Sonny Punj

Ghazni's Gold Sonny Punj

Kris Hamsun, Professional Diver and Project Manager on offshore Oil & Gas projects, suffers occasionally from memory lapses for brief moments, while submerged for extended periods. Required to obtain fresh Diver certification for himself for a major project in the Indian Ocean region, he sails through the certification, but during the process comes in contact with the delectable Susan Brent, Professor of Psychology, who helps him explore the cause of his various drift events while diving. Their budding romance blossoms into a long term future relationship and the explorations they initiate on his drifts, leads Kris to a journey back in time, one thousand years, to an era unmatched in aggression, when seventeen full fledged invasions were conducted into India, in a compressed time span of twenty years, by a GHAZNI based Marauder. Even the repeated VIKING incursions into England, which occurred roughly around the same time, pale in comparison, both in the frequency and the shear numbers, perhaps a hundred fold and more with Ghazni's armies exceeding a hundred thousand invaders in each raid, in comparison to Viking incursions numbering in the mere thousand odd warriors. Kris and a group of dive buddies undertake a risky night time wreck recovery dive operation, befitting their Nordic ancestory, which results in the recovery of tons of gold briquettes valued at a billion plus dollars, while covertly evading the intense scrutiny of Ghazni's successors still marauding in the region. In this adventure they are guided by one Raghu, Kris's mentor, an eye witness to the events of that tumultuous period, a millennium ago, and Kris's predecessor in a previous incarnation. Charged by his guru, with the preservation from Ghazni's clutches of that particular stash of gold, and also with its recovery and subsequent use for benefiting successive generations of his country men, Raghu masterfully executed the tasks assigned to him, culminating in Kris's successful treasure haul after a lapse of an unexpected thousand years. Underlying themes threading through the story include the concept of reincarnation and its lack of acceptance in fields which stand to benefit from its adoption, such a Psychological treatment of certain mentally disturbed persons, possibly suffering from carry over effects of previous lifetimes. As also the drastic improvement in historical studies benefiting from eye witness accounts of important events such as battles, etc . An analysis of previously unknown benefits of the practice of Yoga, particularly Tantric Yoga is included in the context of Kris's application of these arts in pursuit of his treasure hunt.