The Broken Amoretti - The Background Story

The Broken Amoretti, just released, is my third novel, after The Ekkos Clan (2013) and The Aryabhata Clan (2018). It's co-authored by Aparajita Dutta.

When I started writing seriously, and I was working on my first book The Ekkos Clan, the idea of writing a novel set in Kharagpur, or rather the IIT KGP, where I spent one of the most crucial four years of my life, would often pop up in my mind. I'd stayed in hostel for eight more years before setting my foot on the sprawling campus of IIT KGP in 1992. It's not that the previous hostel life is less important or less memorable to me. In fact, the first six years in hostel in a nondescript place called Purulia - one of the poorest and most barren districts of India, in the western frontier of West Bengal adjoining Jharkhand - played a very important role in my overall learning process. Had I not been to Purulia, I wouldn't have seen a totally contrasting part of the world I had known till then, known a particular disciplined way of life and acclimatized myself to a sort of austerity, all of which created a foundation universal enough to hold and sustain my future experiences from round the world.

When I landed up in KGP, the foundation had already been created, quite firmly I would say. But what made KGP stand out from the previous experiences was perhaps the sudden exposure to India - yes that's what I would like to call it. KGP is a crystallized India, and a part of the world too, to some extent. With the diversities in everything ranging from languages and cultures to ethnicity, social status, political connections, economic background and above all, intellect, KGP is like a vessel boiling a soup with an unending number of ingredients - it was up to me to acquire the taste of it, relish it and use it as a creative tonic. It was the wholesomeness of the experience that had far reaching consequences later, in life and work. Overall, it did have enough ingredients for writing.

Another thing that came to my mind, at the same time, was that writing a novel based on hostel life had already become quite cliched. Enough had been already written about it and there was a beeline of books, both popular and unpopular, in the market. So I was certain that I didn't want to write 'another' college romcom story. But whatever I did, it was also certain that I must write about some unique aspects of the KGP life which I knew would be quite exotic to anyone else.

As I was busy with The Ekkos Clan, I didn't get time to ponder over the KGP based novel. Once done with the first draft of The Ekkos Clan, in late 2010, and having nothing to do till I heard back from someone I'd given the book for a thorough critique, I again got back to my idea about the KGP novel. Though I wanted to expand The Ekkos Clan into a trilogy, I didn't want to immediately write the second installment of it. One thing that I had missed while writing The Ekkos Clan was the scope and space to explore relationships, as it was predominantly a thriller. I decided that I would next venture into a love story, which wouldn't be a run of the mill romance, but would delve deep into various forms of relationships.

The writing of The Ekkos Clan had already made me quite inquisitive about Indian culture, history and mythologies, and my interest in linguistics and the history and evolution of the Indo-European languages lead me to the Greek mythologies. I got intrigued with the fact that despite the wide range of relationships talked about in the Indian and the Greek mythologies, the oldest two in the world, there's a certain relationship which is almost conspicuous by its absence or oblique reference and veiled narration. When it comes to unconventional relationships, the Greek mythologies might be among the most vociferous ones. There too, I didn't find much about it. I became curious. Why was is it so? That apart, I wanted to create a story around, not only that particular relationship, but also all unconventional ones, which are often tabooed in most societies and cultures. I felt all these relationships, which have been silenced across the world for long, should get a voice.

The LGBTQ and "queer" activism has of course given a much needed voice to many people, who still  experience social stigma in may cultures and countries. I wanted to expand the term "queer" to encompass not only the relationships widely discussed in the LGBTQ circles, but also other unconventional ones which too are discussed in hushed voices or totally brushed under the carpets citing religious, cultural or even medical reasons. I strongly felt I should weave a story around relationships which can't be confined to any conventional boundaries.

A line of Gulzar keep on haunting me -

haath se choon ke isse rishton ka ilzaam na do,
sirf ehsas hain yeh, ruh se mehsoos karo,
pyaar ko pyaar hi rahne do, koi naam na do. 

Don't touch it with your hands and accuse it of relationships,
It's only an aura, feel it with your soul -
Let the love be just love, don't give it a name.

I think that's the essence of the story I wanted to weave - love without a name, love that can't be touched, love that can be only felt with your soul. It's not about what is legitimate of what's not. It's all about what your heart yearns for, it's all about what you believe in, it's all about what comprises your consciousness, what gives you your existence, meaning in life.

When I was convinced about the theme of the book, I felt there couldn't be a better place than KGP for the backdrop of my novel. After all, KGP has the atmosphere of universality that's needed to nurture such a grandiose concept.

This is what I wrote in the acknowledgement about KGP:

The IIT life, and of course the place called Prembajar, which adjoins the campus at one end, left so much a mark in my mind that I couldn’t have not written about it, especially when I decided to take up writing in a serious way. Prembajar is not an autobiography or even a story inspired by real incidents. Nevertheless, many characters and incidents would have camouflaged into the narration so well that I myself wouldn’t be able to sieve through the layers of obscurities and identify the real ones.

I started thinking about the book in late 2010 and I started writing it in early 2011. Without any other apt name for the book, I called it Prembajar. In between writing Prembajar I had to also rework the various drafts of The Ekkos Clan, based on the feedback from my editors. Finally I completed the first draft of Prembajar in October 2013, few months after The Ekkos Clan had been released in July 2013.

As the seed thought of Prembajar had come from the Indian and the Greek mythologies, something which had attracted a lot of some academic researches for better analysis and understanding, I felt, I needed an academic side to Prembajar too. It was at this point, immediately after the completion of the first draft of Prembajar in late 2013, that I felt I would need a co-author, from a comparative literature background, who could bring in greater authenticity and make everything about the book appear correct by construction, which, I've no qualms in accepting, I knew I alone wouldn't be able to do.

It could be argued that it's after all a fiction, so why should it be so authentic? And if it's meant to be very authentic then where's the room for creativity and where's the creative license? There's of course a very fine line that an author, I believe, must tread very carefully. Authenticity, I feel, is not an impediment for creativity. Rather, it's the fuel for creativity, the main driving force. Where the scientific inquiry ends, starts the realm of creativity. It's just a tool to extrapolate what's authentic. The believability of the extrapolation or the creative license is a direct function of the authenticity of the facts and figures it draws heavily on.

So I embarked on a task of getting a co-author who would make Prembajar look as authentic as possible.

Luckily I found Aparajita, who was at that time doing her masters in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University. After reading the draft of Prembajar and after a series of long calls between Bangalore and Calcutta she was bought into the project. Thus, in 2014, began the the first rewriting of Prembajar. I soon realized that Aparajita's involvement was adding certain finer nuances and subtleties to the women characters - in their dresses, mannerisms, body languages, reactions, dialogues and above all in their development as characters in the novel - which had been totally missing earlier. Perhaps a woman can better create another woman. As Prembajar turned out to be a women centric novel, it was indeed a great decision to have Aparajita in the project as a co-author.

So, it's indeed a long journey, starting in late 2010. Prembajar, rechristened The Broken Amoretti before publication, is finally getting released in 2019, almost after eight and a half years later.

Few things that we, as authors, kept in mind all along are:

1. Though the book is centered around a very unusual theme, a particular aspect of LGBTQ, it shouldn't sound like activism.
2. It should delve really deep into different shades of relationships, which might be apparently taboo in most cultures, but still beautiful, natural and evocative.
3. The book should be the voice of the many people who have fostered, silently, unusual relationships throughout their lives, don't think like everyone else in the world, but still believe strongly in pure love.
4. The book, though set against the backdrop of the IIT Kharagpur campus, should be universal enough to alleviate it from being another college romcom.
5. The book should create new standard in conventional romcom novels, breaking the norms and going deeper into the gloss candy college romance.

All these are very lofty things and we attempted each of these to the best of our capabilities. How much we've been successful, only time will tell.

There's also a parallel sub-story in the book about the cut throat tech-world of the Bay Area, where law suites are the norm of the day and companies thrive by killing competitions through unscrupulous means.