Born on 10th November 1990, Pankaj Kumar Shasini has completed his graduation in Mechanical Engineering. Earlier, he has worked as a designer and delivered corporate training in various 3D designing software. He is congenitally an artist, which he believes is a gift from his mother. And he believes any form of art is a medium of expression. He is a dreamer, who has always tried to explore different modes of expression through drawing, 3D designing and now through words. Not only is he a visualizer of events or nature, he is also keen on sketching a concept like product designs for cars or other innovative gadgets. He even loves to explore unsolved mysteries, which led him to come up with this concept of ‘AfterLife’. Other topics that he loves are about Aliens, Bermuda Triangle, Land beyond the North Pole and Why did America not go to the moon again?
He is interested in educating himself on Quantum Mechanics and String Theory. His role models are Michio Kaku (American Physicist), Brian Greene (Theoretical Physicist), Manoj Bhargava (American Businessman), Deepak Chopra (Alternative Medicine), Leonardo Da Vinci (Polymath) and not to forget Steve Jobs (Cofounder of Apple Inc.).
Music is like a pill for him, coin collection, pen collection, painting, photography, 3D designing, and concept sketching; his mind is always busy in thinking something. ‘AfterLife – The Desolation’ is his debut novel published by Leadstart publishing.
TBE: Tell us a little about your story and the story world you’ve created in ‘AfterLife – The Desolation’.
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: The story revolves around two main protagonist Kabir and Trupti, and the desire to look after their immensely beautiful daughter “Aaroshi”; as one of them perishes on the way to her birth. Just like a new born takes time to learn about their abilities, understandably the perisher also takes time to learn about its new sense of abilities. On the surge to be in contact with the past and discovering own self, the different mysterious life phenomenon is addressed to look on it with a different perspective.
TBE: Where did the idea for the story originate from?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: As I have been to a haunted house for 2 years, few questions lingered in my mind throughout my childhood. Like – Why the intensity of disturbance is slow ascending manner? Why not the direct intense one? Why do they stop when you notice and get terrified from their bothering? What stops them from troubling you more when they could? Are all the disturbances we experience are actually for troubling or they were realising us about their presence? The idea of this story originated from one occasional midnight event by 2015 when few progressive illusions bothered my sleep until I jotted them on a piece of rough paper.
TBE: How was your publishing experience with Leadstart?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: All the necessary information and guidance are well received from them in an informative way. It is good to witness that they are trying on implementing new strategic promotional ideas specially during such challenging time period due to COVID-19.
TBE: I found the atmosphere in the book deliciously dark. How conscious do you have to be of language to create such an effect?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: Instead of prioritizing demonstrating my literature excellence, I focused more on how to give adventure to my readers into such a dimension that it could even be challenging by portraying graphically, because the power of imagination has no limits. I believe more than consciously reading, people might have frequently paused themselves to complete their imagination and synchronise themselves with the perspective I wanted them to sail with.
TBE: This is a book about death, but it’s not depressing. Why is that?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: I am pretty sure that you might have missed noticed it while reading this book. In order to address a possibility of phenomenon, you either prove it mathematically or set lab/experiment through physical examinations. Rather of getting depressed with such dark subject, more than emotionally getting attached to the narrative you might have pondered more on different perspective analysis through visualisation.
TBE: What was the most challenging part of writing this story?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: In order to write with great visualisation effect, it was hard for me to identify when it could go exaggeration and when the input is just right. And specially on decision to not to follow any format to write a book by adopting a completely new style of writing trough mixture of descriptive and plays.
TBE: Grief, guilt and the quest to understand are big themes within this book. What drew you to write about them?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: I believe this book is not literarily crafted, instead it is more like science fiction spiced up with few fantasy elements. Topics like grief, guilt and the quest to understand is reality, but giving it a different perspective builds “HOPE”, that’s what balances it all. I didn’t write this book to become an author, instead I chose this medium to deliver a fact that we being an intelligent species are simply losing our true potential by prioritising and accomplishing self-interests only. While we could contribute a lot to the nature, we are wasting this opportunity by enjoying all the privileges with satisfying self-interests and considering everything as granted.
TBE: How do you see the relationship between fantasy and reality?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: Any event that is easily understood is reality, else it is mysterious. And describing any mysterious event with human known concept is science, but describing without coinciding with any human intelligence is fantasy.
TBE: You must have done a lot of research on death and afterlife in particular and learned a great deal about them. Did you learn anything that surprised you?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: Yes! We being a physical entity observe the universe through physical existence perspective only. But when you consider the fact that physical universe is only 4% of actual universe and remaining 96% in filled with dark energy, dark matter that is entirely against all the science we have known till date. Accidentally when I was deducing our total existence with a mathematical expression through substituting with time using logic and relation method, I found none of us actually exist. We could be just characters in someone’s imagination and every event is controlled.
TBE: What message do you hope people will take away from this book?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: Additional to concept about AfterLife, I hope people understand whatever act they conduct just once considering it will not affect others or without caring about; it will be repaid in either way because this entire existence which includes their activities is in the form of energy wave functions. If energy can neither be created or destroyed and in actual the summation of total energy in the universe is “ZERO”; then every act will have equal and opposite reaction. I hope their perspective of viewing their own life would change by valuing every moment they live with diligently involving themselves into any activities.
TBE: Which books would you recommend for someone who enjoyed ‘AfterLife – The Desolation’?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: “You Are the Universe” – by Deepak Chopra and Menas Kafatos.
TBE: Is there anything you are currently working on that may intrigue the interest of your readers?
Pankaj Kumar Shasini: It is nothing related to my current fictional book. I am working on proposal for reconstructing human welfares where I will be questioning on operational techniques of various social structures like – Healthcare, Education, Judicial, Employment culture, Mainstream impact, Research & Development objectives, Negligent on tracking beggars, habit impacting social generations, appointing governance, etc.
