A lot of people know Sai Chandravadhan Bommadevara as a compliance specialist and Managing Director of Sand Legal Services. Lex Witness goes beyond and brings to you one of the recent achievements of the compliance specialist as a writer.

Sai started his career in 1990 as a practicing lawyer in the Chennai High Court. After ten years as a litigating lawyer, he moved into a Greenfield legal services industry called legal compliance management. Considered as being part of corporate governance, legislative compliance service was in a nascent stage back in 2000. Sixteen years later, Sai is probably one of the pioneers in the business and a go-to person in the compliance industry.

He set up Sand Legal Services Private Limited in 2010. Within four years of incorporation, from zero clients, the company accelerated to work in seventy locations in eleven countries across compliance driven geographies such as North America, Europe, APAC and China other than in almost all 29 States of India. Today, Sand Legal is a name to reckon with as is Sai.

Believe it or not, this busy transactional lawyer is a successful author of fantasy fiction books based on Indian mythology Sai writes his books under the pen name of Vadhan (and so from herein on, we’re going to refer to him as Vadhan for the remainder of this article). It is difficult to associate a busy transactional lawyer dealing with multinational clients handling myriad business laws with fantasy fiction writing but that’s exactly what Vadhan does. It is not just a hobby, writing is Vadhan’s roaring passion. According to him, he is most at peace with himself and those around him when he’s writing. He writes whenever he is not conferencing with his clients or reviewing the work of his team of lawyers. He writes on planes, in airports, at home stretched on his single seater sofa, late at night, early in the morning, just about at any time and any place.

His motivation to write is his willingness and the ability to tell stories. Vadhan has a strong background in Indian mythology. No, he did not read all the scriptures there are, instead his imagination was fired by the elders of his family who filled him with tales of Demi-Gods and valiant kings of India as a growing boy. Funnily, Vadhan’s ultimate transition into a writer happened because of his children. They loved his stories. He created characters for them and it struck him that he should write down the stories. Thus started his first book, Shatru- Kronikles Book 1 which was published in December 2014.

The book has rave reviews, was listed as the editor’s pick in the free press and has done extremely well commercially. In the fantasy fiction genre, Shatru…deals with the concept that by its very nature the universe gravitates towards chaos and the more one sets checks and balances, the more the deviation.

Vadhan gives simple examples to support his theory. All the stuff we buy get into a state of disrepair eventually. The favourite shirt is the first to get damaged, a new car is invariably dented, flowers fade, atoms themselves degenerate. Everything we do to set things right only prolongs a warped life, like a darned shirt or a broken heart. The fantasy element in the book is around the Demi-Gods of Indian literature. The book itself is a fast paced fantasy action thriller and is the first of a four book series.

In September 2016, Ashwin Sanghi, arguably the top mythological thriller writer in India, launched Vadhan’s second book, Agniputr-When Agni First Spoke. Agniputr, Vadhan says, is not part of the Kronikles series. The book hit the racks in the third week of September. A fantasycum- scientific thriller, the story of Agniputr is of course a story of good -v/s- evil but with a difference. It touches its readers emotionally on many levels be it politics, law, quantum science, fantasy, the concept of independence -v/s- freedom, second chances, sacrifices, greed and lust for power. The characters have shades of grey and ultimately their choices determine their very nature.

The book has already hit the bestseller market within one month with national newspapers such as The Hindu, The Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle interviewing Vadhan on the book and on his writing career whereas the New Indian Express and Deccan Herald have listed the book amongst the top new releases from amongst the hundreds of books released during this period. Bloggers have given rave reviews of the book on individual blogs with an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars. Talk to Vadhan about his future in writing and he is very guarded in his words which are shrouded in a secretive smile. He has two completed manuscripts, one for the second book in the Kronikles series and the other a Pharmaceutical law-action thriller which he conceived off while attending the Lex Witness Pharma Summit in 2015! Vadhan is currently writing the third instalment of Kronikles. He is just about to start research on a new series about which he is very excited. He does not reveal what the series is all about but he says it is just about the most amazing topic he has ever worked on so far.

There we leave this lawyer or do we say an author to go about his business of compliance and weaving stories.