Half Torn Hearts
By: Novoneel Chakraborty
Publisher: Penguin
Pages: 224
Price: Rs 199
He has been writing for over a decade now. His first book, A Thing Beyond Forever, won the national bestseller tag within a few months of its release. Out with his latest book, writer Novoneel Chakraborty reveals, “My latest novel Half Torn Hearts is a story of three-layered individuals. The story tracks their lives over three decades and how human connections change and new things are rediscovered. The book, at its core, talks about how love makes us commit a sin and also makes us redeem ourselves. It is also my first romance/relationship novel.”
The author confesses that the character of Nirmaan Bose from the book is very similar to the person that he is. Half Torn Hearts is the story of Shanay Bansal, a young and successful entrepreneur, who is looking forward to his engagement with Afsana Agarwal. A few weeks before the engagement, he receives a mysterious voice message about Afsana’s past. Soon, a different world opens up about a beautiful relationship that broke due to a terrible lie.
Novoneel was still in college when, by his own admission, “characters and plots simply started happening to me”. In order to sort out the clutter in his mind and get the characters and the plots out of, he began writing them down. It was not long before Novoneel ended up “tasting blood”, as he says, and realised that this was something he wanted to do with his life—tell stories.
So, what does writing mean to him? “Well, more than writing, it’s the process of creating via thinking about the characters and plots that allures and excites me all the time. Writing is an eventuality for me,” he says. The young author may be a constant name on the bestsellers list today, but it was not something he had foreseen. “Bestseller or not wasn’t really in my priority list. ‘Bestseller author’ is a collateral term when more and more people buy and read your books in a short period of time.
I simply wanted to be read by lots of people.” Well, he has definitely achieved that, but the journey hasn’t been always that easy. Novoneel remembers being rejected for his debut novel. “At the time when I got published, 11 years ago, the Indian publishing industry had not opened up to commercial writing in Indian English. So, rejection was the order of the day. And I have experienced my share of them as well,” he smiles and reminisces.
Even though, he has achieved his fair share of success in the written world, he maintains that in India, writing is not really a good career option, unless one earns enough. “But then again, what’s ‘enough’ is a very subjective thing,” he says philosophically and is quick to add, “In case I had not become a writer, I would have probably become a sportsperson.”
With ongoing boom of web series, it was but natural that makers would scout around for good content. Needless to say, Novoneel’s books fit the bill. Four of his works have already been adapted into web series, and he is not averse to a few more being adapted for TV or films some day. Does he have any fixed actors in mind? “Not really. Whoever justifies the character the best will be my choice,” he puts it simply.
Novoneel may be open to cinematisation of his novels but he does not really pay heed to reviews—positive or negative. “I read them, but do not dwell on them,” he says. He is looking forward to experimenting with sub-genres in thriller in the future. Right now, Novoneel is working on a psychological thriller, which is not a surprise, considering the fact that one can find Japanese author Keigo Higashino—who combines mystery and psychology in his writing—prominently features on his reading shelf.