For his debut novel “Resonance” (Westland), Ajay Pandey has used a natural physical law, namely resonance, and weaved around it a real life threat possibility of dam destruction. For this Indian Revenue Service official, the novel was a natural progression considering he wrote short stories and articles during his student days.
A National Geographic channel show on mega floods of biblical proportions, which transpired during the Ice Age, struck a chord in the author. “The river Clark Fork’s flow was blocked by an ice dam in Missoula valley 15,000 year ago creating a deep lake. When the blockade broke, it led to a gigantic catastrophe. Thinking about it later I wondered what if something like this happened in the subcontinent. This was the beginning of the plot, story and the characters,” says Ajay. The thriller format came naturally to him since he is a great fan of works in this genre, including that of Robert Ludlum. “I had been reading them for a long time and so deeply influenced I was that I used to create my own stories and narrate to my sister. I always wanted to write a thriller.”
The choice of resonance, a phenomenon in physics which caused the collapse of the Broughton suspension bridge in Britain and the Angers bridge in France, as a tool to destroy a dam is not devoid of reason. “Dams can collapse due to earthquakes and the best attempt by humans to artificially create one was done by Russians when they exploded a 50 mega tonne thermo nuclear bomb which resulted in a reading of 4.6 on the Richter scale — ineffective on a dam. Resonance is the only possibility for this purpose,” explains Ajay. He adds, “Other factors which influenced me were the Indian intelligence outfits’ perception about threat to dams after the 26/11 Mumbai attack and the possibility of under water attack using submarines. Besides the breaking in of Roosevelt dam computer system in the U.S. resulting opening of its flood gates, too played a part.” Thus threat perception to dams is for real.
The depiction of working of agencies like Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing and Central Bureau of Investigation reflects Ajay’s association with them. “It is honest as it is based on my training and experience with them. Besides IRS officials do interact with different agencies from time to time.” The gadgets and equipment used by them too are descriptive. “Though not part of public domain, these agencies have access to many sophisticated wares designed for their work. This entailed a lot of research on my part. It was also required for description of places like Swat, Lahore, etc. in Pakistan — which I had not visited — for which I read more than eight books. I was familiar with the Indian and U.S. locations,” says the writer. After finishing the first draft in 56 days, he took nine months to research in order to make the narrative “interesting, relevant and realistic”.
Interestingly, the good and bad characters belong to either side of the border hailing from all denominations though some have grey shades. He confesses that the reason to keep a main character in “Resonance” alive was deliberate in order to provide a twist and enable to figure him in next works. Happy with the response to his maiden book which has made to the bestsellers list on many sites, he is ready with a thriller on international scale involving Israel, U.S. and India.
