Vineet Bajpai - PRALAY: The Great Deluge

Published by VB Performance LLP in 2018 Copyright VB Performance LLP, 2018 All Rights Reserved Vineet Bajpai asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this book. This is a work of pure fiction. Names, characters, places, institutions and events are either the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of any kind to any actual person living or dead, events and places is entirely coincidental. The publisher and the author will not be responsible for any action taken by a reader based on the content of this book. PRALAY THE GREAT DELUGE ISBN : 9788193642405 This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, physical, scanned, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations (not exceeding 200 words) embodied in critical articles or reviews with appropriate citations. Published by VB Performance LLP Sector 93A, Noida, Uttar Pradesh - 201304, India Email www.VineetBajpai.com Printed and Bound in India by Gopsons Papers Ltd. Published by VB Performance LLP Sector 93A, Noida, Uttar Pradesh - 201304, India Email www.VineetBajpai.com Printed and Bound in India by Gopsons Papers Ltd.

A-2 Sector 64, Noida - 201307, India Cover Design by Munisha Nanda ToVedika, Aditi & VanditaTABLE OF CONTENTSDISCLAIMER This novel is a work of pure imagination and fiction, written with the sole intention of entertaining the reader. While the content has several references to various religions, historical events, institutions, beliefs and myths, it is all presented with the only purpose of making a fictional story richer and more intriguing. The author is a believer in all faiths and religions, and respects them equally and deeply. He makes no claim to the correctness and veracity of any historical or mythological or contextual references used in the story. NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR The Dalai Lama once said, Great love and great achievements involve great risk. Cant say about the achievements yet, but his point about great love is beginning to make sense to me.

And that is because of the tens of thousands of readers of Harappa. I wrote Harappa with creative abandon, penning down what my heart chose to. While I had written three business books in the past, Harappa was my first fiction novel. Therefore, I did not know what to expect from it. So I wrote with speed, courage and freedom. With the blessings of Maa Saraswati, the Goddess of Talent & Wisdom, the result was a book that made its way deep into the hearts of its readers.

Harappa became an instant bestseller. To my delight and gratitude, I was inundated with emails, Facebook messages and tweets, and surrounded by people at literature festivals thousands of readers expressing their adoration for the book, its characters and its intensity. It has been one of the most fulfilling times of my life. However, like Bruce Springsteen once said, Sustaining an audience is hard. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action.... When I began writing the sequel Pralay, the chains of love were tying me down.

The love showered on me by my readers. It was then that it dawned upon me that Pralay will now have to live up to the expectations of all those wonderful people. That was my Everest to climb. The book you hold in your hands has been written with a deep sense of affection and responsibility towards you - my reader. I sincerely hope you enjoy it as much as you appreciated Harappa. And please keep sending the emails, the tweets, the online reviews and the Facebook messages.

They are my fuel. Utthishtha! Rise. Vineet Bajpai THE STORY SO FAR... Harappa, 1700 BCE The devta of Harappa, the mighty Vivasvan Pujari, who has been revered for decades as the Surya of Harappa, is ambushed in a ruthless betrayal. His trusted friend and brother-in-law, the wise Pundit Chandradhar, succumbs to the malicious greed of Priyamvada - his beautiful wife, the Princess of Mohenjo-daro. Three blind black magicians from Mesopotamia, Gun, Sha and Ap arrive in Harappa at the invitation of Priyamvada and her evil man-at-arms, Ranga. The dark wizards poison the water sources of the city with their concoctions, driving its entire populace insane and violent.

In the midst of the chaos, Vivasvan Pujari is indicted in a false accusation of the murder of Nayantara, Harappas most famous exotic dancer. The devta of Harappa is condemned to the mrit-kaaraavaas or the dungeons of the dead. His valiant son, the young Manu, joins forces with Pundit Somdutt, the chief architect of Harappa and the last remaining friend of Vivasvan Pujari. In the battle that ensues, Manu kills the vile Ranga in a spectacular duel. At the same time, the River of the Wise, the Saraswati, rises in unnatural and ominous spate, threatening to devour the whole of the Harappan civilization. Astronomers predict imminent doomsday.

The devtas gracious wife and Manus mother, Sanjna, becomes the target of the arrows of manic Harappan soldiers and breathes her last on the battlefield, dying in her sons arms. At the behest of Somdutt, and his closest friend, the beautiful Tara, Manu rides out into the mist with his mothers body in his lap. But even as he gallops into the haze, poison tipped arrows tear into the handsome Manus back and neck. The devta of Harappa is dragged and tortured like an animal in the Great Bath of Harappa. He is skinned by the mad soldiers, pelted with stones and spat upon by the maniacal citizens of the once glowing metropolis. The devta, the Surya of Harappa Vivasvan Pujari - swears vengeance.

A man once known for his glowing and God-like appearance now looks ghastlier than the Devil himself. He looks up at the sky and screams out his last, bloodcurdling words to the masses of Harappa Listen, you who are already dead. Listen, you congregation of corpses.Listen, you fools.I am half-human, half-God! Banaras, 2017 (present day) Dwarka Shastri, the 108 year-old mystic leader of the Dev-Raakshasa Matth (God-Demon Clan) located in the ancient city of Banaras, is on his deathbed. He summons his highly successful, unusually handsome and supremely talented great grandson - the magnificent Vidyut to the matth. Before his departure from Gurgaon, Vidyut confesses to his beloved partner Damini and to his best friend Bala that he hails from an ancient and mystical bloodline of devtas. Upon reaching Banaras, Vidyut discovers that his arrival had been awaited for centuries.

Among other loved ones like Purohit ji, Balvanta the war General of the matth, and Govardhan - the clans physician, Vidyut also meets his childhood friend Naina. Naina has grown up to be an indescribably beautiful young woman, and Vidyut feels an inexplicable, magnetic attraction towards her. The great matthadheesh Dwarka Shastri reveals to Vidyut that their bloodline was the bearer of a primordial curse. And that Vidyut was the last devta, the prophesied saviour not just of his own bloodline, of the matth or of Banaras but of all of humankind. Just as Vidyut sets foot in Banaras, a mysterious man called Reg Mariani has a meeting in Paris with someone who is known not by his name but by his title the Maschera Bianca. Reg hands over a note from his own superior, the Big Man, to the Maschera.