Probably the cheesy romance adds up more to the story. The character of Shiva is portrayed in a way that one can relate him to movie actors who fall in love at the first sight of the lead actress, Sati in this case, and gets the love his while fighting all odds. Over glorification of Meluha and Suryavanshi’s way of life somehow slows down the pace of the book to some extent, but the latter half adds up to the story much more. However, I felt that some more build-up of the character could have been done to the characters to enhance the details. One might perceive something as evil while the same can be considered sacred as others. It says that evil is a subjective concept.

What I found the most interesting among all these enthralling narrations is the philosophy of evil. Multiple scenes explained adds up to the fascination of the reader like the battle scene where Shiva declared Har Har Mahadev(everyone, who fights the evil, is Mahadev!, how cool is that) or the Scene where Sati was poisoned with Agniban and professed her love for Shiva or the Leaf scene where the Brahmin described Shiva as someone who emits positivity. The story engages the readers on multiple layers. He comes to know that he is supposed to fulfill a prophesy, to destroy the evil. Here he meets the love of his life – Sati ( the beautiful and independent Suryavanshi princess). The plot starts in 1900 BC where Shiva, as we know him as a God, but here depicted as a normal Tibetan tribesman, later declared as Neelkanth (the one with the blue throat) visits a strange near-perfect land of Meluha. I enjoyed this one and recommend it to whoever is interested in mythological fiction from a different perspective. It truly adds to the story and thus becomes a real page-turner for me. On one hand, it does not diminish the Divine image that Hinduism holds about Shiva, but on the other hand, successfully depicts Him in a human form with insecurities and inner conflicts when a huge number of people rest their faith in Him. The perfectness of Meluha, the romantic love story of Shiva and Sati, the unexceptionable devotion of Nandi to his Master, brilliantly written scenes and battle tactics, and overall the Greatness of Shiva who treats every human with love, respect, and dignity.

It is a perfect amalgamation of philosophy, history, folklore, science, and mythology. I almost fell in love with the third-person narration of the story which gives a bird’s eye view about the events going on without hurting the religious sentiments of people associated with the characters (Lord Shiva, Ram, Sati Nandi, etc).

Whoa! What a read it was! In short, just wonderful.

The immortals of meluha hindi audiobook