From author Pankaj Dubey’s trove comes another fun narrative titled Ishqiyapa-To Hell With love. By Arjita Mishra
Pankaj Dubey is no stranger to the world of books and realm of authors. He made his way into the writer’s club with debut book What a loser two years ago, to much critical response and success. It was perhaps the book hit off so well with the people that prompted him to start working on his next, Ishqiyapa-To Hell With love, which was released recently.
The book is a satirical comedy set in the backdrop of Patna and Bombay. In his own words, “When we are in love and we lose our temper, that is ishqiapa.”
The story narrates the tale of a girl Sweety Pandey, daughter of local MlA Kali Pandey in Patna, who harbours a dream of becoming a famous pop diva like Britney Spears, and lallan. “lallan is like Patna’s Ambani in the making. He wants to start a kidnapping insurance business,” the author described the character and gave a sneak peek of the plot. Sweety takes lallan to meet her father, who is an in-house expert on kidnapping, and lallan in turn decides to help Sweety fulfill her dreams. “But this perfect plan does not remain so simple and sweet,” smirked Pandey, leaving audience at the edge of their seats (and full of suspense) at the release event.
Pandey candidly confessed that he does not have to hunt for ideas, or think too much about them. “It comes to me easily. May be I am blessed with this talent. My stories are mostly inspired from the real life,” he laughed. Interestingly, he even uses the same name of the people with whom he is familiar. “I only change the name of people I am scared of,” he added.
Not many would know but in the 80s, Kali Pandey was a local don and an MlA from Bihar apart from being involved in crime. When we asked Pankaj if the character was based on him he denied rightaway. “It is co-incidence. I do not know anyone by this name; I just found the name interesting,” he said.
As commonplace ‘girl-meets-boy-and-things-go-hayware-before-a-happy-ending’ story it may seem, the cover page manages to intrigue the imagination. “There is a small story behind the cover page. I had a chat with my editor regarding the cover of the book and we decided to keep a contest on Facebook. We invited entries of photos either through Facebook or mail. We received a very good response and the photograph on the cover page actually won the contest,” the author said.
For the time being Dubey is busy trying to make a feature film on his first book and has high hopes for Ishqiyapa, too. “I want Sushant Singh Rajput to play the role of lallan Jha because I think he will do justice to the character,” said the author who claims to keep a probable movie in mind when he writes. “I’ve envisioned a movie while writing both the books, so that during the shoot we face no problem,” he added.