, “Creative people are better at recognizing
relationships, making associations and connections and originally seeing things - seeing things that others cannot see…” At heart, one is a storyteller - nothing else and nothing more. Those stories arrive from a confluence of one’s
own personal experiences and memories. But at most times, the stories are a
collation of a vivid and other-worldly imagination. What could be, can be, and
maybe - layered altogether, to become a new moment, a new world.
Q.12 How do you select the name of your characters?
A. Any fiction book is layered with personal life experiences,
philosophy, and ethics (whether you want to make it so or not - IT IS!).
APOPHIS certainly follows that rhythm of sharing a certain life vision. Several
characters, their mannerisms, habits, and even names are a happy mix of people
that I have met in my life, including but not restricted to friends, mentors, and
even a couple of ex-girlfriends. Since the book is in the realm of Historical
Science Fiction, it certainly has important historical figures and (in this
case) ancient philosophers embedded in the story.
As disparate and complex as it may appear, I hope that the array of characters
from varied cultural subsets do come together in a cohesive form to become a
great story. That at least is the attempt and hope.
Q.13 What do you want readers to
take away from your book?
A. ‘Don’t
confuse intelligence with wisdom.’
For there are enough intelligent people today - destroying our world.
Look around you, and you will discover that it is not the wise that head our
governments, but the intelligent. And it is these same super intelligent who
build weapons, desecrate the earth, pollute our rivers, our oceans and continue
to kill all that is sentient.
It is time for this narrative to change - for the intelligent to STOP being
cool.
The virus teaches us the value of innate contemplative wisdom, the value of respecting
nature, the value of slowing down, and the realization that it is a relatively
few essential things.
The virus is teaching us humility.
And at this moment - more than ever - we need the WISDOM to become the new
cool! That is the only path forward for humanity to survive.
Q.14 Which famous person, living
or dead, would you like to meet and why?
A. Obviously,
it would be a writer, ha. I have an eclectic taste in books ranging from
Science Fiction, Philosophy, and Greek Tragedies. But given the context of this,
my first book APOPHIS - Into the Folds of Darkness, I would submit that a book
that had a deep influence was The Celestine Prophecy, written in 1993 by James
Redfield.
The book delves into spirituality and our connection with the divine through a
series of Insights - a wonderful piece of storytelling! I remember reading it
in 1995-1996 and thinking that I would love to follow a similar technique if I
ever wrote a book. Where an exciting adventure is layered with philosophy and a
deeper insight into the meaning of life. Therefore, to answer your question, I would love to meet James Redfield.
Q.15 What is your favorite book or
author, and why?
A. Along
life’s journeys, there have been many from Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck,
Ayn Rand, Rumi, Carlos Castaneda, James Redfield…
But it was the words of one man that took my breath away… the one that I read
so often - Fernando Pessoa. The ethereal power of his words, the raw emotions
so honestly and powerfully shared, the magical prose. I remain besotted by this
Portuguese writer.
I traveled to Lisboa in 2010 and spent a large part of the day in Pessoa’s
museum; traveled on Tram No. 28 the same that he would usually take and
imagined the city from his eyes; shared a bica or espresso with a bronze
Fernando Pessoa, dressed in a suit and a fedora, outside the Café-A-Brasileira
on Chiado square. A place where he often sat in the evenings with a few of his
friends to discuss their writings and, of course, books.
Q.16 Do you
read your book reviews? How do you deal with the good and bad ones?
A. Well, once the book is launched/published, it gets a life of its own, it’s a child born and set free to go into the world unencumbered. The book will never please everyone, but one hopes that the writing quality and the story generate enough interest all around. And I am reminded of a famous quote by the late American President Theodore Roosevelt, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory or defeat.”
Q.17 Among
all the characters from your book, which one is your favorite and why?
A. When you have several children, to love one more than the other is
certainly not possible. Each has their own journey and life learnings that they
impart in their own prescient manner. At
the same time, Agasthi, who makes a brief, fleeting appearance at the beginning of
the book, mysteriously leaves many questions unanswered about who she is? Wait
for the second book in the series to find out more.
Q.18 What do
you like to do when you’re not writing?
A. Besides a writer, I am also an Architect and teach Architecture at
various Universities. So that keeps me occupied and helps in paying the bills,
haha. But I do love to cook, so you will find me in the kitchen trying
out some new dishes or cooking for my 7-year-old daughter at home. My repertoire in cooking is varied and includes Indian, Italian, Spanish, and American
dishes. Besides this, you may find me running across
a forest and a river next to my home in Goa in the early early morning. I have been a long-distance runner
for more than 25 years, including finishing more than a dozen half-marathons in
less than 2 hours.
Q.19 Can you
share with us something off your bucket list?
A. Bucket List? Well, there are many…
·
From reading
several books that remain on my TBR.
·
To traveling
further across the world (already covered 45 countries, some more than once).
·
To building my own
home finally here in Goa (soon, soon).
·
Running the New
York Full Marathon.
·
Writing the next 3
books in the Apophis Series.
·
Writing a couple of
travel-related fiction books.
·
A love story.
·
Writing the
biography of a Shaman-friend.
Let’s see what I can manage to
accomplish in the life that I have left on this planet.
Q.20 Share the experience of your
journey so far?
A. I
have been dreaming about writing fiction for more than two decades. I have
taken creative writing courses, edited Journals of Architecture taught
Architecture and creative writing, written short stories, attempted to write longer
stories, but after a few chapters realized that the story wasn’t really going
anywhere.
How the idea of APOPHIS came about was ethereal and magical. At that prescient
moment, I was certain that this was the book (or a series of books) that I was
meant to write. For it was at the confluence of all my life’s pursuits and
personal interests:
· Politics
· Philosophy
· History
· & Epic storytelling
The book took me five years to finish (between multiple edits). But as much as
I looked and asked around, I could not find anyone to guide me on the
publishing process. So, I began a random, disjointed process of searching on my
own. I found snippets of information and hints online. In error, I sent out
letters to well-known Literary Agents across the world when I had an incomplete
manuscript, badly written synopsis, and worse introductory letters. And of
course, in response (the few that did respond), I received abrupt and sometimes
rude refusals of representation.
I searched further and discovered that only after the manuscript (especially a
fiction manuscript) is complete, finished, and fully edited should I even seek
representation. A year later, after the book was complete, I again approached
Literary Agents across the world and over many months sporadically received
more than fifty rejection letters.
It was only then that I decided to go the Indie publishing way and approached
several such publishers. I chose one that offered the best service and had an
excellent reputation for being honest and professional.
In effect, I did everything wrong (for nearly two years) and went through a
deep agony and confusion - which in itself was learning, especially for a
first-time writer.
I am sure the process of publishing Book 2 (in less than two years from now)
will be from a place of learning the lessons learned from publishing Book
1.
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