Kalinga Literary Festival hosted popular mythologist and researcher Ashwin Sanghi at KLF Bhava Samvad

New Delhi: The online literary platform of Kalinga Literary Festival ‘KLF Bhava Samvad’ hosted a brainstorming session with the popular mythologist and researcher Ashwin Sanghi on 12th September. Having began with a light hearted note, the session turned out to be intensely informative with the moderation of Sujit Mahapatra, the founder of Bakul Foundation.

Sanghi spoke about his niche in mythology, history, and science. He also informed about how writing happened to him and the aspects that influenced him in the pursuit. He said, “I was an avid reader because of two persons in my life. One is my maternal grand uncle who told me to keep the relation of goddess Lakshmi and Saraswati in mind always and live life like lord Ganesh. He used to send me one book every week from Kanpur to read. Over his lifetime he shared 300-400 books with me. It was an eclectic mix of books that came to me. The second person is my mother who used to read for entertainment. Once she completed a book, she used to pass it on to me.

The books ‘Holy Blood Holy Grail’ and ‘The Da Vinci Code’ are one of the prime inspirations behind Sanghi’s works. “Before ‘The Da Vinci Code’, there’s a book ‘Holy Blood Holy Grail’ (precursor to ‘The Da Vinci Code’) fascinated me. It talked about the possible bloodline of Jesus Christ,” he stated.

Sanghi also told about his theory behind writing a book. “When ‘The Da Vinci Code’ happened, I felt like I was learning so much from something that is meant to be for entertainment.
Then I realised a good book should serve 3 ‘E’s- Entertain, Educate, Enlighten,” he said.

According to him, mythological version of literature has become the new space. As he put it in the show, “We are pretty much a part of the mythological retelling trend. But anyone who wants to get into it has to ask himself first that does he want to get into this space because of its popularity.”