Sharath Komarraju: From passion to profession

Born in Warangal, Sharath Komarraju moved to New Zealand with his parents back in 1985. And when he got a job with an IT company in Bengaluru, he shifted base in 2011. Even though he worked from morning till evening, he found he had a lot free time.

Sharath says, “I was living alone and I had to pick a hobby; it was either photography — but I couldn’t afford a tripod or camera — or writing.”

And since he already had a laptop provided by the company, writing it was.

Sharath’s latest book Nari is set in city’s Banjara Hills and is a story about Ramya Tirthankar, wife of a retired Army man, and their 17-year-old servant Nari, who accuses the family of rape. It doesn’t just end there... the family too file a rape claim against the servant.

“I felt Nari is relevant today. The story needed an urban setting, so I decided to go with Hyderabad. When it came to the research, I read a few books on rape, and the theories that abound on the psychology of a sexual abuser. I also read widely about the human sexual condition in general — the nature of sexual desire, the social scripts that dictate mating behaviour, monogamy etc.,” says Sharath, who, like most of his other books, took only six months to finish this one. “I began to write seriously in 2008, the same year I graduated from college. I wrote and finished my first novel in the same year. I enjoyed myself so much that I decided I would do everything in my power to become a full-time writer. By late 2013, I’d been managing both IT and writing, and it was time to give up one. So I gave up my IT career,” says Sharath, who has been writing for seven years.

His first published book, Murder in Amaravati, was long-listed for the Commonwealth Book Prize (2013). So far, he has written 14 books, including one non-fiction; eight of the books have been published and three of them never will.

“I don’t think those books are good enough, the first three. I can self-publish them, but then nobody might read them except me,” he says.

“When I started writing I was 23, so I never asked anyone whether I should continue because I knew they would tell me to enroll in a course or give it up because I was young,” says Sharath, who started off writing two hours everyday.

“Earlier, I would write 1,000 words per day, now the target is 3,000-4,000 words. It has become easier to write, but there is more pressure to write a compelling story. I still haven’t enrolled in any writing course, but I do read a lot and I also conduct writing workshops in Bengaluru,” he says. His next book, The Crows of Agra, a historical murder mystery, is scheduled to release in a few months.