GetUrBook Author Feature: Sachin Karnik

Behind the Stories: Sachin Karnik on Silence, Memory, the Mind and Choice

From a hidden writer in The Roar Within to reincarnation, parallel worlds, and psychological mystery, Sachin Karnik reflects on the ideas that have shaped his fiction.

My books may appear to belong to very different worlds.

The Roar Within is an emotional story about a man who has buried his talent and feelings beneath a layer of silence. The Vow Rewritten explores an unfinished vow, memory and a connection that reaches across lifetimes. Where Worlds Part takes the characters into parallel realities and asks how different circumstances can lead to different choices. My next book, Out of Sequence, moves into the territory of the mind and the gaps in memory.

Yet, when I look at these stories together, I find that, certain ideas keep returning.

Silence. The human mind. Memory. Choice.

I have often wondered why these subjects continue to find their way into my writing. So, rather than looking at my books only through their genres and plots, I decided to ask myself some questions about the ideas behind them and about how those ideas have evolved over the years.

What follows is my own reflection on the stories I have written, the questions that lie beneath them, and perhaps a glimpse of where my writing may go next.

1. Where did the idea behind The Vow Rewritten begin for you?

I have always been fascinated by mythological and historical characters. Both traditions contain some wonderful stories, and many of them are not known to the present generation. That interest eventually led me to the idea of reincarnation.

I began wondering: what if a modern young person were the reincarnation of a historical or mythological character and somehow began to remember his previous life?

But that immediately raised another question: why would he remember it at all?

That question became the real starting point for The Vow Rewritten. I needed a reason for the past to reach into the present, and that is when the idea of an oath came into the story.

The fulfillment of an oath has a particularly powerful and sacred place in Hindu mythology. A promise made in the past can carry consequences far beyond the moment in which it was made. I found that idea compelling: what if an oath made in another lifetime remained unfinished, and its fulfillment became the reason a person in the present began remembering?

That became the foundation of The Vow Rewritten.

2. Why did you choose Rudra as the modern character at the centre of this story?

Rudra,was created as a bridge between the present and the past world of Veeraj, the historical Maratha sardar at the heart of the story.

Veeraj was a man who valued calm and peace above almost everything else. He eventually sacrificed his own life so that peace could be established in his land. I found that aspect of his character more interesting than simply portraying him as a warrior or historical figure.

His horse, Meghraj, is also an important part of the story. The bond between Veeraj and Meghraj continues beyond Veeraj's lifetime, eventually bringing Meghraj into Rudra's life too.

In the world of the novel, the story of Veeraj and Meghraj has survived through generations in the form of soulverses and oral stories. There are also people who have taken on the responsibility of preserving that legacy from one generation to another.

Rudra has many characteristics that remind me of Veeraj. He has strong convictions and definite views about what he believes is right, particularly when it comes to peace and justice. But he is also very much a modern young man living his own life.

The connection becomes even more intriguing because Rudra has been dreaming about Meghraj since he was five years old. At that age, of course, he has no idea what those dreams mean.

For me, that was one of the most interesting parts of creating Rudra: he doesn't begin by knowing who he was. The reader discovers the connection along with him, as apparently unrelated pieces of his present life gradually begin pointing toward a forgotten past.

3. How did Rudra’s childhood dreams gradually become connected to the mystery of Veeraj and Meghraj?

Rudra's connection with Veeraj and Meghraj begins when he is very young.

His grandfather was a retired forest officer who loved trees and passed that love on to Rudra. He often reminded him that the jungle does not shout,it whispers, and we have to be still enough to hear it.

When Rudra was five, he had a frightening dream about Meghraj. Naturally, he was confused and scared by it. His grandfather did not dismiss the dream. Instead, he told him that some dreams are echoes, fragments of vows already spoken and ripples from lives already lived.

Rudra continued to have these dreams as he grew up, although he had no real understanding of what they meant. For a long time, they were simply an unexplained part of his life.

The first real change came when Rudra was fifteen & on a trekking trip. He experienced his first powerful flash involving the mystical horse. In that brief vision, Meghraj seemed to guide him toward a fort, where he caught a glimpse of a Maratha warrior.

That was the moment the dreams began to feel different.

Until then, Rudra had only been dreaming about something he could not understand. Now he was beginning to see fragments of a story, a horse, a fort, a warrior and those fragments gradually drew him toward Veeraj and the legacy he had left behind.

I wanted the discovery to happen slowly. Rudra should not suddenly receive all the answers. The past had to reveal itself to him in pieces, allowing both Rudra and the reader to wonder what these visions really meant.

4. The Vow Rewritten contains principles about silence, dharma, choice, love and responsibility. What made you create the oath in this particular form?

The oath was actually the point at which the whole idea of the novel began to come together.

Once I had the idea of a modern young man remembering a life connected to a historical character, I needed to ask myself what could make that connection meaningful. Why would something from another lifetime reach into the present?

The answer was an unfinished vow.

But I did not want the vow to be simply a promise to return. Veeraj's character is built around his belief in peace, responsibility and the protection of what he considers sacred. So the oath became a reflection of those values.

That is why it speaks in contrasts: to protect silence, not break it; to protect dharma, not distort it; to ripple, not conquer; to witness, not rule. These lines were meant to show that power, for Veeraj, was not about domination.

I also wanted the oath to evolve beyond duty. It speaks about choosing again when choice has been taken away, and about loving again when love has been lost. Those ideas allowed the oath to connect the historical past with the emotional lives of the characters in the present.

And finally, there is the line, “To remember. Always.”

For me, that is the simplest and most important part of the oath. The entire story is ultimately about remembering something that has been forgotten—not just a previous life, but a promise, an identity, a responsibility and perhaps even a love.

That is why I called the vow as The Vow Before the Mist. The mist represents everything that stands between the present and what has been forgotten. The vow is what survives on the other side of it.

5. After The Vow Rewritten, why did you choose to explore the same characters through two different versions of reality in Where Worlds Part?

Where Worlds Part begins after the events of The Vow Rewritten, but I wanted to explore what could happen after the vow had been fulfilled.

The interesting question for me was: does fulfilling a vow mean that everything is settled forever?

In the World of Silence, the story continues almost immediately after the fulfillment of the vow. But in the World of Echoes, several years have passed. Rudra has had more time to live, experience things and make choices. His circumstances have gradually changed his priorities and his way of looking at life. He has moved towards material success and eventually reaches a point where his business interests put the Korlai forest at risk.

That creates an important difference between the two versions of Rudra. They may have the same origins and carry the same legacy, but they have not made exactly the same choices.

Then something unexpected happens. The two realities begin to bleed into each other.

The vow has been fulfilled in both worlds, yet its consequences have not ended. Once again, a sacrifice is demanded.

For me, that was the real reason to create the two worlds. I wasn't interested in simply showing two versions of the same story. I wanted to explore how time, circumstances and personal choices can change the person we become, even when the starting point is the same.

The two worlds therefore give Rudra two different journeys, while keeping the deeper question alive: if we are given another version of our life, would we make the same choices?

6. The two worlds contain different versions of the same characters, including two very different stages of Veer's life. How did you use these characters to explore the effect of circumstances and choices?

I didn't want the differences between the two worlds to be limited to their physical realities. I wanted to show how circumstances can gradually change the way a person thinks.

That is particularly important with Rudra. The Rudra in the World of Echoes has had several more years to live, experience things and make choices. His circumstances have gradually changed his priorities and his way of looking at life. He has become more focused on material success and eventually reaches a point where his business interests put the Korlai forest at risk.

But I also introduced two new characters who experience the connection between the worlds much more directly: Veer, who is eight years old in the World of Silence, and Veer, who is twenty in the World of Echoes.

They are among the first to experience the “bleed” between the two worlds. Their experiences eventually lead to a sacrifice that allows the two realities to separate again.

Later, when Rudra moves ahead with his plan to cut down a large part of the Korlai forest, another bleed occurs. This time, the two worlds bring the characters face to face with one another.

It is at this point that the mystical elder and Meghraj appear, bringing the past and the present together once again. Rudra is forced to confront what he has become and eventually feels remorse for the path he has taken.

The story then moves toward a new version of the oath.

That was important to me. The oath doesn't simply repeat itself. It changes because the circumstances have changed. The characters have changed, the worlds have changed, and therefore what the vow means to them has also changed.

7. Silence appears repeatedly in your writing, but it seems to mean something different in each story. Where did this connection with silence begin?

My connection with silence actually began with my first fiction book, The Roar Within.

The central character is a very talented writer who has kept his talent hidden from the world. He has allowed circumstances to take control of his life and, instead of expressing himself and his feelings, he has covered himself with a layer of silence.

That story made me look at silence differently. Silence is not always the absence of words. Sometimes it is everything a person wants to say but chooses not to. It can hide talent, emotions, memories, pain and even parts of our identity.

Since then, silence has gradually become an important character in my writing.

In The Vow Rewritten, silence takes on a different meaning. It is connected with peace, responsibility and the idea that some things must be protected rather than disturbed. That is why the vow says, “To protect silence, not break it.”

And in Where Worlds Part, silence becomes part of an entire reality: the World of Silence. There, it is not simply an absence of sound. It represents a different way of experiencing the world and the choices made within it.

So, although silence appears differently in each book, there is a common thread. I am interested in what lies beneath what people say or what they choose not to say.

Perhaps that is why silence has gradually stopped being just a theme in my books and has become almost a character of its own.

8. Your stories often leave the reader with questions before giving them answers. How do you decide what to reveal and what to hold back?

Actually, I don't plan my stories completely in advance.

I usually begin with a character who has been occupying my mind, and then I start writing and allow the story to move forward from there. I don't always know what information is going to be revealed, or even where the story is ultimately going. In that sense, I am discovering the story at almost the same time as the reader.

That may not be the conventional way of writing a mystery or a speculative story, but I find that it gives me a certain freedom.

If I plot everything in advance and then write the story according to that plan, I sometimes feel that I am placing limits on where the story can go. When I allow myself to explore it as I write, there seem to be far fewer boundaries.

A character can make a choice I had not anticipated. That choice can lead to another event, and suddenly the story is moving in a completely different direction from where I thought it would begin.

So I don't consciously decide, “I will hide this information from the reader until this chapter.” I often don't know the information myself yet.

For me, that is part of the excitement of writing. I am not simply telling a story I already know. I am discovering it.

And sometimes, when I reach the end, I realise that the story I have written is completely different from the story I thought I was going to write when I began.

9. Memory connects the past with the present in your stories. What does memory mean to you?

I think memories are what bind our past and present together. In a way, what are we without our memories? They are part of how we understand who we have been and how we have reached where we are.

But I don't think we live our lives entirely through our memories. Memories can influence us and they can have an effect on the choices we make, but they are not necessarily the driving force behind everything we do.

We live in the present, and we move towards the future. Our memories come with us, but they don't have to decide where we go.

That is also what interests me about memory in my stories. The past can remain connected to the present without completely controlling it. A memory can remind us of something, make us question something, or change the way we see ourselves, but ultimately, there is still a choice about what we do with it.

So I don't really look at memory as something that should simply be trusted or distrusted. It is a part of us. It connects where we have been with where we are, and sometimes it influences where we may go next.

10. Your characters often stand between what has happened to them and what they choose to do next. How important is personal choice in your stories?

I believe our lives are greatly influenced by the choices we make.

It could be a choice about our career, our lifestyle, the people we become friends with, or even the way we respond to a particular situation. These choices are rarely isolated. One choice often leads to another, and gradually they begin to shape the direction of our lives.

In that sense, I believe the choices we make help make us the people we become.

Circumstances obviously matter. We don't always get to choose what happens to us. But we do have some choice in how we respond to what happens and what we do afterwards.

That is something I find interesting when I write my characters. They may begin with the same circumstances, the same memories or even the same possibilities, but a different choice can take the story, and the person, in an entirely different direction.

Perhaps that is why choice keeps finding its way into my stories. The past may influence us, circumstances may shape us, but the choices we make along the way are also part of who we become.

11. Across your books, you move between emotional, speculative and psychological stories. What is it about the human mind that keeps drawing you back?

What fascinates me most is the inner world of a person, the part of us that other people can never fully see.

I think every person, in some way, moves through life with a mask. We show one face to the world, while the person behind that face may be completely different. Some thoughts and feelings are consciously suppressed. Others may simply never find a way to come out.

That difference between the person we present and the person we actually are intrigues me.

Perhaps that is also why the human mind keeps appearing in my writing. There is always something happening beneath the surface, and we can never completely know what is going on inside another person.

The idea of this mask has stayed with me, and I would like to explore it much more deeply in my future writing. I want to write about the mask that seems to stand between every person and the world around them and what might happen if that mask is finally removed.

12. After readers finish your books, what would you like to stay with them?

The reincarnation theme, the parallel-world theme, the mystery and the other speculative elements are, in many ways, the outer layers of my stories.

Beneath those layers, I am more interested in the human mind, the choices it makes, and the consequences that follow those choices.

A story may begin with reincarnation, move into another reality, or take the form of a mystery, but these are the settings through which I explore the characters and their inner worlds.

Ultimately, I think the choices we make shape who we become and where our lives take us.

If there is one thing I would like readers to remember after finishing my books, it is that beneath all the mystery and speculative ideas, there is always a human being making choices—and living with the outcome of those choices.

A Final Thought

Looking back at my fiction, I don't think I consciously set out to build a particular set of themes.

They evolved with the stories.

Silence began with The Roar Within, where it represented a person holding back his talent and emotions. It took on a different meaning in The Vow Rewritten, and eventually became an entire world in Where Worlds Part.

Memory, the human mind and personal choice have followed a similar path.

Perhaps that is what writing has become for me: a way of exploring the things that interest me, one character and one story at a time.

And perhaps, after years of living through silence, writing has finally given that silence a voice.

About the Author

Sachin Karnik is an Indian fiction author whose stories explore the inner worlds of ordinary people through mystery, speculative ideas, emotional conflicts and questions about memory, identity and choice.

His fiction includes The Roar Within, The Vow Rewritten – A Promise Across Lifetimes, Where Worlds Part – Where Memory Ends, Another Reality Begins, and Out of Sequence.

As a writer, Karnik is particularly interested in what lies beneath the surface of people—the thoughts, memories, emotions and choices that often remain hidden from the world.