Amish Tripathi: Fortunately, the Shiva trilogy is not being adapted into a movie

Author Amish Tripathi’s literary world from the Shiva Trilogy will soon find a way onto the screen in the web space, and he is not fretting about the words getting lost in the translation.

The trilogy is being adapted into a series, with filmmaker Shekhar Kapur getting on board to direct a series based on The Immortals of Meluha, the first of the trilogy.

“When you adapt a book to a movie and a series, both are different mediums. You can’t compare it and movies can’t follow it exactly as well. Because a movie does not have the gift of time, which a novel has. My books are 500 or 600 page novels, if you translate that word to word to a movie, it’ll be an over six-seven hour long movie, which is a human rights violation,” Tripathi says.

He adds, “It has to be edited. That’s a reality. Fortunately, the Shiva trilogy is not being adapted into a movie. It is being adapted into a series”.

The author is happy because web space will give time to the storyteller to weave the world and do justice to the story.

“You have the gift of time in series. Because layers can only be built when you have enough time, and when the reader or the viewer gives you more than three hours, where they watch the story for an entire weekend,” he shares, adding, “So, I am not too worried, just because it’s being adapted into a series not into a movie”.

In fact, it won’t be his first connection to the OTT world. He recently made his OTT debut as a narrator of series, Legends Of The Ramayana with Amish. From writing mythological stories to narrating them, Tripathi feels it is important to revisit mythology in the pandemic era.

“When it comes to the docu-series, we are not telling a different version of the story, but exploring unknown parts of Ramayana. And getting in touch with Indian mythology is even more relevant now. Because one of the dichotomies of the modern world is that you cannot have liberalism and traditions at the same time. We are told that we have to pick one. But that’s not necessary. Our traditional stories give us that space to marry traditions and liberalism, which is what is needed in today,” he says.

When it comes to the literary world, he says the COVID-19 pandemic has added to the woes of the business, which was already struggling with piracy menace after books were exempt from GST. “The literary business is in a tough situation. The pandemic has hit the publishing business hard. The GST changes had also hit us hard. I hope the government will help us on the GST issue,” Tripathi concludes.