Book Review: The Krishna Key by Ashwin Sanghi

The Krishna Key is supposedly a thriller that will keep you engaged and will be a delight for conspiracy theorists. Well, it is almost all that it claims to be, but just a bit shy of being there at the very top, The book is incredibly well researched and tells the tale of a modern man’s illusion into trying to find Krishna’s great legacy left behind to mankind. In that process emerges a hero, Professor Ravi Mohan Saini who is an expert on Lord Krishna. It is upon Saini that falls the onerous task of trying to save the world from the clutches of a mad man who is falsely led to believe that he is the tenth and final avatar of Vishnu. The rest of the plot of the story is a topsy turvy turn of events where Saini is falsely accused of murdering his best friend and then falls into a trap which he realizes much late. But as even best laid plans may fail, Saini miraculously survives everything that is thrown at him and comes out the winner eventually.

This is the third book by the author Ashwin Sanghi. He falls into the pitfalls of trying to impress the readers too much and fails at doing so in a spectacular way. His main protagonist reminds us of Professor Robert Langdon a lot, and there are many places in the story where he sounds too good to be true. Obviously Sanghi is influenced a lot by Dan Brown and that is evident in many places of the plot. The plot is a classic example of starting out great and getting into a point when it becomes impossible to put the book down, but finally reaches a point when the reader is begged into asking when it will all end. The climax, if it can be called a climax is pretty disappointing and when the readers expects some fireworks, all he gets is a tiny ray of light that too feeble to even illuminate a little down the way. Sanghi’s efforts are lacklustre to tell the least. There are many places in the plot where many mistakes have crept up that any discerning reader will pick up immediately. Perhaps the editing of the book was not done properly.

However, the book does represent a growing trend in Indian literature started very recently focusing on works of mythological effect. Sanghi has done one thing right, and that is in reviving the interest of the youth in the affairs of the Mahabharata and the ancient Indian wisdom. The wonder that India was in the ancient ages in brought to light in a wonderful manner, however Sanghi used some very useless mathematics to demonstrate some things which would have been better left out. If his interest was in focusing the knowledge of the ancient vedic mathematicians then he failed miserably, as people will be led to believe that Indian mysticism was not limited to culture and society, but to even science and mathematics. A part of the book talks about Einstein’s theories and there too Sanghi’s lack of knowledge of such things is brought to the fore. Perhaps, it would be better for Sanghi to leave science and mathematics out of his later books.

The Krishna Key is a bit long if you consider the lack of thrills at the end of the plot and may have been stopped at some point earlier. However, if you have nothing better to do and want to take a crash course on the Mahabharata without actually reading it, then Sanghi’s latest offering can give you some pleasure as well as a little bit of knowledge.

Price: Rs. 250

Publisher: Westland

Rating: 3/5

[This review was published here.]