Upamanyu Chatterjee has fulfilled his long standing desire of writing a fable with Fairy Tales At Fifty. He shares why he doesn’t care for market ‘trends’ and his love for fountain pens
Upamanyu Chatterjee is one such author who does not feel the pressure of giving into the demand of the readers so that his book can be published.
He prefers taking his own sweet time before coming up with his book. The reason he said was, “I have no reason to hurry. I take my time to come up with some idea that I can connect with.”
He is the man of few words but he was fairly eloquent when he talked about his latest book Fairy Tales At Fifty at its launch. “It is my first book in three years after Way To Go in 2011 and I believe that it is class apart from all that I have written so far,” he said.
His new book takes a detour from all that he has written before. Neither are the characters of his latest book as complex as Agastya Sen in English, August nor is the plot all about love, lust, strife and strict social issues.
“Fairy Tales At Fifty is an amalgamation of all the cliché incidents and dialogues that one can find in fairy tales all over the world. I have always wanted to do something with fairy tales which always talk about the perfect setting,” he shared.
In the book he has tried to recreate the pauper from Mark Twain’s classic book The Prince and the Pauper. He added, “The pauper in Twain’s book represents someone we come across every other day, which does not excite me. Instead I have taken the pauper and have turned him into an urban murderer in the book.”
He feels that the people need something interesting and hard hitting to appreciate. And he believes that Fairy Tales At Fifty has all the ingredients that are needed to make a book unputdownable.
The story revolves around the protagonist Nirip who is not happy with the way his life has shaped up. Born of an ogre father and a witch mother, he is not happy with his relationship with the chauffeur wife either (neither is she).
His ‘sort of’ half sister is sort of half-man. Everything aside, the larger realisation that looms over Nirip is that he is at the cusp of turning 50. It was when he was about to turn 50 that he, almost unexpectedly, finds out that he is not the biological son of his parents.
The narrative is macabre and the storyline is sad and cruel. The book cover sums up the entire book as ‘part adventure tale, part nightmare, and part acid trip — through a triumph of fiction.’
The author explained, “In every fairy tale people do not want their favourite character to die. I believe that you need to make the readers demand something unique and that is what I have maintained all my life. I have put in a lot of my time, effort and my creativity into this book and I don’t think I would be asking too much if I want my readers to give this book a lot of their time, too.”
He took a dig at Chetan Bhagat, too, when he said, “I am not out to write like Chetan Bhagat, who writes stories which, some way or the other, ends up belonging to the same genre. There is no variety to it.”
What was interesting to note was that the quinquagenarian, even today prefers to write with a fountain pen. “Why not write with a fountain penIJ Those were the kind with which we learnt to write in the first place. I personally find it very comfortable scribbling in paper everyday with it,” he pointed out. Does the chance of leaking fountain pens not bother himIJ “Well, the best things in life always have a conditions apply tag to them,” he rounded up.