The year was 1997, when the movie Titanic released. A four-year-old Krishna Trilok waited in anticipation for his grandmother to return home. And she delivered on her promise when she got back: she narrated her version of the epic love tragedy, peppering it with a fight sequence. Little Trilok was mesmerised.
This story-telling experience was so vivid in his memory that when he finally watched the film, he couldn’t stop drawing parallels between the James Cameron version and his grandmother’s.
“I realised there are so many ways in which I can tell the same story,” says 23-year-old Trilok, a B. Com student from Loyola College, and author of Sharikrida .
In school, he fell in love with English and History. “My teachers had a way of making the subjects sound colourful and interesting. I always found more happiness in fictitious worlds than in the real world. After you cross a certain age, no one tells you stories any more. So, I decided to make my own.”
The inspiration
Asian and Western mythology have influenced Trilok’s imagination. “I come from a family where everyone was a remarkable storyteller. I was always fascinated by mythological and historical movies.”
He began writing Sharikrida , his debut Indian fantasy fiction work, at the age of 13. Set in the future, the novel is about modern civilisation that has collapsed and gone back to medieval times, with six different kingdoms that made a no-war pact. “Instead, they play a game of chess every 10 years. The pieces are made of living soldiers. More than the game, it is about the political intrigue behind it.”
To paint the canvas of this not-so-dystopian future, Trilok did not have to look far and wide; Indian mythology believes in the cycle of destruction and rejuvenation. “Even though none of these are explicit in my book, they have influenced the final product.”
The book pays homage to his favourite show, Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games series.
The novel uses Sanskrit terms and references to Indian magic. “You could say the direct ancestor is the Mahabharata , because the epic also talks about how one’s destiny is based on a game. There are no direct references to mythological characters. This is purely an original Indian fantasy fiction.”
