@BloomsburyIndia
Sonali Sharma
@authorsonali · 1:29
🌃Where the darkness turns into light! 📚Ft. Conversation with Gourav Mohanty
It ancient India fantasy and the reimagination of the epic Mahabharata sounds interesting, right? Well then you shouldn't miss the upcoming swell on 10 August and I'll see you there at seven in the evening. Now let me tell you, that why you should not miss this. We will be having some insightful conversations with Korav Mohanti, the author of Sons of Dark Ness, the reimagination of the epic Mahabharata where the brooding and beautiful Karna hopes to bury his brutal past
Hi sonali. Like when you are sharing about this thing, I was really excited on knowing what happens, how is it and how everything is framed and all. So surely we will attend the session and will listen to the insights. So thank you once again for this wonderful swell and thank you for always invest your time and coming up with great things to share. Have a great day
Sonali Sharma
@authorsonali · 1:11
A connoisseur of mythology and momos. He has been certified as a nerd ever since graduated as a gold medalist from law school. Wow. That's interesting. He keeps things interesting by daylighting as a lawyer, moonlighting as a stand up comic and gaslighting as a storyteller. Sons of darkness is his first ever novel. Good evening and welcome once again. Gaurav, tell us, how have you been? And being from a law background, what got you into writing?
Gourav Mohanty
@GouravMohanty · 2:10
So, incidentally, at the same time, we have this compulsory literature reading of Toni Morrison that's part of our law curriculum. And Tony Morrison has this beautiful quote, and I'm paraphrasing here. It's something like, if you want to read something which has not been written yet, it is your duty to write it. So in a very whole Bollywood fashion, this cinematic quote kind of stayed with my head, and I just thought I'll give it a shot
Sonali Sharma
@authorsonali · 1:36
And to build characters, each of them with their own motives and struggles, it is quite difficult to portray in the tone that readers will understand better. So can you tell us a little more about how did you develop these characters and try to intricate the balances around
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Gourav Mohanty
@GouravMohanty · 3:12
I think subconsciously I adopted the same method that whenever I was writing from the perspective let's say I'm writing from the perspective of the pirate princess who is Bhanumati, who is absolutely immoral. She has no distinction between good and right. All she cares about is what is beneficial to her. So when I slipped into her shoes to write the chapters from her perspective her motivations kind of helped me guide what her response is going to be
Sonali Sharma
@authorsonali · 2:30
That what the character is and what the life of that particular character is. And somewhere it makes me remind my maths lecture from the school when I was in 9th grade, I did remember, I think it was the algebraic expressions, the chapter was going on and my maths teacher, she did stated one line to the entire class that small things matters a lot in life. And that she correlated with obviously the sums that she was teaching because as algebraic expressions was sine plus, car minus
Gourav Mohanty
@GouravMohanty · 4:49
It was actually amazing because from there, I am from Odisha, and I discovered so much about Kalinga's past in the sense that Kalingans used to be these amazing sailors who sort of benevolently colonize Southeast Asia. Like, Kalingans used to have these sailors called Sadabas who used to travel during the time of BCS not even Ad, along the coast of South India and then make their way to Indonesia, Bali, Sumatra, Java, so on and so forth
Sonali Sharma
@authorsonali · 2:35
I would rather say it as a plot rather than experience because it sounded like yes, I am able to see through it what you were sharing and definitely now coming back to the experience part I could feel the excitement and how much you might have enjoyed working on this book
Gourav Mohanty
@GouravMohanty · 4:27
Thank you so much, sonali, for your kind words. I'm glad that I was able to create a visual picture. And I guess as a fellow writer, it is a shared experience which we all kind of have in common. When we try and paint with words, I think it's just something, as colleagues, we immediately capture. So thank you for that beautiful review of my answer. So that was pretty awesome coming to Karna. See, Karna is my favorite character
Sonali Sharma
@authorsonali · 2:22
So I'm pretty much sure that readers, obviously, as you said, the readers were giving good feedback. So I think many more readers and the audience or our audience who is listening, they will definitely find something different, something unexpected, and obviously the good unexpected. And they will like reading the book. And okay, now talking about mythology, somewhere down the lane, mystical experiences also come into consideration. Like, do you agree with this? First of all, just tell us that
Gourav Mohanty
@GouravMohanty · 3:46
I completely believe in the mysticism that exists in the teachings and studies of Sanatan, Dharma and Hinduism. When it comes to Sons of Darkness, I have tried to use that to build a magic system. When it comes to the magic of Sons of Darkness, it is built on the millennia old concepts of yoga, chakras, and mandalas, like how the human body has seven chakras
Sonali Sharma
@authorsonali · 1:49
So, like, what do you hope as an author that your audience should take away from the entire reimagined version of the Hindu epic Mahabharata? Are there any specific emotions that you would like to touch on? Or maybe any particular message or maybe ask readers to question themselves or any discussions that you intend to evoke, but maybe one single specific, significant message that you really want that readers should behold in their hearts after they complete reading the book and and why?
Gourav Mohanty
@GouravMohanty · 3:03
But I think once they're at end, at the end of the journey, I hope they are just craving the second book. I think that's definitely what I would want them to feel once they reach the end to know that I wish that this journey continued depending on the character they're rooting for. Because there is such a diverse palette of characters. I feel that the emotions that they will carry will be different
Sonali Sharma
@authorsonali · 2:08
So, coming to the last question, since it is fiction, since it is fantasy and the genre when it comes to write a fiction book, so what would be that one piece of advice that you would like to give to the youngsters or the youth out there or anyone who is planning to just begin their writing journey? What is that one thing you want them to keep in mind whenever they start writing or just take a step ahead? That yes, we plan to write something
Gourav Mohanty
@GouravMohanty · 2:51
Thank you so much, sonali. It has been such a pleasure to have this conversation with you and for the really thoughtful questions that you asked that fleshed out my answers and kind of made this an entire immersive experience, at least for the both of us. So cheers. And with that, I'll answer your last question as to tips for new writers, these are something which I discovered by trial and error and by watching videos on YouTube
That's my question to you, sir. And again, many congratulations to you. Best wishes to you. Lots of success to you. Thank you so much. Have a great day
Gourav Mohanty
@GouravMohanty · 1:33
So I started out with writing those scenes itself rather than actually wait for the entire plot to unravel. Also, you have to understand that my journey was slightly different because I was just testing it. I did not know that I wanted to be a writer or I could be a decent writer. So when I started out writing, I just wrote one scene, which I really like, which, incidentally, is a scene that comes really towards the penultimate stage of the book