Land of All Things Magical
Over years, people have asked me, “You are a scientist. Why do you have magic in your stories?”. Or various versions of “When will you write about the real world?”.
But who says that magic is not about the real world — or that the real world is not about magic?
Come along on my voyage to explore these magical lands.
My journey so far
The place is a frontier province, stretching through deserts, estuaries, and salt marshes. Border patrol is always on the lookout for smugglers crossing on camel-back. Booze is banned, spawning an illegal market thriving with daredevil bootleggers and their exploits. History there is carved by a long coastline. Walk along the coast, and you’ll see ruins of ancient ports and market towns, with stories of seafarers and traders sailing to Arabia, East Africa, and Madagascar. This land was the final leg of Alexander’s march out of India where he embarked on his fateful journey back. Such is the atmosphere where I began to tell stories, long before I could hold a pen in my hand. This is the world that still dominates my tales. Though I never consciously set out to become a writer in my early years, my childhood experiences had already charted the course. It was the color, no doubt. Color and chaos — for my town was famous for siestas and pickles and week-long carnivals. I flew kites from my rooftop on hazy winter dawns, then came down to lose myself in books. Sweltering summers forced me indoors, into more books and exciting worlds — some wild, some wonderful, none mundane. Spaceships, sorcerer-kings, and evil wizards kept me enthralled, while powerful warrior princesses — some with magic in their blood — defied their destinies. Adventure found me in a different form: medical school, followed by Neurosurgery residency. There I discovered my superpower: needing fewer hours of sleep than most sane humans, which is a blessing and a curse, and something I’m trying to change.
I grew up in India’s westernmost peninsula, where desert winds roared down from the north and clashed with monsoon clouds blowing from the Arabian Sea.
When the new millennium was only a decade old, I reached a fork in my road. A choice loomed ahead: to speed along the highway of my elite neurosurgery life, with its dazzle and glamour but no time for anything else — or to take the road less travelled and return to my first love: storytelling?
If you’re reading this, no doubt you have deduced which choice I made.
I currently divide my time between India and Canada. In India, I move between various places, whereas my Canadian roots are in Calgary, an hour’s drive east of the majestic Canadian Rockies. In the mountains, I have seen grizzlies and moose in the wild, heard a coyote howl under the moonlight, and watched the northern sky shimmer with streams of aurora borealis.
My books draw upon the magic of both these lands — one with scorching summers, and the other with frosty winter landscapes.
It is my hope that you will continue this magical journey with me, marking milestones upon milestones of stories each year along the way.
Welcome.
Quest for fire
And so I joined neurosurgery residency in one of the premier institutes of India. After completing my training, I worked as a staff neurosurgeon in several hospitals across India. In 2009, I moved to Calgary, Canada, where I became a Fellow in Stereotactic & Functional Neurosurgery.
Over years — despite academic success, rising career prospects, and wonderful family — I began to sense that I was not truly content.
A strange restlessness underscored every day of my life. I was becoming cynical, stressed, and irritable, and I hardly recognized the person I was turning into.
I took a year off after my Fellowship to figure out what was going on. And during this time, I came to a shocking realization:
I was burned out.
While exploring ways to recover from this burnout, I noticed signs of burnout in people across all spheres of life.
The more I observed the world around me, and the more I talked to people, certain common threads emerged:
- A burned out person becomes tired, passionless, and demotivated — as if a fire inside their soul has gone out
- If burnout is not reversed, one continues living with chronic stress and dissatisfaction, numbing oneself through artificial stimulants, living a half life and never realizing one’s dreams
- The only way to reverse burnout is to re-ignite the fire in one’s soul
But how?
The search for an answer led me to a secret weapon:
Inner Fire
I discovered that Inner Fire is what makes us look forward to life — be it next morning, next month, or the coming decades of our life.
Inner Fire is what puts spring in our step and sparkle in our eyes. It gives light in darkness and warmth in cold, infusing every waking moment with a sense of passion and purpose.
Inner Fire makes us better citizens of this world, better professionals, better lovers, better human beings, and — most importantly — better versions of ourselves.
But what exactly is this Inner Fire?
Check out Ignite: Beat Burnout & Rekindle your Inner Fire to find the answer.
When one’s inner fire is gone, there’s no magic left.
Conversely, to find the magic, we must first ignite the fire.
Igniting your Inner Fire can take you from ‘stress mindset’ to ‘adventure mindset’, infusing your life with passion, purpose, strength, courage, and resilience.
But Inner Fire is not a magic bullet. It is a way of life. And like any way of life, it demands knowledge and skill.
Journey with me to the dawn of humanity where our early ancestors found fire and changed the world. Along the way, we will explore ways to cultivate Inner Fire — and how to safeguard it from the forces of the world that are trying to extinguish this flame.
What’s next
Plenty.
In fact, I recommend grabbing a brew of your choice before you sit down to read this section. (Unless you don’t want to read it, in which case, what are you doing here anyway?)
With that warning out of the way, here are the three main projects I’m currently working on:
- Nomads of Time. This is a nine-book epic fantasy saga spanning multiple universes, twisting in and out of Time. The first book, Heir to the Shadowed Sun, is being readied for publication by spring, 2018. Books 2 (Apprentice of Starlight) and 3 (Sorcerer of Singularity) have been outlined. And the premise of the remaining books has been developed. The series ending has also been planned. So dear reader, fulfill all your commitments by the spring of 2018, and get ready for Nomads of Time.
- The Pitchfork Chronicles. What can I say about this baby? Mmm…when I was drowning in the darkness of my antagonist’s mind while writing Nomads of Time, I realized I needed a break. A funny, evil, absurd, and satirical break. After all, what better way to cope with darkness than using humor? Thus was conceived the most magnificent of all demons, Diabolus tertius, aka Devil the third. Born with a genetic defect that prevents him from being completely evil, he is fed up of ruling the overcrowded Hell and wants to usher democracy. You won’t see much of him in Book-1, Hell Versus the Other Place. But you’ll meet his minions and some other shadowy characters who are fighting to maintain the Hellish way of life.
- The Quest for Fire. This project contains Ignite: Beat Burnout & Rekindle Your Inner Fire, and its upcoming sequel, The Quest for Fire. While Ignite explained the theory of inner fire, The Quest for Fire will take it to the practical level, describing my adventures and misadventures while learning to put the theory to practice. There’s a possibility of a third book, The Phoenix Phenomenon, but I’m not 100% sure about it as yet.
My other goal, especially for 2018, is to blog consistently.
Your invitation — should you choose to accept it — is to join this journey. Come.