BENGALURU: Even during his days in the underworld, Agni Sreedhar kept his habit of reading intact. Sreedhar, who recently released his book, The Gangster’s Gita, recalls being a serious student of literature from his younger days and knew the power of books on human minds.
“When I wanted to unburden myself from all the thoughts that stayed with me, the only way was to pen them down. Writing was a healer and I was able to get it out with Sona, the character in the book. I had to put him down in words to rid him from my system. So, I wrote it as a novel,” says Sreedhar about his book, the translation of which (done by Prathibha Nandakumar) was released recently. The book delves deep into the mind of a criminal.
Set in the Bengaluru underworld of the ’90s when Sreedhar was part of it, the book is a semi-autobiographical work on the life of the reformed don. Sreedhar says he never struggled to write because he writes only when things are clear in his head and knows what he has to convey. “I am driven by the urge to write and not the other way round.
All authors draw from his or her life experiences in some way or the other at varying degrees, with varying intensities. Since I had decided and even announced that I would demystify the underworld, I stuck to real incidents and personalities and wrote them down without glamorising or glorifying it,” he says.
By the time he started writing Edegarike (Kannada title of The Gangster’s Gita), he had already published several books, including his autobiography, My Days in the Underworld. “I was also writing weekly columns, editorials, and essays on various subjects. Writing had become a routine for me. When it was time for me to unburden Sona, I wrote the book,” he says.
Sreedhar doesn’t specify age group for any work of art, as he himself has been a voracious reader from childhood. “I do not write keeping the reader in mind. Anybody can pick up my books and read. How much they can relate to that depends on that individual’s age, experience and intellectual status. Sometimes even adults cannot handle certain books and likewise, some young adults are extremely good at understanding a book. In today’s world, it is getting difficult to deny access to content and moreover, I don’t subscribe to the idea of keeping in mind the consumers when I write,” he says.