This book is about a boy, Daman, his girlfriend, Avni, and the girl he dreams about every night. But this is no ordinary dream. It’s more a nightmare, one that takes him back to a car crash 18 months ago. One that he was in with a girl, Shreyasi, who he sees dying, but who, everyone tells him, has survived and left the country soon after.

Then she returns, hell-bent on becoming Daman’s muse, ready to go to any lengths to make life easy for Daman. Often spine-chillingly easy....

t2 caught up with the 29-year-old Mumbai-based author over the phone, having enjoyed an advance copy of his book No. 13, The Girl of my Dreams.

The Girl of my Dreams is a very scary character. Which space in your head was she born out of?

I think we all have a dark side and whenever a break-up happens, we start thinking of the worst things to do to our ex, though it’s rarely acted out. I too had fantasies of the kind, when I had started off in the dating game and was getting dumped by girls left, right and centre! I’d want to destroy that person’s life. All I’d actually do was remove her from my Facebook friend list (laughs). So dramatic!

Would you be as twisted as Shreyasi then?

I’d be a little bit of Shreyasi and a little bit of Daman as well. Scared and not sure what’s happening and always trying to talk it out. But, like Shreyasi, I’d not want to get out of a fantasy.

You wanted to venture out of your comfort zone, romance, by writing this thriller?

I had tried and failed at writing thrillers earlier, and those half-finished stories remain with me. I’ve tried writing fantasy as well, but I haven’t reached that level of writing required to make fantasy believable and relatable, which is important to me. It’s very hard to sell a book to a reader when they can’t imagine it in their head and for that you need more control over your language. I’m trying to get there and  am gradually getting there, but I’m still not there.

The blood and gore on the first page as you describe the accident is unbelievable! How emotionally charged were you while writing that?

Since it’s a thriller, it had to start with a bang. When I first read the page I enjoyed it, happy that the result was so graphic. When Thomas Harris writes Hannibal Lecter, or when we watch heads get lopped off in Game of Thrones, you find the gore very interesting. I wanted it to be like that. When I was writing it I kept going back to news articles of accidents where the images are always blurred but the words paint a picture in your head.

Does Daman, at any point, actually fall for Shreyasi? Who would you pick if you were Daman?

There was this part edited out of the book where Daman actively starts thinking of going with Shreyasi. But while his falling for Shreyasi was an act, there is a point in everyone’s life when you romanticise the idea of such a person. Like how girls romanticise the unhealthy idea of dating a bad boy. Daman also realises that in the course of the story that Shreyasi might be crazy but, Avni is equally crazy. Honestly, till the time Avni didn’t react in a crazy manner [where she throws Daman’s rival author, Karthik Kapoor, down a flight of stairs] I’d choose Shreyasi. After that I’d choose Avni.

Daman is an author in the book. So is this autobiographical?

Complete fiction. However, while the travails Daman faces in the publishing industry haven’t happened to me, it’s not a very unbelievable situation. Like, if I were a shrewd editor, I’d try to do something like what Jayanti did (in the book Daman’s publisher Jayanti completely changes the characteristic features of the Shreyasi he writes about). If I were to find a promising author and I’d see the book wasn’t commercial enough, I’d try make it that. But all in all, I don’t think it happens that much because there’s no sure-shot mantras to success in the Indian publishing industry. You can’t really predict what will work and what won’t.

The Girl of my Dreams is a psycho. Was it easy writing her?

Whenever I write, I don’t try and think that a guy behaves like this and a girl behaves like that. I think men and women react in pretty much the same way, it just manifests itself differently. And when I was writing the book I admit being in a dilemma over making the stalker a guy or a girl. Making a guy a creepy stalker would be easy but it’s also done very often. So I decided to make the girl the creep.
 
Chetan Bhagat and Ravinder Singh have written in the female voice in their latest books, and you’ve done that before in Someone Like You...

It’s been done thousands of times by many authors. I think the characters in my books behave irrespective of gender. My last book (Our Impossible Love) talks about how the entire concept of gender is irrelevant. We just make it out that girls react absolutely differently from men. But if a woman is insecure about her body, guys too are.  

The book is about how dangerously little one knows of love. How much do you know of love?

It’s not as if I’ve been through something that Daman has been through, but then I’ve had exes who were crazy as well, and done stuff. I’ve thought of doing stuff that’s extremely crazy but I’ve not done it. So, it was about reaching that dark place inside you and thinking that if you could get away with anything, what would you do to your ex.

You got married in March. What is your wife Avantika’s feedback on the book?

She wanted to get over with the book! (Laughs) She actually took a lot of time reading the book because it reminded her of a crazy stalker roommate. She’d read a little bit and then feel very disturbed.
 
What’s next?

I don’t know how to define my next book. Obviously there will be a central love story, which starts in 1999 and ends in 2017. It will be a two- to three-book thing and will be the coming-of-age story of a couple as the world around them changes. It will be written in episodes, which I hope will transport the reader back in time. It’ll release some time in the middle of next year.

Riddhima Khanna
The silliest/craziest thing I did after a break-up is... Tell us at t2@abp.in. We’ll keep you anonymous if you want