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The Amazing Ashwin Sanghi
In conversation with Sutanuka Sarkar for Oxford Bookstore
Sutanuka: You are quite a successful entrepreneur; what has been the primary inspiration behind becoming a writer?
Ashwin Sanghi: I was born and brought up in a business environment. I started working when I was 16 and completed my MBA when I was 22. My passion for reading was ignited when my maternal grandfather would bombard me with books that were far ahead of my time. He would insist that after reading every book I must write a letter detailing what I liked and what I didn't. In the beginning, it was a tedious process but my imagination and knowledge increased over the years. In 2004, I had reached a plateau at work and I found that nothing was exciting me anymore. That’s when my wife suggested that I try writing instead of merely reading. We were on a week long vacation in Goa and at the end of that trip I had written around ten thousand words. There was no looking back.
Sutanuka: Your pseudonym, Shawn Haigins is supposedly an acronym for your name. How has choosing a pseudonym helped you?
Ashwin Sanghi: The decision to use a pen name was nothing more than a desire to compartmentalize my life so that my entrepreneurial dimension would remain distinct and separate from my literary one. However, I had not thought about an appropriate pseudonym to use until I actually completed my first novel—The Rozabal Line. As you know, there's an abundance of anagrams in this particular novel and the idea struck me: why not use an anagram of my real name as a pseudonym? Hence my first novel was written under the name "Shawn Haigins", an anagram of my real name "Ashwin Sanghi". When Tata-Westland decided to publish the novel in India they insisted that it had to be published under my real name given the fact that the novel in question involved a sensitive subject. As it turns out, that wasn't such a bad idea. My publishers now joke that I was originally a businessman who was also an author and that now I'm an author who is also a businessman. I continue to use the pseudonym “Shawn Haigins” on my Facebook page but my books are marketed under my real name only. My readers still find it fascinating to discover that the pseudonym is an anagram—it remains a curiosity, part of my persona.
Sutanuka: Chanakya’s contemporary moniker - Gangasagar Mishra's character development is amazing, how did you contemplate it? Has there been a real life Gangasagar Mishra to have inspired you?
Ashwin Sanghi: Gangasagar Mishra is a product that has been derived by melting the personalities, character traits and behavior of many real life politicians down the ages into a single unifying character. You will find elements of virtually all Indian politicians is this one single person. What inspired me was not Gangasagar Mishra or any modern-day equivalent of him, but Chanakya himself. Too much attention seems to be given to the political machinations of Chanakya whereas insufficient attention is paid to the fact that his seminal work, the Arthashastra, was mostly about good governance. I was absolutely amazed to find that the Arthashastra even specifies how grain should be stored, how a treasury should be constructed, the ideal form of taxation, maintenance of law and order, the preferred width of a carriage road, and virtually every aspect of sensible government policy. It's unfortunate to see that what plagues India today is simply a fundamental lack of governance. I think the lesson for all of us is that we need to pay more attention to Chanakya's lessons in governance rather than his lessons on realpolitik. Chanakya is truly someone that we should attempt to emulate in order to govern ourselves better.
Sutanuka: How did you connect both the modern with the medieval timelines together so skillfully?
Ashwin Sanghi: It was Edmund Burke who said, “Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.” I find that when I observe current events around me, I instinctively correlate these with events that happened in the past. When I read about modern-day conflicts between Islam and the western world, I can’t help thinking of the religious Crusades that were fought for most of the three hundred years following the eleventh century. When I read about the Nithari serial killings, I begin to mull over the terror that Jack the Ripper caused in England in 1888. When I watch the IPL allegations on TV and the consequent damage that it may have done to the reputation of cricket, I think about the Black Sox scandal that almost ruined baseball in 1919. When I hear about scams like those of the CWG or telecom, I correlate them to the Railroad Bubble. History inevitably repeats itself, one simply needs to observe the patterns. This pattern is what interests me not the history in itself and this is what is central to my fiction. Once one observes the patterns, it becomes rather easy to find modern day parallels to ancient tales.
Sutanuka: Writing your debut novel on Jesus Christ has begotten you criticisms of being a Dan Brown Wannabe along with several appreciations. Is Chanakya's Chant an attempt to prove those critics wrong?
Ashwin Sanghi: I think that my greatest advantage has been the fact that I do not have formal training in creative writing. It was Somerset Maugham who said, “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” I was genuinely unaware of any rules and this lack of formal training allowed me to write in a very distinct style that was uniquely my own. With my first novel—The Rozabal Line—my aim was to coalesce disparate threads of the Jesus in India story and present them in a cogent aggregated form. Whether this made for an entertaining read was inconsequential in my mind. With my second book—Chanakya’s Chant—I was testing my abilities as a storyteller. I simply wanted to see whether I could get my readers hooked till the very last page. Writing Chanakya’s Chant was much more about testing my abilities as a storyteller rather than shaking off the Dan Brown tag. When I die, I hope that I will not be called a writer, novelist or author. I hope that I will be called a storyteller because that is the area in which I’m seeking perfection. As has been oft said, easy reading is damn hard writing!
Sutanuka: Why did you pick Chanakya as a central character for your novel?
Ashwin Sanghi: Chanakya is often called India’s Machiavelli, although my personal view would be that Niccolò Machiavelli was Europe’s Chanakya. Chanakya was probably the greatest political strategist that ever lived and was credited with having engineered the downfall of the Nanda dynasty and the installation of Chandragupta Maurya to the throne of Magadha around 320 BC. As a writer of fiction, I find Chanakya’s personality and character extremely interesting. Here's someone who penned reams of statements on government policy, statecraft, strategy and diplomacy almost 1800 years before Machiavelli! Just as a photographer searches for the perfect picture, I find myself searching for complex characters... preferably characters that are multihued and thus difficult to characterize as good or bad. Chanakya was efficient yet ruthless, principled yet amoral, intelligent yet devious, magnanimous yet vengeful. In short, the ideal complex character for a novel!
Sutanuka: What kind of research went behind your book, Chanakya's Chant?
Ashwin Sanghi: The research was at two levels because, as you know, there are two parallel stories in this book. The first one traces the rise of Chanakya 2300 years ago and ends with him having succeeded in installing Chandragupta Maurya to the throne. The second traces the life of Gangasagar Mishra a Brahmin teacher from Uttar Pradesh who makes it his life's purpose to make a girl from a slum into the country's prime minister. The ancient story required historical reading, including the Arthashastra as well as several other books penned on Chanakya. I also read an English translation of the Mudrarakshasa, a historical play in Sanskrit by Vishakhadatta who lived in the 4th century. The modern-day story simply involved lots of newspaper reading. The drama of politics is enacted before us each day in the front pages... one doesn't need to stray any further!
Sutanuka: You are considered among one of the successful Thriller novelists of India. How hard has it been for you to achieve this status?
Ashwin Sanghi: I could never have imagined that my novels would be so successful when I wrote them. When I completed The Rozabal Line in 2005, I spent a year trying to find a publisher. I was unsuccessful in my quest and out of sheer frustration decided to self-publish the novel so that it would become available on international book retail sites. I had never imagined that this particular self-published book would fall into the hands of Gautam Padmanabhan and Hemu Ramiah at Westland and that they would love it. Even when Westland decided that they would publish the book in 2008, I could not have imagined that it would become a bestseller. Chanakya’s Chant hit the #1 spot last month on India-Today’s bestseller list. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that happening to one of my books. It has been rightly said that the journey is the destination. Rather than spending too much time worrying about the destination, I try to enjoy the journey.
Sutanuka: What are you currently reading? Name some of your all time favorite books or authors.
Ashwin Sanghi: I’m currently reading “The Emperor Of All Maladies: A Biography Of Cancer” by Siddhartha Mukherjee. However, I was brought up on a diet of commercial fiction and thrillers for most of my growing years: Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon, Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsyth, Irving Wallace, Jack Higgins, Tom Clancy, Ken Follett, Arthur Hailey. In the past decade, Dan Brown, John Grisham, Stieg Larsson, Ian Rankin and countless others were added to my list. Among Indian authors, I enjoyed Salman Rushdie, Ruskin Bond and R. K. Narayan.
Sutanuka: Here are some questions that your fans would love to know the answers of:
Ashwin Sanghi:
- Your favorite author? Jeffrey Archer
- Your favorite past-time? Spinning Beyblades with my son!
- Your Pet superstition? I’m “touching wood” constantly!
Sutanuka: What are your plans for your third novel? What is the current project you are working on?
Ashwin Sanghi: I’m working on my third novel and I hope to complete this by March 2012. I wish I could tell you more but if I did I would have to kill you. It was Benjamin Franklin who said that “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead!”
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