Talking about Dhi’s Parables of Divine Transformation, author Saudamini Mishra expressed, “Well, Dhi was a concept that came to me in 2015. I’ve been a painter for about 9 to 10 years. So before the book, I was involved in that. All my paintings are based on this one character, she’s supposed to be my alter ego, and the typewriter on her head signifies intellectual activity. ‘Dhi’ is a Sanskrit term, which means the mind, the intellect, and it’s supposed to signify something which is spiritually transcendental. So Dhi became the narrator of adult folk tales that I term parables as they have moral leanings for adults. The tales are all set in contemporary society and instead of animals like traditional folk tales, these have real people with real issues. But the moral of the story remains the same.”
She has also made it now to the bestsellers list in a short period. Addressing that, Saudamini said, “It is surreal but when I came out with the book, I was very certain about what I wanted. We all want to be bestseller authors but the positive impact this book was intended to have was far more important, I wanted lives to be changed. We all have these larger than life ideas as kids like you want to change the world or change a person’s life. That’s what translated into my ambitions. Also, as an author, I did want that. The numbers are important but the feedback that I’ve been getting that it has impacted people positively is far more important to me. That is surreal.”
Her book has had a positive impact on people and their lives. “I talk about how our inherent flaws are the tools we can use to transform ourselves divinely. We don’t need to be spiritual in the conventional sense such as leave everything, forsake everything and retreat into this life of a hermit, go into the world of seclusion and become spiritually enlightened. The feedback that I’m getting is that the people have learnt to respect their flaws and use them for the divine transformation. And people are telling you that how stories come back to them after a few days, they suddenly remember a story and it’s more real and they can channelise that into their real lives and cope with their problems. And it’s not like a “real-life” situation but real life because I think we all live multiple lives in one life. So coping with each one, be it in terms of separate roles, for example, a mother and a daughter, leading different lives, have inherent challenges in their lives. So they channelise it differently. And that, to me, is the biggest acknowledgement that it stays with them and tells them how to cope with the issues they are facing,” said Saudamini.
She spoke about the motivation behind penning Dhi’s Parables of Divine Transformation. Saudamini said, “There was no tangible motivation and these things are very organic. So I wrote this book in 2016 and finished it in 2017. It’s now that I’ve put it out there. So it was a long process. I’ve been a painter before and that was my profession. The book was a manuscript that was lying on the couch. I’ve met several people, so the book has all real-life accounts. Whenever their life or the incident struck me in any way, I used to write it down, because I knew that someday it’s going to help someone if it has helped me. If I have read that story or heard it and it impacted me, it’s going to impact someone else as well. So that was the inspiration that whenever I talked to people and hear about the different encounters, I said, wait a minute, this is changing something in me so it can change someone else as well. So it was a very organic and long-drawn-out process. It was me helping myself and all these people altered my perspective. So I’ve tried to share that experience.” She is currently working on another book that is expected to release by 2022.