11-yr-old pens space fiction during lockdown

Brad said, “Why didn’t we fight?! He was alone and we guys can kill him very easily!!” Delta command said, “See, that’s not how it looks like if we were to kill him, he will start his magnetic force and grab our guns! Also, he is 23X and has more speed than us. 98% accuracy and 54% eyesight.”

But he did not do anything like that, said Jack.

Ahmedabad: These are excerpts from a novel written by 11-year-old Shaurya Mishra, who resides in Prahladnagar area of Ahmedabad.

The setting of his fiction novel is unearthly however, for it’s in space! The title of the book is ‘Space Mafia On The Loose.’

Chief minister Vijay Rupani lauded the young child for achieving the remarkable feat.

“Your entire book, full of space achievement, is imagined very bravely, compiled, completed and created during the lockdown period,” the chief minister wrote in a letter addressed to Shaurya, a student of DPS School, Ahmedabad.

The young child developed interest in the space at a young age of 7. His mother, Shreya Mishra, a qualified lawyer, got him an encyclopedia on space with several colourful images taken by NASA. Shaurya’s father Bimlesh Mishra is working as a senior executive with an overseas NGO.

“A year later, I also gifted him a telescope through which Shaurya and his twin brother Yuvraj would observe Moon and Mars, staying mesmerized by the enchanting beauty of space, night after night,” said Shreya Mishra. Later, they also visited the planetarium in Delhi.

Shaurya would spend hours talking about becoming an astronaut who would visit space and make a first telephonic call to his mother from his space rocket.

He got interested in everything related to space and then got hooked to an online game called ‘Among Us’ which takes place on a space observatory.

Shaurya would weave stories on different subjects. He used to visit a bookstore every fortnight and would spend an hour or two reading books there and purchasing them. All this came to a grinding halt when the Covid-19-induced lockdown was announced last year in March.

That’s when his mother asked him to write down his thoughts in a diary. This got him thinking and he decided to write his own story. He was given an old cellphone without sim card by his mother to learn sketching. He utilized this source and lockdown period and wrote down ‘Space Mafia On Loose’ in a short span of two months.

“Writing runs in his blood. His maternal great-grandfather Dr Bhagwati Sharan Mishra, a retired IAS officer, is a well-known writer. Also, Shaurya’s maternal grandmother advocate Chhaya Mishra writes stories and poems,” said Shreya Mishra.


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