By Sangeeta Bahadur

Rs 299

Indian authors delving into the world of fantasy fiction were few and far between even a decade ago. The genre, however, is gaining credence in India thanks to writers like Samit Basu (The Game World Trilogy) and Amish (The Shiva Trilogy).

But if you have picked up a copy of Jaal, Book I of The Kaal Trilogy, thinking you will get the same flavour, a la Basu or Amish, you are wrong. The premise of first-time author Sangeeta Bahadur’s book is much bigger than The Game World books or the Shiva ones. It is a curious and not-bad-at-all amalgamation of ideas that draws inspiration from the story of Krishna’s birth (our hero is whisked away after birth to be raised by adoptive parents), the advent of the Aryas in the subcontinent, the Vedas, the Hindu creation belief, yoga sutra and, believe it or not, The Lord of the Rings.
Four primal deities are born out of the union of the Adi Purush and Adi Shakti. They are the Chaturaanan. Of them, Aushij — god of maya and illusion — breaks away from his siblings and tries to recreate shrishti in his own image. In the battle between truth and illusion that follows, Aushij is defeated and imprisoned by his siblings in a prison of maya and illusion of his own creation.
But Aushij is too powerful to be imprisoned forever and to counter his evil, his siblings urge the universe to design a man who can do what they could not: Destroy an Adi Deva. After some flawed experiments, Arihant, our hero, is born. And Jaal is the story of his journey.
Let’s get the negatives of the book out of the way first. The cover graphic is quite mediocre and one would think twice before picking this book up. Most of us, after all, do judge a book by its cover. The second problem is that if you do not have at least a nodding acquaintance with Indian mythology, you will be lost.
Having got that out of the way, one has to say that the book grows on you. You get involved in Arihant’s journey — his coming has been prophesised by sages for millennia — from his birth, when he (there’s a twin, but more of that later) is whisked away minutes before the imprisoned Aushij’s followers raid the village, to the time when his adoptive parents send him on a voyage during which he gains his celestial powers.
Arihant’s journey can be, very loosely, compared to LOTR’s Fellowship of the Ring, with him meeting gurus and companions along the way, all of whom are characters integral to the plot.
From space-time continuum to yog kriyas, Bahadur tries to marry Western concepts with traditional Indian ones and does so admirably. While you might feel a little lost at times given the terminologies (Bahadur does not give the meanings of several Sanskrit words and phrases), you will be safely herded back to the main storyline which is replete with action, politics, kings and usurpers, and plots within plots. One would, however, have liked a bit more “magic” along with some more manifestations of Arihant’s superhero-like qualities.
Interesting characters like Arihant’s gurus, Bhootnath, who is a malang — an ascetic who is like a rishi but does not want to have anything to do with the gods — and Vakrini, who was one of the “failed” experiments of the universe and who has been in a self-imposed exile in a different dimension for thousands of years, awaiting Arihant’s arrival, give spice to the storyline.
Particularly intriguing is the girl Raudraa, who has been brought up and trained for only one goal: to thwart Arihant and ensure that the dark god awakes. One gets a sneaking feeling that in the later books, Raudraa will be revealed as Arihant’s twin separated at birth, for there is a mention of another child when baby Arihant is taken away to his adoptive parents.
While Jaal deals with Arihant’s training and his receiving of the powers that will help him fight the forces of Aushij, one guesses that the following books of the trilogy, Vikraal and Mahakaal, will have more action, not to mention more participation of the side characters the author has painstakingly built up throughout Jaal.
If you like stories about young men fighting like Neo in Matrix, a hero whose only weapons are a staff and a knife and a sidekick with a sword that had been tailor made for him, you will not be disappointed with Jaal.