HYDERABAD : Anuja Chauhan is a popular name across the genre of Indian chick lit. Her works ‘Those pricey Thakur girls’ and ‘The Zoya Factor’ stayed in the bestsellers stands for quite a few weeks. What works for Anuja we wonder. “I write what I know,” she says. ‘Those Pricey Thakur Girls’ is about sisters and their lives together and it came straight from my life. ‘The Zoya Factor’ too showcases a protagonist who is copywriter at an advertising firm and my experience in ad films came through in it.
Similarly Battle for Bittora is about Lok Sabha elections and I had watched some political campaigns closely when I was handling advertising and marketing for them,” she elucidates. Anuja Chauhan who has to her credit 17 years of experience in the advertising world and many popular campaigns in her kitty always had a flair for words. As she puts it, “I went into advertising because I loved writing. And I became an author afterwards because I love writing. My passion towards writing has always been a constant.”
The 2008 novel, ‘The Zoya Factor’ was recently adapted into a screenplay starring Sonam Kapoor and Dulquer Salman and has gotten mixed reviews for the same. However Anuja is unfazed. “When it’s a book, it’s all me. Everything that is there in the book came from me. As a film, bad reviews affect me a lot lesser because there are so many factors that influence the outcome,” she says. As any book-enthusiast would believe she too thinks “books are better than movies.”
“Books are alway better,” she chimes adding, “Books are your own personal vision while movies tend to have limitations and often can’t encompass everything that a character or the story stands for.” Speaking of The Zoya Factor however she admits, “I am pleased with how the film came about. The production house had approached me years ago about adapting the book but it kept getting postponed. Only after I moved on to my other projects I got a call that they needed consultation on the screenplay last year. I gave my inputs with the screenplay and the dialogues and there were quite some back and forth for the same.”
Anuja has her work cut out for the remainder of the year. “I am working on my next book. And I have also been consulting for a few web series and another film too. The book I have just started with so you will probably get to see it on the stands late next year,” she signs off.
The book is published by Westland and is available on Amazon.com
srividya.palaparthi@newindianexpress.com @PSrividya53