Author Malay A. Upadhyay

Malay A. Upadhyay

Malay A. Upadhyay grew up in the Eastern provinces of paradoxical India. Life in the industrial town of Jamshedpur was a quiet affair dotted with crossing social stereotypes at every step. It was a childhood of anomalies - a different spacetime, where he could not understand a friend's passion for books on one hand even as he wrote for school elocution on the other. His high-school activities ranged from the curriculum to foot-tapping participations in inter-school events, to Himalayan excursions.

After school, he shifted to Southern India to pursue Bachelor of Engineering. That was pretty much a preset career route of the generation. But as he moved on, so did his engagements. These were years of managing sections of inter-college events or organizations than mere participation, and part-time work in Business Development for an outstation company. An urge to diversify festered but remained at a minimum as he moved to Bangalore to work at Accenture. A year later, he shifted to Italy to pursue Masters in Marketing.

The time at Bocconi University saw the inevitable extra-curricular engagements keep pace as they now changed focus to involve international seminars and projects outside the ones prescribed. He was invited to a conference with consultants at St. Gallen, and was one of 25 individuals selected from around the globe to envisage the future of textile industry for the Board of Directors of Marzotto SpA. A brief stint with a consultancy followed in Dubai before he returned to Milan to finish graduation.

The seeds of this early end to the time at Bocconi had been sown in the previous year as he began working on a simple idea of an evolving ecosystem. It was in this time that an interest in writing first took shape. In the months that followed, the idea began to branch out and reached a proportion that consumed him, as passion normally does. Balancing a frantic episode of multitasking routine that virtually turned him to a robot in the winter of 2012-13, he developed his dissertation as if in a race to finish it even before some in the batch before his did. The decision to extend it as fiction was its fallout.

Malay returned to India and joined his uncle in their entrepreneurial venture in hospitality - a time that allowed his attempt at PhD and authorial pursuit. An admission to Manchester Business School without scholarship had to be overlooked. Meanwhile, the other two agendas prospered as he built his expertise as a Marketer tasked with paving the way in a budding industry. By the end of the second year, the book was ready to come out.

The story of Kalki Evian is inspired as much by legend and characters in real life as the places Malay has travelled to over the years. All three, in his opinion, hold a mystery - a story - worthy of narration. Malay blogs at www.kalkievian.com as a Fly - a concept of humility that aims at the elusively effervescent, ephemeral connection among beings across space and time. That is after all, a belief that underlies every piece of literature ever written.

grew up in the Eastern provinces of paradoxical India. Life in the industrial town of Jamshedpur was a quiet affair dotted with crossing social stereotypes at every step. It was a childhood of anomalies - a different spacetime, where he could not understand a friend's passion for books on one hand even as he wrote for school elocution on the other. His high-school activities ranged from the curriculum to foot-tapping participations in inter-school events, to Himalayan excursions.

Kalki Evian – The Ring of Khaoriphea

(blurb)

Every choice we make leads to its own unique consequence. To change the consequence, therefore, one must travel back in time to change the choice. But what if such change, instead of altering our future, simply created another - one that came to exist simultaneously with our world?

This is a story of how one such moment of love led to two parallel futures; a story of how your choices have an impact far beyond the world you know; a phenomenon that we had sensed, and wished for, all along. Set in Italy, while one timeline scales a city of the future where not just people but also things like money evolve, the other cradles itself in an amalgamation of contemporary Europe with ingredients of a new age. Step by step, the story embarks on a journey in a parallel world that we all live in but rarely see.

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Kalki Evian – The Ring of Khaoriphea

(Excerpt)

Thoughts remained hazy and many minutes passed until she heard a knock on the door. The prospect of moving felt like too much effort. So she simply used her own version of the mid-air frivolities to unlock the door. It was pushed open and Qin stood there, hesitantly peeking in.

“Yes?”

“Umm,” he hesitated, “could you come with me for a second?”

“What is it?”

“Please, if it’s not too much trouble.”

She forced herself to get up and asked, walking up to him, “What did you do now?”

“Well, I tried,” Qin replied and led her to his room. He opened the door and bent forwards to check inside while she waited behind him. He then stepped back and signalled her to go in. She gave him a scrutinizing stare and walked in restlessly, only to have her feet stall at the door.

The room was as dark as darkness could allow without losing out on charm. There were just two distinct divisions in its ambience, physically divided midway through its height. The roof and the upper half of the walls seemed stretched out into an infinite space, showcasing a starry night, populated with little sparkles beyond count but not without meaning. There lay clear patterns of constellations and distant hints of planets and moving asteroids as if the room had lifted itself up into Earth’s exosphere. And yet, it could not possibly be as the lower half of the room was submerged in soft waves of water, lit up underneath with careful streaks of turquoise light. The projection lay complete with a glimpse of the waterbed superimposed on the floor while their bed lay risen inches above the surface, in between like a hammock. The three-dimensional theme had come alive with slight sounds of water hitting against the surfaces around even as they moved in little waves. As she stepped in, ripples began to radiate out from her legs. It was all very magical and yet, all very real.

Friuli stood in a trance, unmoving. She then turned towards Qin, her lips still parted but with eyes far more at ease than they had been. He took her hand in his as he led her to the bed. He moved along to the northern end of the room while she lay down. Both her legs bent backwards and her head rested on her palm which in turn rested on the pillow. She looked at the sky, wordlessly staring at the stars – static and shooting across – while the sounds of the water filled her senses. She then murmured as if to avoid disturbing the ambience that prevailed in the room, “Thank you.”

Qin looked at her and smiled. He followed it up with an equivalent counter, “Something happened to you back there.” Friuli looked at him and turned back towards the stars. She did not really wish to talk much but then, he deserved to be answered.

“What you said was absurd,” she joked, “but unfortunately, it carried traces of an inconvenient reality. The group of companies that came to nearly monopolize all digital space, through acquisitions and a very smart play of marketing that spanned many years, were led by a similarly ruthless drive of ambitions that marked perhaps the only emotion left in its bearer.”

“From what I see so far,” Qin said, pointing out at the theme at play in the room, “it is all quite beautiful.”

“It definitely is. People wouldn’t accept change if it did not appeal to them.”

“Yet, you speak of it as if it were decadent.”

“All that glitters, Qin,” she left the proverb hanging.

“Ah, I am surprised gold has retained its privileges even in this age,” he remarked but it took him a couple of seconds before his smile disappeared under the realization of its true significance: Gold or diamonds should have lost their status in such an age as this. He did not stretch the thought but let it implant itself well within him.

Friuli stammered, clearly acquainted to that realization only now and out of her comfort zone, “I . . . thought you would, umm, be able to identify with it.”

“And that would mean you are mindful of what would and would not affect me,” Qin quipped, now with some idea as to the source behind the appearance of the fly. He waited, she stared and the turning of tables ended soon after. Qin was careful not to damage a rare moment of an unexplained dominance he had stumbled upon. “Quite an exceptional and caring nurse you are,” he said on a lighter note, “So what was wrong with the changes? Short-sightedness?”

“Yes,” Friuli answered quickly, “A concoction of technology that no one could have imagined, and no one did, except perhaps one,” she said with some thought. “We were mostly oblivious to where it all headed as we became an unassuming part of another worldly evolution, this time more personal in effect.” She obstructed her own statement with an impatient expression and turned to lie on her back with both her palms held over her stomach and feet stretched out straight. “Let me soak in this place for now,” she exclaimed, “These are two of my favourite themes but it never occurred to me to try them together.”

It was easy for him to stop questioning. His mind was stuck on her discomfort. It was something personal to her and yet, he felt it clog his thoughts more than whatever had happened to the world itself. He fought off the urge to inquire further. She now lay deep within the projected space. He let a few moments pass before suggesting, “You should rest. I will sleep in your room. Just try to get the bitterness out of your system for now.” She turned to him and smiled. Qin’s reply was quick, “okay, so you won’t.”

He did not ask why, even though his eyes did. She continued to smile but did not answer. It slowly faded as he left the room. In her head there was just one sentence running across – one she whispered as if with hope that it would get lost in that dark sky, Cos it were the wild ambitions of a loveless woman that took away what once mattered the most to me. That was Friuli’s experience with a creamless Canneloni.