‘Not my job as author to tell you what truth is’

Amish Tripathi and Bhavna Roy

For siblings Amish Tripathi and Bhavna Roy, home was the place that expanded their worldview. "Our childhood was an interesting amalgam of the East and West," says Bhavna, who is older to Amish and his twin Ashish by eight years, and brother Anish by two. While the four siblings grew up in Mumbai, and studied at several prestigious schools across India, their western education was supplemented with learnings from the ancient Indian philosophies. "Our grandfather Pandit Babulal Tripathi was a renowned pandit in Benaras [Varanasi]; he was also a Sanskrit scholar, and the head of the department of math and physics at the Benaras Hindu University," she tells us over a video call. "Our summer holidays were always in Benaras, and those trips were steeped in Hindu philosophical thought."

Amish, who is the force behind the Shiva Trilogy and the Ram Chandra Series, and currently works as the Minister (Culture) of the High Commission of India in the UK and the Director of The Nehru Centre (London), says his parents introduced them to the stories from the Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita early. "They would share these stories in parts, and encourage us to ask questions [about it], because that's how you truly and deeply understood the philosophies behind them," says Amish, who has joined us for an early morning call from London. He remembers when he was at boarding school, his mother would write him long letters, where she would pose philosophical questions that would compel him to think. "Much of it would fly over the head, but as I grew older, I would understand the depth of those teachings. She is a shakta, a follower of the Goddess, and would tell us how to live life and make the right choices." His father, he shares, was a nirgun nirakar. "He was more esoteric… he'd ask us questions like ‘what does love mean?'" Bhavna adds, "While on the dining table, my father would ask us, ‘Do you think relationships are driven by love or power?' I mean, we were 12- and five-year olds, and dad was having these discussions with us."

Where the Tripathi siblings were deeply enmeshed in the Hindu way of life, their puja ghar did not just have the entire phalanx of Hindu gods and goddesses, it also made room for Guru Nanak, Jesus and Mother Mary, the Kaaba, the Star of David, and Zarathushtra. "It was a very eclectic home to grow up in," adds Bhavna, "And we were raised with a deep sense of inclusivity. As a family, we were inward looking."

Having straddled these different worlds rooted in tradition and thought, writing books about it, seemed like a natural step forward. Both Amish and Bhavna first co-wrote Dharma: Decoding the Epics for a Meaningful Life, during the pandemic, and are now, in the throes of releasing their second work together, Idols: Unearthing the Power of Murti Puja (HarperCollins India), which will be available for pre-order early next week.

The idea of collaborating came to them nearly a decade ago, when Amish was already a bestselling writer, and at the peak of his literary career. "We are a very verbal, voluble family when we get together. Often, raucously interacting… talking at each other and even with each other, or sometimes, just listening." Amish interjects: "We are deeply Indian that way." They both share a laugh. "This one time, when we were discussing Amish's books, and talking about ‘dharma' and ‘karma', our brother Anish suggested that Amish and I work together on a book that focussed on these philosophies." Bhavna spent some time rigorously putting together 15 pages of "pure philosophical thought". "While Amish is loving and respectful, he is also very frank. He read it, and told me that it was academic and textbook-ish, and that only the two of us would enjoy it," says Bhavna. Amish decided to take a look. "And then the Amish magic emerged. He made these four very interesting characters who are a family, with a father-in-law and son-in-law engaging in dialogue, and discussing different points of view."

The siblings had just begun working on the project, when in May 2018, Bhavna's husband, IPS officer Himanshu Roy who served as the Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) of Maharashtra and Joint Commissioner of Police in Mumbai, died by suicide after a long battle with cancer. "It was not just traumatic for me, but for all of us," shares Bhavna. "For almost two-and-a-half years, I was drowning in grief. That impulse to go on living had disappeared. Amish, my sweet brother, reached out to me at the end of 2019," she says, adding, "That impulse came from sheer love… he said, ‘Didi, remember that project? Let's start working' He threw this anchor to pull me out. It was like a lifeline, it became a mechanism to look forward to life again. He gave me back a sense of meaning and purpose, and I am extremely grateful."

Amish was certain that he didn't want to imitate the structure of Western non-fiction, where the author sets a hypothesis and then convinces the reader of it. "All our Upanishads are structured as dialogues, and the root of this is the belief that there can be multiple points of view, and that it's not my job as author to convince you of what the truth is, [but present different truths]," he says, adding, "I thought if we put it this way, the philosophies would become clearer and the text richer." He explains that unfortunately, today, everybody wants to only follow people whom they agree with. "That's why many of us, in the modern day, are growing up listening to views that reinforce pre-existing points of view. That is the path to intellectual death. You can only grow when you hear a different point of view."
The two started talking about doing more books in the future, even before the first one was published in 2020. "We truly enjoy doing this together, and also feel it's needed in some ways," says Amish, adding, "The fault with the modern education system is that we are teaching kids to make a career, not how to live a life." He rues the fact that philosophy is now relegated to the stream of humanities. "This was not how traditional education functioned. Our gurukuls and madrassas, they taught you the basic of philosophies of life - how to make choices, and understand the consequences of your choices. That's extremely important, otherwise you can land up in a situation where you have everything, but you are still unhappy. I see that in the West."

As creative collaborators living in different cities - Amish in London and Bhavna in Mumbai - daily phone and video calls, have helped, they say. "Too much communication has never been a problem in our family," laughs Amish. Bhavna adds, "When you open the space for various points of view, what you subtly lose is judgment. When you lose judgment, you create space for respect. With the two of us, there's a lot of respect both ways. Quite frankly, I am like his second mother. But I respect him for his heart, and his craft. He is Amish, he understands the book's space. I work with him with complete humility, and really listen to what he has to say." Even if they agree to disagree with each other, they say, there will be always be an openness to receive.