Author Siddharth Tripathi chats with Divya Kaushik on his growing up years in Varanasi and shares how he has presented the city in his first fiction book
Most of the text, paintings and pictures that he encountered depicted in entirety the beauty of the pristine ghats of Varanasi or presented the narrow lanes and some described the town in the most clichéd term, “one of the most ancient cities of India.” But Siddharth Tripathi, who spent his childhood in Varanasi, thinks that they all depict the city from the point of view of an outsider. A very few works are by the people who have lived in the city and have been with the people of the place. “For example, not many have written about the life of the pandas and the pandits there. Spending two to three days is not enough to bring out the character of the small town,” said Tripathi, who therefore weaved the story of his first novel, The Virgins, around the city. The three characters in the story depict the people of Varanasi and their life in a small town. “The story draws references from some of my personal experiences as well. For instance, towards the end of the novel there is a boatman mentioned. This boatman has come from an interesting encounter that I had at one of the ghats. Boatmen usually ferry passengers, mostly foreigners and seldom the local people, from one ghat to the other. I met a boatman who narrated his sob story of how his wife left him with his four or five-year-old kid. He told me he used to drink and beat her and that is why she left. He was too guilty about the fact that she left but said he cannot stop drinking. Interestingly the other times when I watched him on the ghats I would see him merrily chatting with his group. I think he only told this story to his passengers sometimes to make their journey interesting and make them like him,” shared the author, who is presently working as a consultant for a business advisory firm. He had to quit his job to dedicate over eight months to complete his first novel. “I was sure that it has to be fiction since I grew up reading fiction and I used to write short stories and poems since I was in school,” he shared.
The author informed that the reason he named his first novel The Virgins is because the three characters have something pure, innocent about their lives. “It is about six months in the lives of these characters. They are unaware about the harsh realities of life and after six months, some get some good things and some bad. So it cannot be said if the novel really ends on a good note. Some people have told me that it ends with a lot of questions and also on a not-so-good note. After reading the novel some people also told me that they feel it deals with a lot of social issues, which to an extent is true. In the novel I have mentioned a story of a girl who gets married young and was suspected of witchcraft by her in-laws and was burnt alive. This is the true story that I heard and I incorporated it in the novel. In a nutshell, I would like to say that the title was not decided to be The Virgins, to draw more readers. It is a relevant title which I decided after writing the first two chapters of the book,” he said and added that he has already started work on his second novel.
That too will be fiction. But one of the character’s life will be depicted after a few years,” he ended.