English Literature – Articles ☆ After ‘Manifest’, Here’s My Manifesto for the Next Binge-Worthy Indian Fantasy Saga ☆ Shri Jagat Singh Bisht ☆

Shri Jagat Singh Bisht

(Master Teacher: Happiness & Well-Being, Laughter Yoga Master Trainer, Author, Blogger, Educator, and Speaker.)

Authored six books on happiness: Cultivating Happiness, Nirvana – The Highest Happiness, Meditate Like the Buddha, Mission Happiness, A Flourishing Life, and The Little Book of Happiness. He served in a bank for thirty-five years and has been propagating happiness and well-being among people for the past twenty years. He is on a mission – Mission Happiness!

🌌 After ‘Manifest’, Here’s My Manifesto for the Next Binge-Worthy Indian Fantasy Saga 🌌

I did something that would make even the most devout couch potato raise an eyebrow. I just finished watching Manifest on Netflix. Not an episode, not a season, but all four seasons, sixty-two episodes, back to back—like a determined yogi on a tapasya, except my tapasya involved popcorn, tea, and an extraordinary level of commitment to my sofa. I think I’ve not only broken all my previous records of screen-watching but have likely secured a spot in the Guinness Book of Personal Excesses.

Now, Manifest, for the uninitiated, is a heady concoction of mystery, suspense, thrill, romance, supernatural twists, and generous sprinkles of high-voltage drama. It tells the story of Flight 828, which disappears mid-air and reappears five and a half years later, leaving its passengers miraculously unaged and understandably confused. What follows is an intense rollercoaster of callings, divine signals, ancient prophecies, biblical references, government conspiracies, and enough emotional upheaval to require a seatbelt even on your couch.

You remain hooked, booked, and spooked, all at once. Right till the final episode. And after that? The mystery still lingers, much like the memory of a strange dream or the taste of that mysterious achar your nani used to make.

But Let’s Talk About the Overdose

Here’s where I must play the fair critic. While Manifest does keep you engaged like a child listening to ghost stories under a blanket, it sometimes overdoes the biblical mythology. Noah’s Ark. Apocalypse. Day of Judgement. Repetitive murmurs of redemption and salvation. After a point, I began to wonder if the writers had a private WhatsApp group titled “Heavenly Plotlines Only.”

Which got me thinking—why hasn’t anyone made something like this based on our own Hindu mythology?

Picture This: An Indian Manifest

Imagine a mysterious flight crash—not unlike the tragic Air India crash in Mumbai—except the passengers mysteriously survive and reappear twenty years later at the very same spot, unaged and unaware of where time went.

Only this time, instead of an angelic voice whispering divine instructions, a modern-day Hanuman enters the scene. Or perhaps Ashwatthama, still cursed and wandering, appears at the crash site muttering cryptic Sanskrit that Google Translate can’t handle.

The plot could elegantly unravel across the four Yugas, stretching back to Satyuga and flashing forward to Kaliyuga with equal ease. Characters could be avatars in disguise—office-goers by day, Vishnu’s messengers by night. Some could have supernatural memory, like Trikaldrishti, able to see past, present and future in a jiffy (a handy skill for solving cliffhangers). A humble tea-seller might turn out to be Narada, orchestrating cosmic drama with a grin.

You could have rakshasas in three-piece suits, capable of morphing into anyone from your HR manager to your favourite cousin. Entire episodes could unfold in the metaphysical corridors of Mount Meru or the digitised archives of Akashic Records, now available in cloud storage.

Add to this the diversity of our terrain—snowy peaks, desert forts, temple towns, monsoon-soaked ghats—and the infinite emotional bandwidth of Indian families, and you have a mythic thriller-meets-family-drama that can run for ten seasons and still leave audiences asking, “Phir kya hua?”

The Canvas is Limitless

Where else in the world mythology will you find a bridge built by monkeys, a charioteer offering a cosmic lecture mid-battle, and gods who come in ten versions, each with unique personality quirks?

A series like this could dive into karma, illusion, reincarnation, leela, and that ever-elusive concept of moksha, all wrapped in a plot that makes viewers think deeply and binge happily.

Let the best creative minds, writers with a dash of madness and vision, take up this challenge. Let the production houses with grand budgets and grander imagination step up. And please, someone cast Naseeruddin Shah as a time-travelling rishi—because, frankly, who else can pull it off?

Final Boarding Call

As I slowly emerge from the rabbit hole that was Manifest, my heart (and remote) longs for the next epic binge. I’ve had my fill of apocalyptic plagues and biblical visions—now I want cosmic snakes, flying chariots, shape-shifting warriors, and dialogues that begin with “In the age of Treta Yuga…”

So, dear OTT platforms and myth-loving creatives, consider this your calling (pun intended). It’s time for a homegrown mystery saga that draws from our timeless myths but wears a modern trench coat.

Till then, I’ll be here, sipping chai and imagining what Hanuman would make of in-flight turbulence.