Author Devapriya Roy shares intriguing insights about her book 'Friends From College'. Explore the complexities of relationships, personal growth, and nostalgia portrayed in this captivating novel. Discover the inspirations and themes that make this story a compelling exploration of friendship and self-discovery.
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00:00 I remember when I was in college, I used to buy a book every day from the book market
00:04 of College Street.
00:05 The second hand books?
00:06 The second hand books, 20 rupees, 30 rupees.
00:08 Once I remember, I actually spent all my money.
00:10 So that anecdote has made it into the book.
00:12 That you know, you spend everything because you have to buy the book.
00:15 And then you figure out how you borrow like 5 rupees and then take a bus or 10 rupees
00:19 and take a bus.
00:20 Hello and welcome to Outlook Bibliophile.
00:29 Today we have with us author Devapriya Roy who is going to talk about her book, Friends
00:34 from College.
00:35 It is a love story and a kind of a love letter to the colleges of 90s.
00:42 Hi Devapriya for joining us for the show.
00:45 Thank you for having me.
00:46 So Devapriya, what made you write this story?
00:50 I think what happens to me is that I write a book about Calcutta sort of alternately.
00:57 So I write something else.
00:58 My last book was a graphic biography of Indira Gandhi.
01:00 There was very little of Calcutta in it.
01:03 Little bit.
01:04 And then I think there's one part of me which then wants to write a Calcutta novel.
01:08 So it was quite fortunate for Twitters that the Telegraph, they had been wanting to run
01:15 a serialized novel in English for a long time.
01:19 And one of the editors asked me that, you know, are you up to it?
01:22 And I said, well, and she said, why don't you give me one chapter just for a knock.
01:26 And so I just sort of sat down one day in a burst of energy.
01:30 And let me tell you that happens very rarely in the life of a writer.
01:33 We're mostly procrastinating all the time.
01:35 So but that day I remember I had this burst of energy and I wrote out the first chapter
01:39 about Charulata Ghosh coming to Calcutta.
01:42 And that's all I knew about the novel.
01:44 You know, I just knew Lata and I knew Ronnie.
01:47 That's it.
01:48 None of the other characters or anything.
01:49 I just wrote it and I sent it off to her.
01:52 And Samhita, she was with the Telegraph at that time.
01:56 She really liked it and she said, oh, OK, I'm going to send it up and we'll see.
02:02 Then as you know, it happens sometimes.
02:05 Then I got busy with other work and they were going through some changes and so on.
02:10 So nothing happened with it for several months, maybe six months.
02:14 And then after that, Reshmi, she became the editor.
02:19 Reshmi became the editor.
02:20 Samhita had left, but she had passed it on to Reshmi.
02:23 And Reshmi then said that, oh, you know, I really like it.
02:26 Can we do it?
02:27 Will you send me some more chapters?
02:28 And that's when I started writing.
02:30 So it just continued one after the other.
02:32 It went on for 42 weeks, I guess.
02:34 It went on for 42 weeks.
02:35 And let me confess that like the old fashioned serial novels of the past, this one was also
02:40 written week by week.
02:43 Technically, I should have had a bank of chapters.
02:46 Right.
02:47 You have like four or five chapters and you keep writing.
02:49 So there's a, I don't know how it came to be that we would mostly work with like one
02:54 chapter that's going to press and one that I'm writing, which is very nerve wracking
02:58 at the time.
02:59 But which in retrospect also makes it like a really glorious experiment.
03:03 Yeah, because it was, it had to be the final draft, right?
03:07 You couldn't go back and do it all over again.
03:11 So just wanted to know, say it's Calcutta of the 90s.
03:14 How different is Calcutta of the 90s to Calcutta today?
03:18 So it's quite interesting, the characters, the protagonists and sort of the group of
03:23 friends that's there.
03:24 They are about five, six years older than my husband and I, when we had gone to presidency.
03:30 So they're very much what I call the children of liberalization.
03:34 So they came of age in socialist India, their childhood was socialist India, you know, that
03:41 Calcutta that we remember.
03:43 Then by the time they went into college, things were changing.
03:46 And when they graduated and finished their sort of MBAs and all, they became that first
03:51 generation getting those huge salaries.
03:55 So it's a peculiar mindset, which I wanted to explore.
03:58 See this, and again, I want to come back to this again, most of your characters are all
04:03 drifted away from Calcutta.
04:04 So what does it say about the city?
04:05 Yeah, so that's also been one of the sad scenes.
04:08 For example, I live in Delhi, but I'm living, writing about Calcutta.
04:15 But I wanted to make a contrast there also.
04:17 Two characters are very sort of Ronnie Banerjee, the filmmaker and Aduri Bagchi, the editor,
04:23 who's now editing a website, but she used to be a books editor, a literary editor.
04:28 They are the ones who stayed on in Calcutta.
04:30 And so Aduri is constantly sort of, you know, making fun of Lata's NRI mores.
04:34 Oh, God, you NRIs, always talking about flurries.
04:40 And Ronnie, of course, is a different kind of artist, you know, for whom the city is
04:46 very important.
04:47 So we see Ronnie is sort of ignoring the siren call of Bombay and staying on in Calcutta,
04:54 because he believes in his art.
04:55 In spite of being in the industry.
04:57 Exactly, exactly.
04:58 So there are great filmmakers like that in Bengal, even now.
05:02 Even now.
05:03 Yeah, whose art is sort of, you know, it's very much drawn from the city.
05:07 So viscerally, they want to stay close to the city.
05:10 It's like Orhan Pamuk basically always wants to live in Istanbul.
05:13 You know, because the city is so much.
05:15 But for a lot of professionals, of course, they've, yeah, they've abandoned Calcutta.
05:20 And like my parents, sometimes, my father's sort of is, you know, annoyed when he says
05:25 the city is becoming an old age home, you know, it's the old age home.
05:31 And how much of you is there in the story?
05:35 So you know, a little bit of the main protagonist, is it you?
05:40 So the thing is, you know, when I wrote my first novel, that is my autobiographical novel,
05:44 right?
05:45 It's called the Vague Woman's Handbook.
05:46 And the protagonist, there, Mil Chatterjee is very much me, a version of me.
05:52 And then the book that Saurav and I wrote together is called the Heat and Dust Project.
05:57 It's based on our travels around India.
06:00 And that's quite well, it was huge.
06:02 Yeah, well, till now, most successful, let's say, book.
06:07 So you know, for that, again, that's part memoir, part travel.
06:11 So a lot of me is in it.
06:12 So I kind of got now, by now, I'm over that writing about me.
06:16 I'm now very much more interested in other people.
06:19 So I, of course, there are certain things about Lata that are more like me.
06:25 But Lata is essentially different for me.
06:27 So you know, she's a management consultant.
06:29 I'm the one who's always making arch comments about management consultants and teasing them,
06:34 you know, that sort of thing.
06:36 And Lata's from North Calcutta, right, from one of those beautiful old houses of North
06:41 Calcutta.
06:42 And she's, yeah, the inspiration to Lata Ghosh is a senior of mine from college, Priya Basu.
06:52 And I absolutely love her to bits.
06:54 So she is a management consultant, and she lives in London.
06:58 And so I told her that, you know what, I'm going to write a book about somebody like
07:01 you.
07:02 She said, okay, do what you want.
07:04 And so I remember she actually followed the novel while it was serialized.
07:08 And then later, she started like me, but then she became a different person.
07:13 And I like that.
07:14 So I said, okay, good.
07:15 So I think that's what happens in the pages of fiction, you know.
07:20 And then again, you talk a lot about the people, those old places of Calcutta, like Fleuries,
07:27 and then you have that coffee house.
07:30 Coffee house.
07:31 Are they still as charming as?
07:36 Yeah, I mean, when we were in college, my husband and I, 2000s, we used to go a lot
07:44 to coffee house.
07:45 And coffee house was our sort of the main place we used to cut classes and go to coffee
07:49 house.
07:50 And he would always have the Mughlai Paratha and I would have the chicken pakoras.
07:55 And coffee house was very, it was the energy there was quite something else.
08:01 I've never encountered anything like that in Delhi, you know.
08:06 In Kerala, the coffee houses are again also very much quite similar.
08:10 So is it because of our communists?
08:13 Yeah, also because they're run by the workers unions, right?
08:17 So and the food is similar, the energy is very egalitarian.
08:22 So you know, people will come and be there and there's no, the sort of the classification
08:27 that we see, especially in a place like Delhi, where you know, you can walk into a place
08:32 and feel who patronizes this place, right?
08:37 Is it South Delhi college girls go to this place, you know, and you have West Delhi yummy
08:42 mummies go to that place.
08:44 So there is very much that.
08:46 Coffee house, everybody goes to coffee house, right?
08:49 So there are writers who come there, filmmakers who don't want to spit out everything about
08:54 the book, but then just a little bit about like those your favorite joints in Calcutta
09:00 and why are does it has a lot to do with that.
09:05 I think College Street and coffee house are two of my most favorite places in Calcutta.
09:09 I remember when I was in college, I used to buy a book every day from the book market
09:14 of College Street, you know, secondhand books, 20 rupees, 30 rupees.
09:18 Sometimes I remember I actually spent all my money.
09:20 So that anecdote has made it into the book that you know, you spend everything because
09:23 you have to buy the book.
09:25 And then you figure out how you'd borrow like five rupees and then take a bus or 10 rupees.
09:29 So that is how it is.
09:30 You save a little and you spend more and then you save a little just to buy a book.
09:35 That's the whole thing about Calcutta students.
09:38 And that's the you know, so that's how Ronnie and Lata were when they were in presidency.
09:43 But of course, the novel is set in the present right now.
09:45 It's the Calcutta of the malls and the Calcutta where the parents have now grown old enough
09:50 for the young people to think that, okay, how do we do this?
09:55 Should we come back?
09:56 Are they going to come and live with us?
09:57 There's that anxiety, right?
10:00 And the parents, of course, they don't want to leave their place, right?
10:03 It's also unfair for them.
10:05 So they are that generation, they are facing these questions.
10:09 And it is about the reunion.
10:11 It's about the reunion.
10:12 And it's a love story.
10:14 I think it's a it's a it's a rom-com, essentially.
10:17 Did you feel that?
10:18 And you see, it was serialized on Sunday, Sunday mornings, right?
10:23 So the idea was that Sunday morning read, it was nice and pleasant with a cup of tea,
10:29 just the way we're doing it today.
10:33 And another thing I just want to know, like, what do you have?
10:36 How different are the adults of Delhi and Bombay and Calcutta?
10:40 How different now? I think the particular class that we're talking about, I think they're
10:45 very much the same.
10:46 The music and everything they have, like, breaking into conversation.
10:52 Yeah, I mean, of course, Calcuttans have certain reference, right in their world, which they
11:02 will never give up.
11:03 So so whether they are reacting to it or not.
11:07 So Ronnie, when he's making the film, so I was able to weave a little bit of it.
11:12 So he's making his magnum opus film, right?
11:15 And it was going to be a personal story.
11:17 But then he adds the renaissance Bengal element, right?
11:21 He brings in J.C. Bose and says, OK, I'm going to make J.C. Bose a character in it.
11:25 J.C. Bose at the time was teaching in presidency.
11:28 So there's that element of, you know, I was having fun doing it.
11:31 Because I think that is something that Bengalis would do.
11:34 You can relate to this book very well, because you felt it all, you've lived it all.
11:39 Yeah, and it's that sort of generation that is very familiar to us.
11:43 Yeah.
11:44 So it was kind of, it was a great learning experience for me as well, because this is
11:50 the first time that, you know, it was like painting a canvas in full view of an audience.
11:57 So you knew that you can't go wrong.
11:59 Yeah.
12:00 So, yeah.
12:01 And did you inform your friends at whom you've taken bits and pieces of their lives?
12:06 Oh, they were all very pleased.
12:07 And plus, you see, writers are doing it all the time.
12:10 All the time.
12:11 Because that's the best way to write.
12:12 You feel it, you've seen this.
12:14 There's a lot of soul in the book, I must say.
12:16 I'm glad you think so.
12:17 I think my husband is the worst sufferer.
12:20 He finds himself into all my writing.
12:22 This one I've left him.
12:23 Your husband is the one?
12:24 You left him?
12:25 Yeah, I've written too much about him now.
12:27 So, yeah, but writers, it's a hazard being friends with writers because they are going
12:32 to...
12:33 So Aduri, for example, I told my friend Samhita, the original, the one who I had written the
12:40 first chapter for, I said, "You know what, I think Aduri is turning out to be a lot like
12:44 you."
12:45 She said, "Yeah, that's fine."
12:46 And then, you know, later on, she started following Aduri's character.
12:50 And then she called me up and said, "How did you know that I like Chanel No. 5?"
12:54 I said, "I didn't know that."
12:55 She said, "But how does Aduri like it?"
12:56 So I'm saying that some peculiar things happen, you know, you're able to intuit certain things
13:00 that you didn't know.
13:01 Yeah.
13:02 Right?
13:03 I'm sure this book is going to do really well.
13:04 Thank you, Lakshmi.
13:05 And it's going to sell into a movie too.
13:06 And why don't we make it into a movie, Amrita Pandey?
13:10 Oh, I'm delighted to hear that.
13:12 I hope somebody makes it into a movie because apparently that's the only way writers can
13:17 sell books now, if it becomes a Netflix show or a movie.
13:20 All the best.
13:22 Thank you.
13:23 Thank you, Bibliophile.
13:24 I really enjoyed this.
13:26 Thanks.
13:27 Thanks.
13:28 Thanks.
13:29 Thanks.
13:30 Thanks.
13:31 Thanks.
13:32 Thanks.
13:33 Thanks.