Entrepreneur-turned-thriller writer Ashwin Sanghi explores the critical and much-longed-for element called luck in his first non-fiction foray and says his entire career is a "stroke of luck".
In "13 Steps to Bloody Good Luck", through entertaining and informative anecdotes, narrations of personal experiences and vignettes of homespun wisdom, he gives a new insight into how people can work towards being lucky.
"My entire career is a stroke of luck. After completing my first novel 'The Rozabal Line' I was to find myself inundated with rejection letters. I described my situation to a close family friend. The gregarious Punjabi gentleman responded, 'In life, 99 per cent is about good luck! Just remember that, son.'
"In a slightly argumentative tone I asked, 'But uncle, what about the balance one per cent? Surely that must be hard work or talent?' Laughing loudly, he declared triumphantly, 'The final one per cent? That's called bloody good luck, my boy! Simply keep at it and wait for your bloody good luck to kick in!' That's precisely what I did," Sanghi told PTI. His debut work "The Rozabal Line" was compared to "The Da Vinci Code" by critics and his second novel "Chanakya's Chant", narrating two parallel political tales - Chanakya's puranic Bharat 2300 years ago and post-independence contemporary India - will be made into a movie by UTV Motion Pictures.
"The Krishna Key", his third novel, explored the ancient secrets of the Vedic age and the Mahabharata and his fourth book "Private India", a gritty crime thriller set in Mumbai, was a collaboration with James Patterson.
Sanghi says as a writer of fiction of the conspiratorial and fast-paced variety he had never imagined himself as a writer of non-fiction.
