An interesting and thought-provoking speech-cum-interview with an Indian author, Shri. Amish Tripathi, who is described as “India’s first literary popstar” was hosted by Amit Dixit, the Founder and Executive Director of the South Asian Arts Council at the Boston Public Central Library on Saturday, February 10, 2018 from 3:00pm to 5:00pm. Many audiences attended this event with the curiosity of knowing about Amish’s journey from banking to writing and his ideas and motivating factors behind pushing liberalism in the age of nationalism through his creative writing.

Amish Tripathi authored six books so far and have sold over 4 million copies in the India. The Immortals of Meluha (2010), The Secret of the Nagas (2011), and The Oath of the Vayuputras (2013) - which comprise the Shiva Trilogy, the fastest-selling book series in Indian publishing history and Scion of Ikshvaku (2015) and Sita: Warrior of Mithila (2017) – these two books are the one and two in the Ram Chandra series. The first three books collectively comprise the Shiva Trilogy and the latter two are the first two books of the Ram Chandra Series which is going to be a collection of five books. Amish recently launched his first non-fiction book called Immortal India. His fastest selling of Shiva Trilogy has created a record in Indian publishing history. His novels have been translated into a number of languages, including Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Assamese, Malayalam, Marathi, Kannada, Estonian, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Polish and Odia. The reason for being translated into many languages is that the Indian publishing is increasingly focusing on the Indian cultural sensibilities. Amish also said that we will witness a situation in few years, when other languages will account for higher sales of books than in English. 

Amish Tripathi was born in Mumbai and studied at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. He wanted to be a historian but he chose a career in finance because it was the logical thing to for a lucrative job in those days. Now, he is a full time writer because he has lots of ideas. He is honored with many awards: Forbes Magazine listed Tripathi amongst the one hundred most influential celebrities in India, and he is the recipient of the Pride of India Award (Literature), the Raymond Crossword Book Award, Dainik Bhaskar Literature Award, and many more. Amish was also selected as an Eisenhower Fellow.

Amish Tripathi in his exclusive interview with Smt. Kavita Chibber said that he is a happy writer and he does not select the topic of his books and he just goes with the flow of his thoughts and mixes with the facts of history, mythology, ethical theory, technology, and management science. Amish logically answered the questions on Manu Smriti rules, laws, and constitution. He said that when we look at the past and present societies, some rules are very liberal and some are conservative, and they reflect the mood of the society when these are written and our society should do what works for us at this point of time. Amish mentioned about scriptural texts that supported the liberal approach towards issues of gender and given the high status of women in ancient India because in the Rig Veda, many hymns were written by rishikas or female rishis. Amish not only touched upon many issues prevailing in the modern world but also answered cleverly all the questions by the audiences.

At the end, Shri. Amit Dixit thanked Boston Public Library for their support and providing the beautiful auditorium for the event. He also, acknowledged support by Kanchan Banerjee, Co-Founder & President, of New Global Indians for Bharat Vikas (GIBV), Kavita Chibber, a well-known journalist of Boston. Shri Dixit also thanked profusely Amish Tripathi and enthusiastic audiences for making this program very interesting and a grand success.

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