In bestselling thriller novelist Salil Desai’s latest offering, 206 Bones, Inspector Saralkar returns to solve another murder mystery. The sharp sleuth, who has enjoyed a loyal following since Killing Ashish Karve, Desai’s first novel in the series, discovers human remains beneath a redeveloped family home. But there is more to the case, as Saralkar — along with his associates Motkar and Zirpe — gets embroiled in a high-profile murder-suicide investigation.
The novel’s setting also becomes more challenging as Desai, known for books such as 3 and a Half Murders and The Murder of Sonia Raikkonen, returns to domestic turf. He said: “The first novel in my Inspector Saralkar series was set within a domestic space, and after changing ‘universes’ in each subsequent novel, with 206 Bones I have returned to a family setting once again.”
Offering further context, he added: “Families are idealised all over the world, and particularly so in India. But, much like what Leo Tolstoy wrote about each unhappy family being unhappy in its own way, I believe all families are also weird in their own distinct ways. That weirdness lies beneath an appearance of normalcy. What, then, turns a family from normal to abnormal? A bruising event? A violent brush with the outside world? Or something internal? And what happens after that? Does the weirdness take over, and how does it manifest itself? Who does it implicate, and how far does the chain of complicity extend? Or is the family itself as much a victim? Hence, I felt an intimate, upper-middle-class setting would be perfect for unravelling an un-cosy mystery — beginning with the discovery of human remains when a bungalow is demolished for redevelopment.”
Salil Desa
The novel engages deeply with themes of inherited guilt and long-suppressed family secrets. To what extent was he interested in examining how private histories intersect with public justice?
“Murder or crime is by definition a private act, which becomes the subject of public justice, the very moment it is committed. Long, long ago, humankind realised that to let individuals settle crime scores between themselves is a recipe for disaster. In 206 Bones, the theme I have dealt with is how a crime like murder taints everyone around, simply by association, starting with the family. But a family does not live in a vacuum; it is surrounded by relatives, friends, acquaintances, neighbours, people who work for and with them. Moreover, the association by guilt extends to generations and embeds itself into the family histories and memories of all those people who have had some advertent or inadvertent link/connection to the murder — witnesses, suspects, strangers, just about anyone, who happened to be in the ambit,” said Desai informing that though his novels are set in Pune, he attempts to capture the moral, cultural, social, existential, attitudinal vibe and compass of the city and its people in my narratives.
With 206 Bones, where the plot spans 40-50 years, Desai gets the scope to dwell on the remarkable transformation that has occurred in Pune. Elaborating on assessing the city that he was born in, the novelist said: “What I have done in 206 Bones is to show that this loss of innocence and change in the moral landscape of the city began much earlier, before we even became aware of it. The very fact that a buried skeleton is unearthed when a bungalow is demolished to make way for a posh apartment building is, in a way, symbolic that the rot goes way into the past.”
With a background in screenwriting, his narratives are anchored in visual storytelling. In fact, his Inspector Saralkar series is being adapted as a series on a popular OTT platform.
Talking about his writing process, Desai, an alumnus of Film & Television Institute of India, said: “I started writing at a time when all that mattered was putting words on a page, whether I chose to write a story or a poem, a play or an article. The same thing happened when I first attempted to write a short film. I assumed it is much the same as writing a play. So, I became a bit of an all-rounder as a writer fairly early on, right from college. By the time I applied for FTII in 2005, I had dabbled in all forms of writing — fiction and non-fiction, been published in newspapers and magazines and had had over a decade-long corporate career, and then become a maker of management and corporate films.”
He had more to say about screenwriting: “I still don’t understand how anyone can be a screenwriter without basically being a narrative writer. I must admit, though that the biggest influence that screenwriting has had on my novel writing is the use of parallel tracks and structuring my stories in the form of tight scenes and sequences, which is extremely effective in making narrative fiction closer to visual storytelling.”