4 GOODLIFE
BOOKS
DURJOY DATTA ON HIS NEW NOVEL AND
THE PERKS AND PITFALLS OF SOCIAL MEDIA
D
urjoy Datta is
perhaps one of the
most self-aware
young authors of our
generation who isn’t
afraid to call a spade
a spade. Riding high on the
launch of his new book Wish I
Could Tell You, the author has
delivered another novel that has
love at its crux but is a far
departure from the
quintessential boy-meets-girl
trope.
Set against the backdrop of a
company that crowdfunds for
cases that are in need of money
through social media, the author
manages to touch upon various
social aspects of life that we are
affected by. Cast, poverty, gender
roles are topics that get a nod
from the prolific author who has
a massive following in this
country.
Amidst the hullabaloo of a
wedding that the author was
attending in Jaipur, we managed
to catch him for a brief chat over
phone about the book and what’s
keeping him going now!
Excerpts...
Tell us about the birth of the
book Wish I Could Tell You...
The germ of the idea came from
the fact that once I had a child,
Facebook and other social
platforms started showing me
ads based on my searches. I saw a
lot of posts from crowd-funding
websites that wanted a child to be
saved, someone with grave
illness and more. They were
trying to gather people who
would be willing to donate for the
cause. I mean it just requires
2,000-3,000 people coming
together to fund an entire liver
transplant! While on Twitter, a
hate-filled tweet will get a
thousand retweets. This sharp
contrast really caught my eye
and piqued my interest. So that’s
where the germ came from —
what if I set my story in a
crowdfunding company and then
touched upon multiple ideas that
this book encompasses.
Was there ever a fear of not
being understood while you
were in the process of
penning this non-linear
narrative?
There is a major incident that
happens a little beyond the
midway of the book. And there
was that risk of people not
following the storyline. Of course
there was a fear but that was a
decision that I had willingly
made and the book couldn’t have
been written in any other way. I
couldn’t have written any other
way!
And what about fear around
building a character that
people won’t like, in this case,
Anusha?
If this book had been just about
Anusha, it would have been a
way bigger risk but because
there is another character that
plays foil to her so aptly, the risk
somehow seemed less daunting.
Durjoy Datta
Plus, when Anusha hates on
things, they are things we have
all hated on. I was sure that some
parts of her will be relatable to
everyone.
Are there any milestones in
your personal life that affected
your writing style?
I can’t sense it in a very obvious
way for now but I feel one
obvious impact is that if I were to
write older characters now, I
would write them better. Which
also means that if I were to write
younger characters, I would
perhaps falter. This is a
difference that I can legitimately
say has occurred but other than
that, I don’t think there is much.
There were a lot of social
issues that were addressed in
this book — caste, poverty,
mental health. Was that, too,
done consciously?
I feel like the book would have
been incomplete had those things
not been there. Also, I didn’t want
to force it upon my readers.
Moreover, I feel, to be able to talk
about the things that you just
mentioned, one would have to
have a lot more knowledge than I
possess. I could have never said
that ‘Okay, I am going to write
about the issues’. I could only tell
a story and touch upon these
issues and tell you what I feel
about them. That is what I have
tried to do in the past as well.
For example, The Boy Who
Lived was clearly about how a
Hindu family reacts to a Muslim
family and vice versa. But the
book was never about that, in it’s
THE TELEGRAPH WEDNESDAY 30 OCTOBER 2019
Gautam’s parents, in the book,
define helicopter parenting,
insisting upon dropping him to
the metro on his first day at
work. Are you a similar
parent?
Whatever I do, I don’t think I
would ever be able to match up to
my parents. Bengali parents are
like that. It’s not helicopter
parenting per se but they just are
very scared for their kids.
Generally, boys tend to be more
careless so perhaps that’s why
they obsess a little more. Of
course, I would never match it to
that level but I do see traits of it in
myself. I am definitely more
paranoid about Rayna (daughter)
than Avantika (Mohan, wife) is.
Having written about romance
for over a decade, with the
advent of technology in every
sphere, have you seen any
marked difference in the
evolution of modern romance?
This is something that has scared
me honestly because when I am
writing a love story, I might get
these things wrong. However,
technology has perhaps changed
the process of it but the basic crux
of the emotion remains the same.
In The Boy Who Lived, I have
written about characters that are
much younger to me in age.
But it is my imaginative world
so I can conveniently create one
where the rules of technology
don’t apply. I don’t think I would
be able to mimic how a young
person navigates love now. If I
Watching on Netflix: The
Family Man was quite engaging.
essence the book was still Reading now: Anarchy by
about the boy who loved. William Dalrymple
Fitness app: Default Samsung
What are your thoughts on app
the various Social media Fave city: I love staying at home
platforms available to us? so right now Dubai is my fave
I have realised that I am not a city!
Twitter person. I do scroll
Fave restaurant in India:
through my timeline there but
it comes across as a largely 6 Ballygunge Place in Calcutta
negative space. I may not because that’s where my
interact with people there but I reception food came from!
do see how people interact Most-used app: Instagram
with each other there and it’s Last watched movie: War
just the worst. Social media as
a whole has two sides to it.
While a person getting sucked
into it too much will
experience its negativities,
some people also manage to
find a sense of community
online. One can get to talk
about things that one
otherwise wouldn’t, with their
immediate friends and family.
It is sometimes so much easier
to talk about your troubles to
someone online, who is
perhaps experiencing the
same, as it isn’t offline.
Also, there might be people
willing to help but not know
how to. Social media facilitates
that sense of community,
which is an obvious good thing
about it. I do feel that we
exaggerate the negatives of it
and not speak about the
positives at all. Obviously, I am
not talking about privacy
issues and how these big Wish I Could Tell You; Penguin
corporations operate. So while India; Rs 199
there are people getting
negatively impacted, there are
people getting positively
impacted as well.
XXCE
were to do that, I would have to
create a certain world where
different rules exist. A very
simple trope would be to make my
protagonist not believe in the
concept of dating apps (laughs!).
There are more able writers who
will know this universe better
and will therefore pen this
universe better as well.
So coming back, I do feel
modern love has changed and
kids these days are able to deal
with a lot of things more maturely
than we did. They are more sure
of themselves or are trying to be
more sure of what they want.
Earlier, we used to just accept and
compromise but youngsters now
feel the need to be more sure of
themselves before getting into a
relationship or getting out of one.
What is your writing regimen
like?
I write every day because I feel
like I would otherwise fall off the
wagon and getting back up is very
difficult. Sticking to a writing
schedule has become hard, ever
since Rayna came in but I still try
to hit a particular number of word
count because that really helps in
having a sense of how much you
have achieved in the day.
I do play music to set the mood
for what I am writing but it’s not
absolutely compulsory. So you
can say that I have no quirks
when it comes to writing. I just
open my laptop and go at it!
Which one would you choose
between writing a book and
writing for television?
Writing a book is always more fun
than writing a television show
because in the latter, there are a
lot of external constraints like
production costs and egos to
pander to. Whereas when you are
writing a book, you can
completely let loose. I mean TV
writing sure is fun in its own way
but writing a book is definitely
better.
Do you read the works of your
peers and try and check out
competition?
I do read my contemporaries
more out of curiosity and not
competition really. It’s not like if
someone is reading another
author’s book, that would lessen
the chance of them picking up my
book but nevertheless.
I do get obsessed with a writer
for certain periods of time and I
unintentionally start mimicking
them when I sit down to write.
And then I will need to have the
book around to serve as a guide!
However, each draft starts
looking different than the other,
with the final draft finally
sounding like me!
Any plans of completely
diverting from the genre of
romance and experimenting
elsewhere?
My last few books have me
straying from the quintessential
romance by introducing newer
themes but it’s just easier to sell
the book if a romance author
publishes another romance novel.
There might be a certain element
of love in everything I write but
yes, I will explore various other
topics.
Shrestha Saha