Eminent writer Hara Prasad Das and for Vice-Chancellor of Ravenshaw University Devdas Chottaray inaugurated a book entitled The Bhubaneswar Times here on Sunday.
The book, the debut novel by Nidra Naik, is the story of a girl Twinkle Das who comes back to her hometown Bhubaneswar from New Delhi to begin a job with the magazine The Bhubaneswar Times and how her love life and work unravel in the magazine and the city of Bhubaneswar. The 220-page novel is a refreshing attempt at romantic fiction.
It’s a love story told with youthful vigour and in a gushing style. The setting and situations — big city, professional setup and young professionals — are contemporary and easy to identify for readers when it comes to a romance developing at office. Naik’s prose is effervescent, especially when she is being herself in describing a character. In her prologue, while being self-descriptive, she says, "Oh...by the way, I am Twinkle Das, a mass communication pass-out from IIMC, New Delhi...frustrated at heart and terrorist in mind. To tell you the truth, I am usually a sweetheart, but presently...noooo...absolutely not!"
The Bhubaneswar Times is published by Frog Books. To Nidra Naik’s credit, she was surrounded with highly creative parents Swrup Nayak and Niharika and aunt and first woman Odia movie director and actress Parvati Ghosh. After completing her MBA from the Institute for Integrated learning in Management (IIlM), New Delhi, she got somewhat lost and perplexed in the downstream of her life. Returning for a job to her homeland made her introspect about her state of being!