The Aryabhata Clan
The Aryabhata Clan () is the second novel by the Indian author Sudipto Das, published by Niyogi Books in December 2017. It was officially launched at the New Delhi World Book Fair, on 10 January 2018. Set against the backdrop of the Islamic State spreading its tentacles in India, it is a historical thriller and mystery novel where a 1,500-year-old verse composed by the Indian mathematician Aryabhata plays a crucial role in the deciphering of innumerable cryptic symbols, ancient signs, mysterious carpet motifs and a sinister plan to destabilize India. The story is "set in a time period which is very similar to ours but with conspiratorial and complicated mysteries sprinkled into the ancestry of the main characters that have profound implications in shaping the history of mankind". It's an independent sequel to Sudipto's previous novel, The Ekkos Clan. Author The Aryabhata Clan is the second novel by Sudipto Das. An alumnus of IIT Kharagpur, a columnist, a TED speaker, and a musician too, Sudipto is a veteran in the semiconductor Industry and takes deep interest in Internet of things and artificial intelligence. He is a successful entrepreneur, having co-founded two successful startups. The founding member of the band Kohal, Sudipto is also the General Secretary of the Sarathi Socio Cultural Trust, which has been successfully involved in various socio-cultural activities in Bangalore for fifteen years. Plot The Aryabhata Clan is set in 2010, nearly two decades after The Ekkos Clan that unfolded in the 1990s. The Islamic State is slowly but surely making forays into the spheres of academia, media and politics in India. The mastermind Shamsur Ali, a physicist from Bangladesh, wants to destabilize India by creating a sort of apocalypse. And it's all up to the beautiful and spirited 20-year-old Kubha to prevent this at any cost. The crux of the novel is a diabolical plan to legitimize the demolition of one of the most prominent historical structures in India. Afsar Fareedi, a linguistic paleontologist and the main protagonist of The Ekkos Clan, catches the fraud. Amid all this mayhem, there are three gruesome murders, including that of her father, perhaps to eliminate all traces of a carpet, which Afsar discovers, has a lot hidden in its mysterious motifs, and which incidentally her father had a hand in making. Chilling murders, mysterious carpet motifs, cryptic symbols, thousand years old manuscripts, and at the center of all is a verse composed by the maverick mathematician Aryabhata 1,500 years ago - the key to solving all the mysteries. But, "the central crisis that needs to be averted in the present is far more intricate than the historic riddle that needs to be resolved". Background Sudipto "pulls together the mysteries found in Iranian carpet motifs, a 1500-year-old verse by Indian mathematician Aryabhata, and cryptic symbols from ancient languages, and manuscripts to come up with a compelling argument about the inherent falseness of any kind of cultural demolition based on exclusion." In a blog Sudipto has mentioned that one of the