Author Deepti Kapoor talks about the madness and catharsis involved in her debut novel, A Bad Character. By Devi Singh
Twelve lines buried in the middle pages, one line standing out, the last one, in which a cop he’d never met said to the reporter, He was known to us, he was a bad character. It’s a phrase they use sometimes, what some people still say. It’s what they’ll say about me too, when they know what I’ve done.” These are the first few lines you’ll find in Deepti Kapoor’s book A Bad Character. But the leitmotif ‘bad character’ doesn’t actually refer to the protagonist or her boyfriend. It’s an abstract idea which we all are grappling with. As a society it has been entrenched in our psychological existence. “The title A Bad Character is an ironic title. Its easy usage in the Indian society explains everything from coming home late to doing anything which is not acceptable,” Kapoor says.
The book is quintessentially a city novel. It’s about Delhi with all its idiosyncrasies. Kapoor’s portrayal of the city makes it come across as the third bad character. The mere amalgam of Delhi with all its hysteria and a lone young woman make for the stereotypical dangerous proposition. The treatment given to the city manifests the deep-rooted bond she has had with it. Her background as a journalist and profound experience and knowledge about the city has actually helped her making Delhi a character. “I knew Delhi in my bones. There were things I could write about Delhi which others would find interesting. I wanted to paint a portrait of the city as I knew. Delhi used to haunt me even after I left it. So I thought about releasing my pent up emotions by writing about what I knew of the city,” she says.
A Bad Character encapsulates the precarious journey and fragmented experiences of a young woman in Delhi. In her desire to unravel the dark side, she embarks on a pernicious relationship with an extremely aloof and seemingly intense man. She faces her demons in order to become the person she always wanted to be. It’s a story which concerns itself with the characteristic human desire to experience ‘danger’ in all forms, corporeal or otherwise. Kapoor has put some parts and elements from her life in the character sketch of the protagonist. The author tells us, “I did have a story which I thought would make an interesting novel. I had a boyfriend who died and with whom I had a complex relationship. The character in the book is struggling with her surroundings. She wants to break free. It’s like a battle between old and the new India. She’s me in some parts and not me in others.”
With a non-linear storytelling, the narrative structure of the book is unusual for the debutant author. Initially, Kapoor, did try to write in the conventional third person style. She broke down the story into chapters and wrote from an observer’'s perspective. “I was told by an agent in the publishing industry that as a first time writer, you need to write some 100,000 words which should be in third person. So I did that for three chapters and I felt like I was dying inside,” she shares. That’s when she decided the conventional style was not working for her and that she needed to come up with something different.
The woman in the story is apathetic and feels detached and unaffected to the things and people around her. Writing in a non-linear fashion with the employment of dabs and fragments explain her erratic thought process. “The way she experiences Delhi is very fragmentary and I wanted to reflect her state of mind in the narrative structure,” Kapoor says. The author mentioned how French writer, Marguerite Duras influenced her work. “When I started to work on this book, my influences had changed. I started to read more French and Japanese literature. Non-linear structure started enticing me,” she added.
The most significant part about the novel is that both the author and the protagonist are women. A female voice renders different emotions all together. There are enough books with the male protagonists setting on a journey in a city. “I have always wanted to write a ‘male novel’. I essentially wanted to write a city novel where men go out striking in the city. I had great experiences with Delhi so it came naturally to me. But then I was like as a woman my protagonist can’t penetrate into the city like a man. She has to receive the city and can’t explore it like men,” explains Kapoor.
The novel is about escape routes, a sense of belonging or lack of it, emptiness, and the desire to have an alternative lifestyle to maintain sanity. The one which helps break the shackles of traditions and familial constrictions, especially the much dreaded concept of arranged marriage in the Indian milieu. The protagonist finds freedom from all the conformities around her when she’s out with the man whom she thinks low of, but still considers necessary for her existence. She finds him irresistible because he represents everything her aunt despises. “We all are looking for a channel where we no longer have to bind by things we hate,” Kapoor signs off.
photos Sanjeev Kumar