HOSUR ROAD:Arjun Krishna Lal was born in Thiruvananthapuram but then moved with his family to Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the US. He moved back to Thiruvananthapuram when he was in his 10th grade. It was while attending an international school that inspiration struck and Arjun wrote Wicked Games. A self-proclaimed ‘PC hardware nut,’ Arjun also enjoys reading and video games. Excerpts from an interview:
What inspired Wicked Games?
Wicked Games was largely inspired by the experience of studying in an international school in India. Most people at my school were Malayalis who were brought up abroad--like me. I saw people living a kind of a double life in the way they reconciled theww traditional aspects of their lives with the Western influences and created an absolutely unique international school subculture, a kind of a liminal space which was neither here nor there.
What is your novel about?
Wicked Games is the story of American-born Amit Pillai, faced with a recent move to India, as he attends the Ananthapuri International School. It’s about growing up, finding love, and exploring one’s sense of identity in the rapidly changing reality of upper-middle class Indian life.
Tell us something about the protagonist. What is he like?
I’d say Amit, the main character has a lot in common with me, and not just at the superficial level of his situation. He’s a bit shy and awkward at first, quiet, but he’s essentially a good person, with enough inner strength to take the situation he’s in, however bad it may be and make something beautiful of it. That doesn’t mean he’s a goody two-shoes or whatever. As the novel progresses, Amit comes into his own as a person. There’s a lot to him that I wish I was, there’s a lot to him that I am, and there’s quite a bit to him that I wish I wasn’t, as well.
What made you choose writing? Are there any authors who inspired you?
I never really planned on being a writer. I mean to write the Civil Services exam after my degree. I started writing because it just sort of felt like something I was able to do--I was able to put my pen down on paper and get something out of it at the end of the day, so I wrote. It was a big surprise for me when Penguin picked up the manuscript of Wicked Games. I am a big reader though, and I’ve always been. I’m currently around 10,000 pages into Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.
Orhan Pamuk is my favorite author and my greatest source of inspiration. While stylistically my approach is very different, it’s always been a dream for me to write something that would in some way approach the emotional intensity of something by Pamuk.
What is your next plan? Are you working on any other novel right now?
I’m doing a couple of things right now. IGN, the premiere video game and movie review website hired me to review video games and PC hardware. As an avid gamer--I’ve owned seven game consoles and a gaming laptop over the years, this is a dream come true for me. I’m also working on a second book, titled Bitches Don’t Care. I plan on writing regularly, then studying for the Civil Service exam.
Do you work on a plot or do you prefer to go with the flow?
How I work is that I usually get a very tentative grasp of a plot for a book. I then take this and break it down on a chapter-wise basis. I write out paragraph-length summaries for each chapter, then take those and work on one chapter at a time.
Rather than just taking the writing where it wants to go, I feel that this approach makes the whole experience more straightforward, approachable, and helps to tighten the plot.
What difficulties do you face while writing?
The main difficulty I’ve faced while writing is time management. The trouble here is that if you set a time limit per day, suppose that’s one hour--your output is going to be very inconsistent.
On some days when you’re feeling inspired you might crank out 1,000 words or even more in that time. On other days when you’re not feeling it, you might not even manage 500 words in an hour.
If you set an allocation for word count each day and ignore the time factor, you end up with consistent results. My usual part is around 800 words per day. The trouble with this is that on some days when I’m just not feeling it, work can drag on for hours and hours, which is when time management issues start cropping up.
Would you like to say something to young aspiring writers?
The most important point is perseverance. If you plan on writing a book, you’re in it for the long haul. It means days and months of writing. It might feel overwhelming at first but you have to take it step by step.
Write every single day, and read when you’re not writing. Also I’d like to thank my parents.
I absolutely would not have been able to achieve any of the things I’ve done if it wasn’t for their constant support and guidance.
