Hallucinations, Lies and Damned Lies!

My friends, what would be your reaction, hypothetically speaking, if I try to convince you on the following :
a. b. That the mythological Ravana was probably Sitas brother That Krishna gave the knowledge of Bhagwad Gita only to Arjun because he may have been his blood brother! That Lord Shiva always chanted Jai Sri Ram!

c.

Well I am sure if you read the above you may presume that I have gone nuts and that I must be out of my mind! But friends thats where you are in for the greatest surprise of your life! If you had written such nonsense convincingly enough, a publishing house would have handed you Rs 5 crore (yes close to a million dollars)! Surprised? But thats true enough! The last statement about Lord Shiva (and such other imaginative nonsense) is actually written by the celebrated author Amish Tripathy (yes, he is a Brahmin!) in his book The Immortals of Meluha . Those of you who are not aware our age old mythology says that Ravana was a Shiva Bhakt. Then in which hallucination did the author imagine that Shiva was a Ram Bhakt? And to think of it, the Shiva trilogy is one of the best selling fictions and even a movie is planned based on this very book! Now it looks as if WE are all going nuts! An author passes of to us his hallucinations and careless imagination and we lap up his books like hot cakes. Maybe literature is now more about advertising rather than about, well, writing! I too bought his first book and immediately realised many glaring inconsistencies and the urge to read the book died down. Had he not taken the names of the actual characters from our mythology, we could have liked the fiction. But once you know a particular story and someone tries to turn it upside down, it may be too much to absorb. Maybe Indian literature has caught the celebrity bug and if the author is an IIM graduate or an exbanker how can he be wrong? He must have done his research, is what we all assume. We never stop to question his intellect! So much, for the madness of crowds and herd mentality. I would not like my children or of those of my friends to read the Shiva Triology nor see any movie based on it; lest they should forget the real mythological story. A confused author can surely multiply the confusion in the minds of the unsuspecting reader. I am really amused by the publisher who handed the author a cheque of Rs 5 crore to write more of such nonsense! And if I do sound critical, go ahead and read the book and let me know the various such flaws and humbug that it has! Our only prayer should be to have lesser and lesser of such literary crap! CA Rajiv D Khatlawala