Talk to Isahitya : Sabarna Roy

Sabarna Roy, 44, is a qualified Civil Engineer from Jadavpur University, Calcutta. He works in a senior management position in a manufacturing and engineering construction company. An avid reader and a film buff, Roy is widely travelled in India and lives in Calcutta with his family. He started writing during his university days, mostly English and Bengali poems. He stopped writing after he left university and took up employment. After a gap of 19 years, he started writing once again, mostly to reconnect with himself. 

So Meet Mr. Sabarna Roy , writer of three beautiful books and know about him , about his books and more in his exclusive interview with Isahitya . 

Q. First thing that we like to ask you that how is your journey so far as writer?

During my University days [1984-88] I was writing poems in English and Bengali; I was editing Bengali poems written by my friends and getting them published and I was also co-editing a Bengali journal that dealt with many contemporary issues including publishing poems, translations from English poems and lyrics and also a few polemical writings. 

While I was always yearning to be caught up with something creative and imaginative during this phase as an easy outlet for my restlessness with life, I would not say I wanted to be a writer. In fact, I wanted to be nothing. I was never thinking about the future. I have not much changed as a person even today. My Bengali poems were atrocious. My English poems were clumsy although some of them had vivid images. I would say I was a better editor. However, I was a bit pampered among my friends as an intellectual. I was and [still remain] a voracious reader. I have keen interest in cinema and music. 

During my professional years I wrote occasionally although I read, watched films and theatre, and listened to music. But I did not write seriously. It is not because I had no time. It is simply because I lacked the right intensity in my thoughts and intellectual pursuit. Writing, irrespective of its quality, is an enduring task. What a writer is essentially doing is creating an alternative world and life through words. It is exhausting and requires terrible degrees of patience, and above all, an ability to exist in another world. Telling a story to a live audience is very different from writing the same story for your readers. It is not only a difference in crafts but also the ability to endure isolation and constant exploration for the right words that would evoke similar sensations in your readers about the world that you are writing.

Between 2002 and 2006 sometimes I would tell stories to my family, friends and colleagues. I found I could hold the attention of most of them during these sessions. Slowly it converted itself into a challenge. I would delve deep for newer ideas, narration and oratorical styles. Sometimes I would copy ideas from books and films but then I would feel guilty about plagiarizing. So I was overall very serious about this storytelling business, which in a way brought me close to writing. I felt tired of talking. I started loving the process of searching the right written [and not the spoken] word for describing the lives that I was thinking about. All of a sudden in June 2007 I ended up writing Instantaneous Death [Frosted Glass] on my laptop. 

 Q. " More you grow senior, more you avoid risks" . Your story is different from this; you take risk, because after achieving so much in professional life, you again start as new comer (in book industry). Were you nervous at that time when you decided to publish your first book?  Do you see it as risk or never thought about this? Is their any planning or it just happened?

I have not taken many risks to write. It is not as if I have left working to write although writing takes away a major portion of my time, energy and intensity now. It is true that it is very difficult to establish yourself in anything if you start late. In the writing industry all the more so; it is not newcomer friendly; it is hypocritical and overtly commercialized. It more or less operates like the defence industry – lobbyists have a major role to play here. There is very little space left for small independent writers like me. That is not a deterrent to write. My professional life has granted me with some solvency. This gives me relative freedom to write without having to worry much.

Q Please write tell me about about your writing style and about your books? 

My writing style depends on what I am writing.

Frosted Glass comprises two cycles – one a story cycle of 14 stories and another, a poem cycle of 21 poems. The story cycle deals with betrayal in modern relationships in urban landscape. It is styled on a pure narrative structure trying to look at the betrayer and betrayed with equal empathy. There are a few differences from the classical short story format. There is an attempt to look through multiple vantage points and create an interlude of interlinking thoughts one would ideally expect in a novel. Names of a few different characters have been kept same in different stories to create a metaphysical impact surrounding questions relating to identity. The poems are more or less narrative poems dealing with the theme of love and loss.

Pentacles consists of a novella and 4 long narrative poems. The novella apart from telling the story of a man separated from his mother who abandoned her family for the love of another man also deals with more serious contemporary and philosophical issues. At one level the writer is telling you a simple story of complex relationships and at another level, he is trying to impregnate urgent ideas that are behind this human civilization moving towards a path of inevitable end. The poems at one level read like short stories bound within a poetic idiom but using the jump-cut technique [as used in films] to squeeze time and space.

Abyss is a pure drama – a murder thriller. However it deals with the internal relationships of an industrial family caught between issues of land acquisition, complex inheritance related issues and the working ethics of a writer.

My personal belief is: prose in any format – novel, novella, short / long story and drama – will always receive greater attention of readers than poetry because of prose’s intrinsic and expansive quality of creating a second life which a reader is looking for when he picks up a book to read. 

Q .Who is your inspiration as writer? Which is your personal favourite book and writers ?Share With us.

I am not easily inspired by outside events / people except when I am blogging. I think this is a defect in me. That is not to say I am not influenced. There is a marked difference between inspiration and influence. However there is an intrinsic and invisible inspiration to write. Writing for me is almost battling with myself to look beyond the screens and layers of my own consciousness: to create an alternate universe for myself and possibly my readers, which can help me comprehend my immediate life.

Well, when one looks at influences especially the way one would look at the world I remember, in my case, significantly they are 3 books and 2 films. The books are: Anna Karenina [by Lev Tolstoy], Dakghar [by Rabindranath Tagore] and The Unbearable Lightness of Being [by Milan Kundera]. The films are: Aparajita and Pratidwandi [both by Satyajit Ray]. This is not to say that these are the best books and films read and seen by me. But, no other book or film has impacted me as deeply.

Q .What is your expectation from your books and from your readers?

I expect more readers to read my books. What more expectations can a writer carry? In a rank-and-file consumerist society a book, until and unless marketed in rabid proportions does not reach its audience. Everybody is looking for a brand whether it is soap, health service, food, or book.  Increasingly the space for small things and small efforts is shrinking. 

My books – Frosted Glass, Pentacles and Abyss – are available on the net [indiaplaza.com, flipkart.com, amazon.com, leadstartcorp.com and many other e-retail stores] apart from bookstores. In 2009 Bohurupee had published a Bengali play I had written in 1994.

Q.How you see the present and future of  Indian Sahitya Industry?

Well my understanding of Indian Sahitya in totality is very, very limited. One thing is for sure: the English publishing in India is wiping out vernacular publishing barring major publishing conglomerates like Anandabazaar [in Bengal]. I don’t find translations of major works of Indian languages in wider circulation. 

Q.So Whats future Plan? Any specific goal?

 I have a simple future plan: to keep on writing as long as I am willing to battle with myself. Recently I have finished a poem cycle of 12 poems dealing with the recurring imaginations of death and home. I am planning to start writing another English play in January. The planning work is mostly over.

Q.And at last please tell us , what you think about Isahitya? 

It is a wonderful website smelling of independence.

Thanks for talking to Isahitya. Wish you a great success in Your Life . 

Isahitya

Sabarna Roy's Books Click on Book Image to Buy Online Via Flipkart 

• < Prev
• Next >