The Krishna Key

The Krishna Key- This is more a philosophical saga than a rational thriller.

Chanakya Chants was one of the very few novels that I have read in my life. I have to admit that it really caught my admiration. When I knew the author was coming with his next historical thriller, I did expect a matured craftsmanship in similar lines as that of Chanakya Chants. I wouldn't say I am completely disappointed, but I am not satisfied either. The fact is that I expected a hair raising thriller and my expectations just withered away as the story developed, but there was indeed an overdose of philosophical preachings and historical  backscratching. Since I do enjoy a bit of philosophy and history, I could bear it, but I am not quite sure how many can really chew that.



The reason Chanakya Chants was uninhibitedly accepted by the masses was that it directly correlated with peoples lives. For the very same reason, The Krishna Key lacks the punch. Its not that we are not concerned or completely aloof about our historical splendidness, but I think the author should have taken into account that all his readers are not going to be scholars, historians or archaeologists. I have utmost respect for the vastitude of facts that he has spectacularly dispersed throughout his novel, but at places, he seemed to have run out of preachers . Even a mafia don appears to give lectures on Krishna and Indian history and that was beyond my sane frame of  grasp.

The gain from the book was that I got an overall picture of Mahabharata, the great epic that I always wanted to read. The subsided fascination within me for history and mythology seems to have waken up.  I knew about a hell lot of things after reading this book which I never had any idea about. But as a novel or a story, it failed to catch my imagination. At times I did run at the pace of the story with astound eagerness to know what happens next, but then it slowly died down. There are places where the story might defy logic or becomes a bit unpalatable, but I continued since the information inflow was quite acceptable. Read "The Krishna Key"  for all the efforts Ashwin Sanghi has put to enlighten you. But it lacks a consistent demarcation of what is fact and what is fiction as, many a time, my comprehension failed me and  was in a state of confusion if  whatever information, I was being fed,was it a myth or a fact!  But you can give it a try with an open mind and I am sure its not just another junk in the bookshelf.