Nandini Sengupta is a Pondicherry-based writer and journalist. After a chance trip to the Ajanta and Ellora caves in 2007, she began researching third and fourth- century India, initially out of mere curiosity and later out of interest, which quickly deepened into an obsession with India's glorious past. An avid reader of the historical genre, she has been researching for The King Within for the past eight years. Already a published author with several non- fiction titles to her credit, this is her first work of fiction. Nandini is forty-nine and lives in Pondicherry's quaint French quarter with her little daughter Kiki.
THIS ISN'T A LESSON in narrative history. This is primarily a story that takes place in the historical past, featuring some well-known and some lesser known historical figures. Apart from Chandragupta himself, many of his friends too are real characters. Kalidas is easily the most recognizable, but Saba Virasena, Amrakarddava, Varaha Mihir, Harisena and a number of others in court are also real people, described with a little imagination here and there to breathe life into names on copper plates and stone inscriptions. The entire royal family, including the Vakataka in-laws, are, of course, taken from history but they have been fleshed out with a generous dose of poetic licence. As is Chinese pilgrim Fa Hien, though much of what he says about Buddhist pilgrimage sites across India is historically authentic. But rubbing shoulders with them are some entirely fictional characters and incidents. Ancient India does not have the wealth of contemporary accounts that enriches medieval Indian history. In their absence, I have used my imagination to fill in the gaps and there are places in the story where I have taken poetic license with history. For instance, there's nothing to suggest Govind Gupta was the bastard child of Emperor Chandragupta Vikramaditya. But there's nothing to suggest that this is entirely unlikely either.
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