When imagination takes flight
Amarjot Kaur
In his first attempt to write a book, titled When She Smiled, Ritoban Chakrabarti, an internet marketing company entrepreneur, who is also a UIET alumni, prepares a dramatic cocktail infused with the flavours of love and romance. Strangely though, this young author, who braved the decision of penning a book about teenage trivia about love and life, has sought very little inspiration from his personal experience. As he brings to play his fragments of imagination and weaves them in a story, he underlines that the true merit of an author lies in his capacity to produce a story out of his imagination. “When Dan Brown, John Grisham and Agatha Christie write about murder mysteries, they don’t kill anyone. In my opinion, a writer’s ability to imagine makes him an author,” he says.
Ritoban, who has also written a couple of non-fiction books on online marketing, says that to write a fiction novel he had to take a flight to Maldives and sit in a cafe overlooking the Indian Ocean! “The most critical part is the initial stage when you have to write a basic plot summary, scene by scene description and character sketches. Once you’ve done that, the writing part becomes easy,” he says.
Talking about the challenges while writing the novel, Ritoban shares, “First up, before even considering writing a novel, you have to promise yourself that you will see it to the end. Next, you have to completely focus and rule out other people’s opinions, self-doubt, and expectations. And then, just don’t stop writing.” Talking about the premise of the novel, Ritoban shares that he purposely wrote a novel about teenagers because they are more interesting than adults and have eccentric ways with life, which calls for so much drama and fun. “The fact that the book is set in Shimla is because I grew up there and am quite familiar with the city. Also, the way people live there is so much different than the regular city life. So, it was a perfect backdrop to have my characters placed in and the whole story is based on the thought that you are in control of your own destiny, which is determined by your past,” he says.
Currently working on his next non-fictional novel, titled Email Marketing, and a fiction that is a thriller-mystery, Ritoban is rather relieved to have a check on his dream board ‘to-do list’. “I always wanted to become an author and now I will be writing another fiction novel, which was essentially a dream I had one night,” he signs off.
amarjot@tribunemail.comk
