119)įrom the above quotation, we can see how the term ‘elephant’ has been used to describe the face of Ganesh. It almost seemed like the head of an elephant had been placed on the body of this unfortunate soul. The ears were floppy and large, shaking of their own accord. Two buck teeth struck out of the mouth, one of them broken. His nose was abnormally long, stretching out like the trunk of an elephant.

The description is given by Sati when she saw his face for the first time was. In the book, Ganesh is shown to be a ‘Naga’, a race of people who are physically deformed. The first instance in this essay where Tripathi has attempted to portray the myth in a realistic context is the representation of Sati’s and Shiva’s son Ganesh. In this essay, we will be exploring some of the instances where the author has attempted to relate the myth of Shiva in a realistic context, in relation to the ‘Secret of the Nagas’, which is the second installment of the Shiva Trilogy. Although that may be the case, Tripathi has attempted to demythologize many key aspects of the myth in order to make it more realistic. Due to the fact that most of the characters in the novels are embedded in Indian mythology, the genre of the set of books is categorized as mythology-inspired fiction.

The ‘Shiva Trilogy’, written by Amish Tripathi, is a set of three novels depicting the rise of Shiva, from a normal tribal chieftain, to Shiva being the Neelkanth, the destroyer of evil.

Shiva trilogy the secret of nagas