#Talkto Atharva Pandit 😲Find out the 3 missing sisters!

@authorsonali · 7mo ago · 1:06

Hello and good evening everyone. Firstly I would like to wish you all a very happy Sunday and welcome to today's super interesting conversation with Atharva Pandit. Before we directly begin the conversation, firstly I would like to take a moment to introduce him to our audience. Atharva is a writer based in Mumbai. His writings have been appeared in The Wire and the Economic and Political weekly among other publications. He was the 2021 South Asia Speaks fellow for fiction and Ruda is his first novel

@atharvapandit · 7mo ago · 2:05

And I've always believed that reading is where all writers start their writing journey. So reading everything that you can get your hands on is the best education that a writer can ever receive. So I've been reading since childhood. And that sort of does something to your imagination, right? It makes your creative faculties jog. And then what happens is that you realize that you too have perhaps stories to tell

@authorsonali · 7mo ago · 1:27

So yeah, talking about your book, firstly, I wish you congratulations on your very first novel. And since we know your book ruda has been written or uplifted from a very real incident. So can you focus a bit or throw a spotlight on what incident inspired you to write this particular book? And how did that real life incident shape the entire scenario? The story, the characters in your book?

@atharvapandit · 7mo ago · 1:52

In a way, directly or indirectly. So there were a lot of emotions, and they developed over the course of years that I spent writing and thinking about Hurda

@authorsonali · 7mo ago · 1:11

So by this, what message or what is the key element of discussion that you want to highlight and hope that readers take away from this aspect of your novel? And what can readers expect from the story? Obviously not giving any spoilers, but a brief ideation that readers can expect, like when they pick up the book, this is something that they will come to know. And the gripping line, the storytelling, the way you have taken the book ahead with the characters

@atharvapandit · 7mo ago · 2:12

Like I said, you try and tell a story and you try and inject your experience in that story through those characters. So it's a multiple character novel in the sense that it doesn't have a single protagonist. There is a protagonist, but it's not as if only his perspective has been considered. There are several perspectives and there are several storytelling methods which are applied. And I hope they create the effect that I wanted them to create

@authorsonali · 7mo ago · 1:20

Absolutely true. Atharva reading is a very subjective you know, every person has a different approach, and every reader who reads the book interprets the story, the characters, the description in his or her own way and the way he or she perceives. So completely with you on that. And yes, absolutely true. You know, they also play a part in making the story towards a better approach, because when readers read, they share their different perspectives. So, yeah, completely with you on that

@atharvapandit · 7mo ago · 2:13

So I just took stuff from life, the way people talk to each other, because sometimes the way people talk to each other also is very funny, even if they don't mean it to be very funny. Right. But yeah, that served as sort of an inspiration or a technique to me. And I just looked at things that happen in life through conversations or events or how people react to certain situations, and I just put that in the book. Yeah

@authorsonali · 7mo ago · 0:57

Okay, so since your book Around Three Sisters, which relates to women, okay, so the three Sisters, Anisha, Sansita and Priyanka, they play a very central role in your story. So how do they reflect women in India or how do their experiences spotlights on the women of India in any aspect, in any form? And by them, what is the message that you want to convey to the people, to the readers out there?

@atharvapandit · 7mo ago · 2:23

And that crime and what happened to them was something that I've been thinking about for the past ten odd years, since 2013, about the lives of these three sisters and about our ability to forget the fact that there were once three sisters with three distinct inner lives. So I was determined for myself not to forget about them, which is perhaps one of the reasons why I ended up writing this book

@authorsonali · 7mo ago · 1:39

I liked the approach. I am very soon going to read the entire book. So now, talking about a book, we talked about the story, we talked about characters, how you wrote the book about three sisters. But now when it comes to a book, it also involves some technical aspects, right?

@atharvapandit · 7mo ago · 2:52

I mean, people say that it takes a village to publish a book, and it's absolutely true. This was my first book and the first time that I experienced the publication process, and it's absolutely true. There are so many people who are working behind the scenes to ensure that the book gets to bookshops, to people, to readers, and it reaches people's attention

@authorsonali · 7mo ago · 2:41

So yes, talking about the last question. Now, this has to be with respect to the readers and the audience out there. Like as an author, what is the top advice that you can give to the younger generation? As in people who are just looking forward to start their writing journey and especially the teenagers and the college students because we know very well today that even they are much more aware with what they have to do

@atharvapandit · 7mo ago · 3:03