It was 19th March
2020 morning, as I was preparing to go on work my wife approached me with
the news of closing down of Schools, Colleges, Movie Halls due to spike
in Corona positive cases. U.P. followed the norm made by Delhi a week
back. The dreaded virus
was making serious inroads in our lives. Wiffy literally put her foot
down and so the supposedly never-ending house arrest started in our
lives as well, just like in many others.
Two months went by in
speculating and adjusting to the new normal of COVID times. One fine
Wednesday on 27th May, while sipping morning tea in my balcony, enjoying a bit
of ME-TIME a thought came in my mind that ' Can there be a love story in
such a difficult time of lockdown due to Corona?' There itself, I put
forth the idea in my School Alumni Whatsapp Group and asked for
the pointers. In no time I could shortlist two brilliant ideas and my
journey of penning down my Debut Novel started.
Now
since the story had the current scenario as the real backdrop, extensive research had to be put in to make it as authentic as possible. Out came the PTI (PRESS TRUST OF INDIA) news website and tweets of the last six months, Articles and Blogs on different Social
Media platforms by
individuals directly or indirectly involved. Government website updates of last 6 months, Various news agencies
updates worldwide, News clippings from DD News of the last 6
months also gave important
inputs.
That taken care of,
now came the all-important work of setting up the story in the date and time frame cohesively with the dreaded reality happening in the real
world parallely. After all, it was my maiden attempt in what I was doing. Let me tell you
writing a 1,500 words blog [which I was doing for a year now] to write a novel
of more than 25,000 words is another thing altogether.
I liked
two ideas and decided to write two stories running parallel to
each other with the backdrop of Corona, Lockdown and migration of Labourers.
I thought I took too much on myself in the very first outing as a writer but
once the thought clicked in my mind, there was no looking back thereafter.
The laptop was out
and fingers started clicking the alphabets on the keyboard. The journey of
bringing the characters of Rohan, Chetna, Kavita, Archana,Satender and Hari
to life was no less than a rollercoaster ride of emotions filled with joy,
happiness, sadness, triumph, hope, positivity, sacrifice and what not.
My
characters are not Black or White but Grey, they don't hesitate to
display their real feelings without the fear of getting judged and that's the way it should be. Both the stories ended with the sacrifice
which is an essence of love between two individuals. After all, when you are in
love all you want is the other person's happiness.
On 1st of July,
after 35 days, my debut novel was complete. With another 7-10 days of giving
the finishing touches, the book was finally launched as an e-book on Amazon
Kindle and subsequently on Google Play
Books Platforms
for you all, on 9th July 2020.
Please
give all your love to my first creation. I am quite hopeful you all will like what I
wrote. With this, I sign off...until next time.
HAPPY READING!!
