I dreaded writing essays in school. It is quite ironical that I do this for a living now!” says Sudeep Nagarkar, laughing. Starting off by penning everyday events in his personal diary, Sudeep grew fond of writing. At first, he middled between work and writing, but when his books started doing well, he wanted to dedicate more time to them and he quit his job. The author has published eight novels already and is in the city to launch his latest, Our Story Needs No Filter.
Talking about the plot of Our Story…, Sudeep shares, “The story is set in a socio-political milieu. It is about the lives of university students. The plot revolves around student politics, protests and more — there is also a contemporary tale of love and friendship.”
Book cover
Elaborating more, he adds, “This story was inspired by the JNU protests. There are many untold stories of the students studying in such big universities. In many institutions, although they tell that they are against casteism, pseudo-secular manipulation on the students keeps happening. They are indeed separating students on the basis of caste or during election to get votes. The lead character Raghu and his love with Ruhi, gets caught in the campus politics. Although there are a lot of fictional elements, there is also a deep message that comes with it, like my other books.”
Stating that with the advancement of technology results in relationships losing the real essence, Sudeep says, “Youngsters are losing the essence of the love in relationships. Since they are the backbone of our country and economy, they need to know how people and relationships work.” The book, which has about 20 chapters, contains many twists to keep the readers engaged as well.
When asked if he would let the book be incorporated into a film, the writer shares, “There are a lot of movies made from the books and most of them tend to lose the proper plot of the storyline and the originality. If a director wants to genuinely use my story and do justice to it, I am up for it. Only when the writer and director work together in a movie, the movie and the book would be similar.”
Talking about his method of writing, Sudeep responds, “There is no big secret. I just don’t take breaks in the middle. I would like to work at a stretch without a break as I don’t want to miss the flow. Also, I take readers’ comments into account. I loved writing a lot of shayaris, (Hindi verses) in my stories to add a bit of poetry, but the readers in the south couldn’t relate much to it; now I don’t.”
To the belief that all stories have a happy ending, Sudeep concludes, “I don’t know if every ending can be happy... some are not. But what I do want my readers to believe is that every person comes into our life to play a role. If they leave, we just need to treasure their memories and take everything positively. So every story of mine has some positivity, so that youngsters learn to think that way.”
