Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
0:00
|
16:23
The first novel in The Sufy Epic series ...
One woman's battle for humanity's soul
In a darkening world teetering on the edge of collapse, a young girl is torn from tragedy and thrust into destiny. Rescued by a cosmic guardian, Cha’nir is raised on the mystical island of Lotus High — a sacred bridge between Earth and the celestial realm of Muktiland. Trained to become the GuruMentor, Earth’s fiercest spiritual warrior, at first, she rejects the path of power in search of peace. But peace is no longer an option.
As the Dark Age gathers, the Klesh Nine — addicted to materialism, greed, and violence — come ever closer to summoning their banished lord, the corrupt Demi-god Kalokaya, from his imprisonment for millennia inside a Black Hole of fire. As Earth groans under the weight of rising evil, ancient battles spill into Tamo-Terra, a scorched parallel world where good and evil wage endless war.
When even the might of Cha’nir and her Humanity Warriors fail, hope flickers in the arrival of one final champion: Sufy, a reluctant Super Warrior born of divine purpose, whose strength embraces the cosmic truth of Oneness.
Inspired by Indian philosophies, spirituality, and folklore intertwined with universal wisdom, Cha’nir and the Light of Nam is a sweeping tale of warrior gods, spiritual warriors, dark warlords, and the eternal battle between light and darkness.
It's good morning, Giard Chahool. Welcome to Yellow Shelf.
SPEAKER_01
So good, Chahal. I think it's uh good. You are yes.
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for correcting me. I it's always a bit tricky sometimes with with names. Thank you for joining us. Congratulations. You are a bookseller, a successful bookseller, an author of a series. Uh your book one is called Chania and the Light of Nam. Tell us all about the book.
SPEAKER_01
Okay, first of all, uh Joel, thank you very much for inviting me. Uh, respect and reverence to all your listeners and viewers. Um so uh I have spent 35 years in uh crafting this uh universe. It's a new global fantasy, epic, epic fantasy universe. It's cross-cultural, but it's inspired by Indian spirituality, uh, folklore, and uh and philosophies. Um centered on the cosmic truth of the oneness, that everything's connected, and exploring humanity's struggle during the current dark age as Indian thought feels that we are in at the moment. So so that is so so that is the that that is basically the actual uh the universe. Um so there'll be in terms of how it how the story is actually coming out, it's coming out in a series of books. There'll be three books. So the first book, Chine and Light of Nam, the opening book has now come out, right? Uh that was published on the 15th of uh May this year, and he went to uh bestseller number one within 48 hours. It just shows that in the current climate, that opening new doors, new perspectives to readers, you know, uh it really matters. Uh because, you know, uh the in terms of epic fantasy, in terms of epic fantasy, uh for the last say since um J.R. Tolkien, J.R. Tolkien uh created the uh the new epic landscape, right? He's also from Birmingham, just like me, right? Uh and he started about a hundred years ago. The world was different then. Sure. And he created, as you know, he he spent 17 years um sort of writing the uh Lord of the Rings. I've spent 35 years, I've come 70 years after that, 35 years. Now, what he did was he basically got a template for for all the great epic uh fantasy uh novels, and a lot of people then followed him after that. But all the epic fantasy genre is very much uh dominated by Western mythology. Okay, so that is fine, right? Since the Second World War and what have you, that is fine, but at the same time, now we have a globalized world, a diverse world, a more device-connected world. Because we are now currently in the device connected world, we are less connected spiritually, everything is down to attention, attention, attention. Everything wants to be instant. That's why the superheroes are so uh popular, because when you get power just like that, as a superhero, who wants to work for it? You know. So what we're so there when I when I was born in India, and then when I was eight years of old, age came to the UK. But when I was during those eight years, I was absolutely fascinated by stories. And those in those days, there was no internet, there was no television, we just had the stars at night and nature, and so we'd have the elders at night sitting down and telling us stories underneath the stars. You can imagine a mud house, no running water, no electricity, but at night we had this beauty under the stars and listening to stories and the worlds within them. And then we'll have wandering sages coming around and they'll tell stories. Then we'll have singing dervishes type of people, they'll start stories. So I was sort of in that. So it's actually fantastic. So when I came here and I thought, okay, stories, right? Got into fairy tales first, great. Then got into DC and Marvel comic universe, especially you know, Superman and Batman, Fantastic Falls, you know. So, so all very good. I thought these are great stories, but there was some Joe, there was something missing, okay, right?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01
And I thought, what is missing? These stories are absolutely fantastic, I love them. What is missing? Then I realized going back that the way that the stories are told in the east and the western world are different.
SPEAKER_00
Okay, right?
SPEAKER_01
They are different. And I thought, why are they different? Why are they different? If we're all human beings, why are they different, right? So then at that point, I had two questions. I took a newspaper around at the age of 13. I would get off five o'clock in the morning, dash down to the news news shop, read all the comics, read everything. Oh I devoured everything, right? And then I thought, why isn't it? I had two questions. Why, you know, we've got Superman, Batman, all these great superheroes. Why have we not got one, uh, a great global superhero from the East that everybody can enjoy? Why haven't we got one? So I thought somebody might bring it up, but it didn't happen, right? That was the first question. The second question was deeper question. If there are so many religions in the world, and everybody says we should live together harmoniously, why are there so many divisions in the world? Why are there so many, so much inequality in the world? So this goes beyond fantastic, this goes into all genres, right? It's a quick question. So I started researching number one, how stories are told, the structure of Western and Eastern stories, and number two, the epics have two purposes. One is to create a great story and entertain, number two, it's passed on eternal wisdom. And that both how stories are told and wisdom is passed on is different in a different age, right? So when when J.R. Tolkien wrote his work uh 70 odd years ago, that was a different world. Now we've got a different world. So so I've I've spent these 35 years doing what? Right? Doing the research, collaborating with a lot of people to try to create a cross-cultural epic universe that every single culture can enjoy because it should touch the heart, right? So that's where we are. So, in terms of book one, book one, uh, the world is has fallen into the dark age, and this is a modern mythology chart in the last 40 years. So the world has fallen in a dark age, Indian and Eastern philosophy, spiritualities see the world in cyclical terms. Where in the world west, right? I'm a crop two-culture person, East and West, right? In the West, we see time as linear, right? Time goes by in a linear fashion. But in Eastern philosophies, it's cyclical, everything is cyclical. Day and night, years go cyclical, seasons is cyclical, and humanity, humanity goes in cyclical nature in terms of the consciousness. We start off with consciousness that's pure, and over the years it decays spiritually, right? So in this world now, in this world now, we are more connected through devices, but spiritually, we're getting more and more decay. So in the story, this is this is mythologized. This is a story of our time, but mythologized, right? So, what do we got? So, over the over decades and what have you, there is one light, light of Nam that connects us all, right? Now, Nam is just the generic name, but you can call God, you can call the divine, whatever faith you're of, you can call it that faith, right? Everything's connected through blood or bond. Uh, you know, everything's connected, and you either are part of the uh part of nature, i.e., connected, or you become a part of nature if you pursue materialism, greed, and violence, right? So we've got two values here. So we've got the dark forces who want to bring on darkness in the world, and we've got the light forces of light who are trying to protect the world. Each generation has one fiercest warrior protecting the light. That's a guru mental. That is Junir in our story. She begins to be.
SPEAKER_00
I was gonna touch on that. The artwork is is pretty impressive. I mean, it's a very visual cover. Um, and it, yeah, I guess that's the first cover in the book in the series. Um, do you want to tell us a little bit? Um, you you mentioned the 35 years to get to this point. Um tell us, um, yeah, just quickly give us a summary of yeah, the the book one. Um, and yeah, like fantasy is such a popular genre at the moment, and it's wonderful to hear that you've got this cross-cultural, respectful spiritual story. But tell us a bit about the story, just so we we know what the book's about.
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so so basically it's it's a battle between the light, light and the dark. In it in uh the Western world, we normally uh see between good and evil, right? But in the eastern world, it's between light and dark. Light means that you have true knowledge, dark means that through ego and arrogance, right? There's corruption of that. So it's the ancient truths against the corrupted truths, right? So you've got the two forces. So in our story, we've got different worlds. So there's the gods of nature who have basically said uh earth will be protected by a guru mento in every generation, the most fiercest warrior in the world. And that guru mento will have four warriors from different parts of the world. They're called humanity warriors. So you'll see here uh Vidran, who is from Norway, right? So you got one uh person on skin colors, one black, one white, one yellow, one brown, protecting the whole world. So they work with the guru mentor, right? To protect the light. But on the on the other side, we have a fallen demigod who 70,000 years ago came here to protect the oneness, but he got corrupted. And with him, he's got nine servants called the Klesh, K-L-E-S-H. These are bad dog forces, and they're there to corrupt us. So the battle, there's an everlasting battle. So book one is where what happens is that Chinir, right, protects the earth in in parallel worlds, but uh the demigod Kalakaiah, who's here, right, he is a worst, right? He came as a as a as a demigod, but he's turned into a nasty uh character. But he's got godly powers. He's been in in prison in a black hole for 70,000 years, but he's his servants bring him back in book one, right? They bring him back. Chenear then battles him. She's an earthly warrior, she hasn't got the godly powers, she cannot beat him, right? She cannot beat him. So the world, the first book is to do the with the earthly battle. At the end of the first book, I won't tell you the full story, obviously.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, don't tell us, don't tell us.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, at the end of the first book, then the gods decide we need to send a celestial warrior, but he or she must be born off earth in that dimension, right? So at the end of the first book, then a celestial warrior from the celestial being is born to the most purest person in the world, and that happens to be Janir, right?
SPEAKER_00
So for the first yeah, we're gonna run out of time. So, what I want to do is I want to want to give you the the space to share. I was looking at your website. So your website talks about um, you know, the books, the book series, gives you lots of information. There is a huge following in fantasy. So I want to point people in the right direction to get get curious about your book and get curious about your series. Are you on uh are you on socials as well, or should we just go to your website?
SPEAKER_01
So the socials on Instagram.
SPEAKER_00
Oh, great, great, yeah.
SPEAKER_01
If you have it socials, right, on Instagram. Yeah, lots of beautiful information there. Yeah, and we have a website, right, which has all the information. So I would I I would uh sort of uh suggest that uh I would invite your readers, just for interest, to subscribe to the website. So all the information there.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, what I'll do, I'll put that in the show notes good to make sure anyone who's curious you know can have a look and connect with you. I'm assuming the books are gonna come out like next year. Like when are the other books coming out?
SPEAKER_01
Okay, the first the first book's obviously come out. Second book, I've just finished a manuscript, so that'll be coming out so that so that'll probably take about six months of editorial and uh all the uh layouts and what have you. Um so that'll come out certainly by probably January, if not before. That's what we're trying to do. And then book three will then come out the following year. So you can get the it's already been written, everything's been written, but to be formatted in one form is obviously enough. So, how do you want me to deal with this now?
SPEAKER_00
Well, what I'll do, I'm gonna get this interview out now. People can get curious about your first book. I would love you to come back when the second book's out. Well, we we can organize that down the track. But I mean, enjoy this book launch, enjoy this fabulous time of um it's been 35 years in the making. That's that's a persistent author there, Gerd.
SPEAKER_01
Well, it's 35 years in collaborating with a lot of people, right? Because some one person cannot write a great epic. It's like once again, I've got back to talking. You had C.S. Lewis, you had other people as sport partners, you know, and one person just hasn't got the perspective or the capacity to write a great epic, you know.
SPEAKER_00
It just sounds like you've been inspired by some of the great authors over this time. Now you're the author. Congratulations. Uh, I hope you enjoy and continue to write, and I'd love you to come back.
SPEAKER_01
But there's a couple of things uh I forgot to put in, uh, Joe, right? The first thing is the first book is a female warrior, which which which has been lacking in traditional epics in both of the east and the west. And what I've done is I wanted to create a female warrior to show the power of a woman, right? That's great. Inner power of a woman, right? Inner power of a woman. So that was that's important. So sorry if I if I if I'm not used to this, uh I'm used to the radio interviews, but it's difficult to oh it's yellow shelf is dear friend.
SPEAKER_00
But I mean, look, it's it's wonderful. And I it was really interesting to hear, you know, what inspired you, the connections, the persistency you have delivered as far as being an author, and you know, what the story's about and what how the series is gonna unfold uh with characters and themes. So thank you so much for joining us. All the best.
SPEAKER_01
Have you got enough have you got enough there, you think?
SPEAKER_00
That's that's wonderful. Our audience will be very grateful. All the best.
