Mallikarjun completed Electronics & Communication Engg. He is currently working as a full time writer. Let us know more about his writing and his latest book.
What inspired you to start writing?
It all began when I was laid down with Jaundice during my third semester in engineering. I saw in the news on television how Graham Stuart Staines and his two children Philip and Timothy were burnt to death. It was all about politics. A Hindi poem mourning them suddenly flashed in my brain. I wrote it down.
This was the changing point in my career although I didn’t know it then. I wrote three more Hindi poems.
After that I started writing English poems and creating Digital Paintings. I started posting them on the net. Soon I had the good fortune to make friendship on the net with a fellow artist, Sue Grannemann from Canada, who told me to collect all my works and create a book out of them. I took her advice.
I then took my manuscript of about 10 Digital Paintings and about 30 English Poems to two great men in the field of literature and art, Prof. K. Raghavendra Rao and Sri. Arya Acharya. They helped me to get my first book published. After that I confidently set my foot forward in to the realm of fiction. The inspiration to write had always been there inside me hidden behind layers of social conditioning.
But once the baby sapling broke through hard earth and received a few drops of rain which nourished it, there was no stopping it from growing.
What did you like to read when you were a boy?
Everything I could lay my hands on. From Tintin to Asterix & Obelix. From Phantom to Tarzan. From 20,000 Leagues under the Sea to The Time Machine. From Agatha Christie to Doctor Who.
Famous Five, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Perry Mason to Wodehouse.
What is the greatest challenge in writing a book?
Personally to me it is all about getting right all the semantics and the syntax surrounding the seed of the work.
How much research do you do before writing the book?
I read about 4 to 5 books in 6 months before beginning a new project.
What motivated you to write the book “Star Ride to Nirvana”?
I read a lot and am profoundly interested in Nirvana. I believe in Atman and Brahman. I also believe in Super-consciousness. I also believe in Karma Yoga – the path of detached work towards Nirvana.
I also believe that when I sit down to write that I am just a Hollow Bamboo and that every word I write comes automatically to me. This Hollow Bamboo is as I believe between the Super-consciousness and my consciousness which makes me write. I am in bliss when I write.
This bliss which I experience when I write is my inspiration. Inspiration for the book “Star Ride to Nirvana” and all others.
Can you tell us more about your latest book “Star Ride to Nirvana”?
This book is about the realization of the Self through a pure and painstaking pursuit of the secrets of the Universe by a young astronomer, Chandra. The young scientist chooses the way of work to reach his goal of Enlightenment and thus climbs the outer ladder of professional life in the University where he first studies and then begins to do research in the field of astronomy to climb his inner ladder towards achieving Nirvana.
The seeds of Chandra’s will to study the Universe had been sown in his childhood itself, without his knowledge, when he had been mesmerised by clear winters’ night skies sparkling brightly with stars, and had twice experienced unearthly experiences during those times.
He had succeeded in experiencing those unearthly experiences many more times while he was doing his Ph.D by emptying his mind, and allowing his consciousness to be open and aware, so that through a hollow bamboo, the Universal super-consciousness which contained all the knowledge of the Universe, could reveal the solutions to his questions and problems to which he had not got an answer even after wrestling with them hard and long.
But even after he got his Ph.D and later on quickly became a professor after publishing many brilliant papers which were internationally acclaimed, he had not attained the Nirvana which he so desperately sought.
After much introspection, he finally realised that he had been asking trivial questions all along of the super-consciousness, and that in order to achieve Enlightenment, he had to ask the Mother of all questions.
He finally did so by doing research upon the ultimate question about the life and death of the Universe. He attained Enlightenment after completing his research on the Mother of all questions by combining science and philosophy.
But the wheels turned in an opposite direction for him, and he who had been a prodigy, suddenly became an outcaste in the international astronomical community on account of his metaphysical views on a subject in which purists demanded only pure physics.
But Chandra was not bothered in the least, and after a few more years of research and teaching, resigned from his job. Meanwhile, all along the way to his becoming Shoonya, he proved that one need not be a recluse.
He lived in the society, had a girlfriend, who later on became his fiancée, and at the end his wife, who was a struggling writer and who also wanted to become Enlightened like him. When she wanted to attain the peak as a writer, Chandra took her under his wing, and taught her the secret of the hollow bamboo.
He explained to her that when she wrote, she should ask mighty questions in the book, which would be hers, and the answers to those mighty questions would be relevant answers, which would also be hers. Therefore, she would be in fact introspecting, meditating. Thus, instead of asking trivial questions to which she would get trivial answers, she should ask profound questions to which she would receive profound answers.
Then and only then she would be on her way towards Enlightenment. Thus Chandra attained his goal and helped others with the same bent of mind as his. That of the path towards Enlightenment through work.
How did you come up with the idea of writing fiction genre book?
After my book of poems and Digital Paintings was Published, I thought that if I could write poetry, a fiction genre book was within easy reach, and that it wouldn’t hurt to try.
From then on, it has been a chain of fiction genre books interspersed with poetry.
Who are your favourite authors?
Hermann Hesse, P.G. Wodehouse, Osho, Deepak Chopra, James Frey, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Abhedananda, Jiddu Krishnamurti, U. G. Krishnamurti, …
How much time do you dedicate to writing on a daily basis?
I begin when I feel creative and stop when I feel drained out.
Time is a strange thing.
It cannot be measured.
For not only is it chronological, but it is emotional, distance related, physically involved, etc.
What words of wisdom would you like to give to aspiring writers?
Write, Write, Write, Until You Feel Inside It’s Right.
You can buy his book now: