The Krishna Key | Book Review

Anil Varshney, India’s youngest linguist and symbolist who had shot to fame by deciphering ancient hieroglyphs from the Indus Valley Civilization is mysteriously murdered. His friend Ravi Mohan Saini, is suspected to be the murderer for he was the last person seen by Varshney. Saini escapes from the clutches of police to solve enigmatic secret of the Krishna Key that his friend had briefed him about. Varshney had told him about the four seals that he had discovered. They would sit on a ceramic base plate to decrypt the Krishna Key. Saini was to be the custodian of the base plate in case of Varshney’s untimely demise.

Saini’s doctoral student Priya Ratnani accompanies him in his run as a fugitive. Her father Vivek Ratnani, a leading criminal lawyer aids them. The professor begins his quest to meet three others who were handed over seals by Varshney for safekeeping. The thriller unfolds as each of the seal owner is killed in a similar pattern before or after Saini met them. Taarak Vakil, is the antagonist who believes himself to be Kalki, the tenth avatar of Vishnu. He is the murderer who swiftly gets his job done and is able to efficiently stage the murders to portray Saini to the culprit on the loose. Cops Radhika Singh and Rathore too have significant role to play in unraveling the tangle.

Along with the plot, author narrates the story of Mahabharata in figments at the beginning of each chapter. Author has done abundant research on history, mythology, symbology, numerology, science, mathematics, vedas and what not. The way he has connected the the dots and filled the gaps is applaud worthy. He has brought forth connection of many historic or modern day events with Vedas. Right from Stem Cell technology, Nuclear explosions, radiations, historical events or beliefs around the world, global languages and culture alike – everything under the sun is depicted to have an association with the Vedas. The book brought about innumerous revelations which at times was too much for me in a single book. The book had several images, graphs, maps, magic squares to support the story line. I thoroughly enjoyed the depictions as they kept my curiosity alive. There were times, when I felt the extravagant supply of information smudged the story line to some extent.  There were loose ends, but all in all I was hooked on to it till the last page. The end, however let me down a bit. With such a heart-stopping whopper of a plot, the end somehow dampened that effect.

I was bowled over by the amount of research that Ashwin Sanghi must have done to come up with this book. Can you believe that just the links to his research run through around 10 pages! Not only has he studied wide variety of topics but the way he has been able to link them together to weave into a story is commendable.

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