The week of Vimanas
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This week was the most exciting week in a long time. Vimanas (aeroplanes) feature left, right and centre in ancient Indian epics and texts. When I started working on this series, I wanted to find out a way to incorporate them in a way that makes sense.
I struggled a lot with Vimanas. Indian epics do genre-bends of sci-fi and fantasy with ease.. it was like, ofcourse he had a Vimana, no questions asked. It was a lot harder for me to blend them in to my series, especially because its going to be my first novel that I am trying to go to publishers with.. questions of what do I even say to potential literary agents in the West, promising them a fantasy series like the Indian version of Game of Thrones but instead of dragons, people are flying around in Vimanas..
In the end, I came to the conclusion of.. It is what it is. This world is what it is, based on more ancient works and hopefully, I’ll find agents, editors and an audience who accept this world.
And all this preliminary self-torture was even before I figured out where and how Vimanas make sense in the story line. For example, which Kingdoms have them, why, which characters get them, what can they do and how do they add to the existing plot lines.
Interesting tidbit: Vaimanika shastra, an ancient Indian text on Aeronautical Engineering which wrote about the Vimanas in the image above, messes with my head.. quite a lot. What kind of information, how many years of practical experience does a culture need, to write such a instructional manual?