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| Author Deepak Bohra and film-maker Ashok Vishwanathan at the book launch |
IITians might, but it’s not every day that an army officer tries his hand at romantic comedy. Captain Deepak Bohra has, that too with his first book, Crazy Bloody Thing LOV.
The novel, partly inspired by the young captain’s circle of friends, was launched at Press Club on Friday by film-maker Ashok Vishwanathan, who remarked on the “generosity with which the characters had been drawn” and “the spontaneity of the humour”.
The story revolves around three boys and three girls who meet at an All India Debating Talent Hunt.
So how is the story different from IIT fiction? The protagonist is an army officer. What he and his new acquaintances do in the 72 hours they spend at the competition forms the crux of the book.
The author, who is “not much of a reader”, revealed that he was already considering two “unofficial offers” to film the story. And what has “lov” got to do with it? “Love makes you do a lot of crazy things. And people in the army use the word ‘bloody’,” he said.
The “e” was dropped from “love” for astrological reasons cited by the Delhi-based Srishti Publishers. Fiction is changing beyond recognition.
Bookful of characters
Another pro and more fiction spread over a few hours of action. Sampurna Chattarji, and that’s how she spells her surname, was known as a children’s author. With her new novel Rupture, launched at the Oxford Bookstore on May 28, she has crossed over to adult literature. Chattarji, who was born in Ethiopia, grew up in Darjeeling, graduated from Lady Sriram and worked in J Walter Thomson in Calcutta and Mumbai, had a “pedestrian reason” for writing the novel.
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| Sampurna Chattarji reads extracts from her book. Pictures by Anindya Shankar Ray; (below) a shot of the Dhakuria Lake by Arun Ganguly. |
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“Publishers told me to write a novel before they would look at my short stories. So it happened.” Over five cities with nine characters in the course of 24 hours.
Ruchir Joshi, who moderated the show and who hadn’t read the book, called it a “finely crafted machine” as it dealt deftly with so many characters “in a linear progression”.
Conflict writing
Conflict writing in a fictional form is like trying to spice up a fiery hot rogan josh. But that’s what Anna De Vaul taught a handful of students in a workshop at the Seagull Foundation for the Arts. She showed snaps of Vietnam, of the war fought in the 60s that polarised the world into the US and anti-US camps.
Anna had taken these pictures while she was on a study tour. She had thousands of stories to narrate, like the one about a man from south Vietnam who acted as a mole for the US army.
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| Anna De Vaul |
“It’s tough trying to get the Vietnamese to talk on the war, particularly for an American like me. I have often had to say I am from Canada to win their trust,” said Anna.
Lake view
This was the shortest book launch ever. All over within 30 minutes, a book of photographs on the Dhakuria lake — Lures of the Lake , A Visual Journey Around Rabindra Sarobar by Arun Ganguly — was launched in Starmark.
Actor and wild-life enthusiast Sabyasachi Chakrabarty was present. There was an audio-visual presentation of the snapshots that had captured the lake in its myriad moods.
