BENGALURU: As a management graduate and professional content writer at a Bengaluru-based company, Dipnanda Bhaduri Roy used to do some ghost-writing. Which is when she felt a sense of emptiness and started questioning her identity. “It took little time to realise that a career in management won’t take me anywhere because my over-imaginative mind and search for independence won’t let me surrender to the conformities of ‘system’,” says Roy, who recently released her book, I am in love with a Shuddh Desi Firangi: Hey Shiva, I see You in Him.
The fiction revolves around the romance between a Shaivite firangi named Rudra, and a shy Bengali beauty named Kattyayni. Having grown up watching her grandparents worship Lord Shiva, Roy says, “There was a strong ‘Shiva-culture’ in my family. I was told that in every jeeva, there’s Lord Shiva and that he had the virtues of an ideal husband. His ‘simple living-high-thinking’ lifestyle and ability to denounce wealth and worldly pleasures of life fascinated me. He believed in gender equality and empowered his wife to fulfil her responsibilities of protecting the creation from evil forces. So I was looking to write a story with a hero with a strong presence of Shiva in him. I was looking to create a sort of a modern-day Shiva-Parvati romance,” she says about the 221-page book published by Raindrop Publishers.
After the writing was done, Roy – who made a foray into writing by chance through submission for a weekly debate contest in a youth magazine – had to face rejections. “It didn’t bother me. How can a few people determine your fate and decide on the behalf of hundreds of readers who are waiting to read what you have written?” says Roy, who has pledged to donate 20 per cent of her earnings to city-based child welfare foundation, Kritagyata Trust.
She has content ready for the next 10 books. “The more I write, the more vibrant I feel,” she says. “I start working on my novels after 10 pm and sometimes even continue till 3 am. I don’t feel tired at all because my passion drives me crazy.”