BENGALURU: As a marketing professional, Diptakirti Chaudhuri’s job involves dealing with a lot of numbers. It’s interesting then that he turns towards words to unwind at the end of a long day. Come nightfall and Chaudhuri, who is the head of marketing at Manipal Global Education Services, dons his writing cap as he gets down to work on his upcoming sixth book. “I look forward to unwinding this way. I try to dedicate at least 30-60 minutes a day, sometimes longer even to sit down and just write,” says Chaudhuri, who started blogging in 2006 before he published his first book, Cricket! All You Wanted to Know about the World Cup, in 2011.
Today, he has to his credit five books, published by the likes of Hachette India, Penguin Books Limited and Westland Books. But the four books that followed his debut novel, and the upcoming one as well, strayed far away from sports and ventured into new territory: Bollywood and Hindi cinema. “Most of the books on cinema that I read were scholarly. My books offer a different take, they are fun, fanboy-ish and have lots of trivia,” says Chaudhuri, who has penned books called Kitnay Aadmi Thay?: Completely Useless Bollywood Trivia, Bioscope: A Frivolous History of Bollywood in Ten Chapters, Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters and Bollybook: The Big Book of Hindi Movie Trivia.But how does the marketing professional find time to churn out so many books? “The same way everyone else does about things they like,” he answers simply.
This love for cinema is one Chaudhuri shares with his loved ones as well. He even firmly believes it was passed down to him by his mother, who is also a big fan herself and often offers feedback on his books. His friends too are big fans, and the readers he keeps in mind while writing his books. “They are the reason I started,” he says.
It goes without saying that Chaudhuri is a big fan of cinema, but if there’s one thing he loves more than films, it’s writing about them. The MBA graduate takes a couple of days off work every year to head to various cinema and newspaper archives for research. “My research process began when I started watching films at the age of five,” he laughs, adding that the process also requires him to watch many obscure and famous films more than once to see what he missed out on. His favourites are Yaadon Ki Baaraat, Disco Dancer, Sholay and Amar Akbar Anthony.
Sometimes, he isn’t even sure what he is looking for but that, he says, is the fun part. “I come across something interesting that I can save for later, sometimes I forget about it altogether. But going through 10 editions of a film magazine is bound to leave you with something to work with. It’s just like life, you have to go with the flow.”