One Hundred Years of Solitude: Sanskrit-speaking Netflix character refreshes García's India connection

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who died at the age of 87 in Mexico City in 2014, may not have been a learnet in any of the Indian languages but was no stranger to the South Asian country rich in literature.

A Sanskrit-speaking character in the series has sparked the fresh speculations of Gabo's connection with India, where he visited in 1983 and was introduced to then prime minister and a giant politician, Indira Gandhi.

Melquíades used classical Indo-Aryan language to write the prophecy which was listed on the parchment in a script that resembles a laundry hanging on a line.

Gabo, the affectionate name for the legendary novelist, accompanied then Cuban president and a revolutionary, Fiden Castro to India.

As reports claim, Gabo was reluctant to interrupt Castro's disembarkment protocols and that led Gandhi marching up to the aircraft in search for the novelist upon his arrival in India.

Gandhi asked, "Where is Garcia Marquez?" "From that time on, we were inseparable," Gabo said as quoted by Firstpost.

Gabo, who had also visited India along with his family in 1979, spent an afternoon on that tour with books at a bookstore in Delhi's popular Khan Market.

Gabo's love for India was quite palpable in India's former external affairs minister, late Natwar Singh's claim that the Colombian writer had actually named his love child after Indira, who was then the most powerful, popular and maverick leader of the country.

"In the early 1990, Marquez had a secret affair with Susana Cato, 'a writer and journalist who worked with Garcia Marquez'. Cato gave birth to a daughter, whom the parents’ named Indira," said Singh in an article for The Sunday Guardian.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, meanwhile, has drawn appreciation from the Colombian audience, who were highly protective of the novel.

The novel, which deals with magic realism, narrates the 100-year story of a mythical town named Macondo and its founders, José Arcadio Buendía and his wife Úrsula Iguarán and their descendants.

"I was completely skeptical. This book means so much to me, how on earth do you translate it into a series?" said 34-year-old English teacher Irene Arenas said as quoted by The Guardian.

"But it overwhelmed me with its beauty. I watched every episode in two days, I cried several times, and I’ve just gone and bought the book again."

It was "one of the most ambitious productions in Latin American history" for Netflix to package the entire novel into 16 episodes across two seasons with the first already streaming on the popular streaming platform.

Laura Mora and Alex García López, directors of the first part of the series, reveal the creative process and challenges of directing One Hundred Years of Solitude, the series based on Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece, which premiered on Netflix on December 11, 2024.

"It's about living up to something that will always be bigger than all of us. We worked hard to build that particularity that has a distinct quality that embodies the Caribbean and encompasses the tropics," says Laura Mora.

"We accomplished something I believe has never been done in Latin America, something that isn’t just for Colombia or Latin America but for the whole world," says Alex García Lopez.

Married against their parents' wishes, cousins José Arcadio Buendía and Úrsula Iguarán leave their village behind and embark on a long journey in search of a new home. Accompanied by friends and adventurers, their journey culminates with the founding of a utopian town on the banks of a river of prehistoric stones that they baptize Macondo.

Several generations of the Buendía lineage will mark the future of this mythical town, tormented by madness, impossible loves, a bloody and absurd war, and the fear of a terrible curse that condemns them, without hope, to one hundred years of solitude.

Published in 1967, One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the emblematic works of Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Considered a masterpiece of Spanish-American and universal literature and receiving enormous popular acclaim, it has sold more than 50 million copies and has been translated into more than 40 languages.