As children we have read stories about a princess being swept off her feet by a knight in shining armour. Though Ilika Ranjan brings back the genre of saga in her fantasy novel Secrets of Zynpagua: Return of the Princess , the story goes beyond that narrative to include well-rounded women characters who need no rescuing.
Instead the main character is Anika, daughter of the queen of the cursed land, Zynpagua. There are, in all, seven main characters, each with distinct traits.
“My favourite character is Femina. She is a warrior girl. She is into horse-riding and excels in archery,” says Ilika.
Secrets of Zynpagua is Ilika’s second book. Her debut book is Puppet on the fast track , which she wrote after she quit her job as a banker. “ Secrets of Zynpagua took me three years to write.” The effort she has put in to craft and write the book is evident. The book also makes for an easy read.
“I have used common words such as curse, prophecy, king and queen, which children can identify. The prophecies have been written in a lyrical style. The writing is simple, but I haven’t compromised on the language.”
The book is peppered with Spanish lines. “I learnt the language particularly for the book,” she says.
She chose to write a book on fantasy because it offers a lot of scope for creativity for a writer. She emphasises, though, that the book is meant for every age group, not just for children and young adults. “This book is a great stress buster for adults too.”
The journey of getting the book published, however, was met with some bizarreness. “I got rejected from some publishers because they said children read adult fiction. And I noticed that children don’t know any other Indian author, except Ruskin Bond and Rudyard Kipling.”
But Ilika was pleasantly surprised to see that the children of the various schools she visited in Bangalore, recently, to conduct interactive sessions on her book had read every detail and knew the characters well.
“I was so happy when one student said the author he reads is Ilika Ranjan.”
Ilika has given credit to children who have personally written to her. “A young boy from Mumbai wrote to me saying he wanted to be a part of the book. So I put him in it too. I have also included one of my friend’s daughters, who likes gadgets, as a character who has the power to solve technological formulas.”
Ilika is an entrepreneur and a management graduate from Symbiosis Institute of International Business, Pune. She says that the genre of fantasy fiction makes for a good category in markets. “For any product, you have to create a market. I saw scope here,” she concludes.
Secrets of Zynpagua is a Partridge publication.
