One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, diarist and writer Anne Frank; wrote on her wartime diary The Diary of a Young Girl that “I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my cour-age is reborn.”This is true for many authors I met, perhaps that is what every time an author feels while penning his or her greatest creation. A well written literary work often unifies with life. Dreams and battles of the protag-onist of the novel often merge with author’s own dreams and battles. Demarcation between imagination and life blurs there. That very life written on white paper creates an imprint on readers mind and soul for ages. Our cover story is based on such an enigmatic author of our time. Like Anne Frank, our young and charming Komal Mehta, feels the

EDITORIAL

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same. Her writing perhaps is the greatest strength to battle against every odd in life. Mukesh Rijhwani unveils Komal’s battle for life, her passion for writing and undiminished passion. We have featured an article on the digital marketing executed by Piy-ush Jha for his latest crime thriller, “Anti-Social Network”. It will give you a glimpse of the canvas of the modern day marketing. In this issue, Vishwas Mudagal and Indrani Bhattacharyya shares their inside story in “My path to get published” section. Satyarth Nayak shares interesting thoughts on “how to sketch your pro-tagonist”. An excellent article if you’re a writer with interest in fiction. We also have our regular sections such as poetry, book event and hot of the press in this edition for you. Do keep writing as always. Happy reading!

TEAMEditor

Victor Basu

Sub EditorsMukesh Rijhwani

Sumantra Chaudhury

Features WriterSudipa Chakraborty

Copy EditorsAtul Randev

Saurabh Chawla

Photo EditorNeloy Bandyopadhyay

DesignerAmit Mitra

storizen.com | August 2014 | 3

STORIZEN

ARTICLEsatyarth nayaksketching your character - protagonist [28]

simran tanejaan attacking campaign [32]

28

CovER SToRykomal mehtathe winner who takes it all [08]

08My PATH To GET PUBLISHEDvishwas mudagal [18]

indrani bhattacharyya [24]18

BooK EvEnTSbook launchratna vira [06]

hot of the pressshobhan bantwal [36]

06

PoETRypiya naini want to be something [40]

nivedita nlend me some money [41]

40

august 2014 contents

BooK REvIEWvasraoanti social network by piyush jha [38]

38

Book Launch - Daughter By Court Order

There was a book launch recently in Mumbai. It was Launch of Finger-prints publication’s “Daughter By Court Order” by Ratna Vira. Ratna holds a masters degree from the London School of Economics and Political Sci-ence, as well as a masters in English Literature from St Stephen’s College, University of Delhi. She also holds an MBA. She is the daughter of senior journalist, Nalini Singh, and SPN Singh. Ratna juggles her corporate career with her writing and love of art. She lives in Gurgaon with her daughter and son, where she is at work on her second novel.On this book launch occation many distingushed guest were present. Amongst them were ex IPS Kiran Bedi, film director Sudhir Mishra. n

Life tried to bow her down time and again, first with dys-

lexia and then with a critical kidney failure; but, she, the

spirited one, came out a win-ner every time.

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Komal MehtaThe Winner who takes it allLife tried to bow her down time and again, first with dyslexia and then with a critical kidney failure; but, she, the spirited one, came out a winner every time.

Mukesh Rijhwani

Cover Story

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I was standing outside Café Coffee day, hungry and angry. The Mumbai monsoon was at its peak. Thank-fully, it was just drizzling at 9 pm in the evening. I checked my watch, 10 times in the last 5 minutes. She was already half an hour late. Wearing a bright red party top, jeans and red platforms, Komal Mehta emerged from an auto rickshaw. She said, “Mukesh, you’re at the wrong Café Coffee Day”. Incidentally, there were two similar Cafés five minutes apart on the same stretch, the Juhu Road. After initial pleasantries, we settled down inside the Café. The music being played out was a Bollywood number and a bit loud for the cafe. We requested them to switch it off, but they declined and turned the volume down instead. I ordered Samosa and a Cold coffee. She or-dered, what she calls the only vice she has – an ice cream. She request-ed me to make this quick as this was her weekly party night. She came across as bright, jolly and full of life as I interviewed this soon-going-to-be-30-single-Mumbai-girl for the next half an hour.

Early years

Komal suffered from dyslexia when she was a child. It was not diagnosed until she was in her twelfth standard. By that time, it had almost corrected itself. But while in school, all those years her teachers found her weird,

her classmates found her weird too. Throughout her school life, she had only one friend. Because of poor eye-hand co-ordination, she per-formed miserably in sports or any kind of performing arts. She didn’t imagine alphabets flying out from the question paper (as in the case of Ishaan of Taare Zameen Par), but she had her own world of fantasy. In the fourth standard, she had to write an essay about the place of her dreams and she wrote an essay about her fantasy world. She got a big zero in that assignment. She was disappointed, demoralized, devas-tated, but determined and she de-cided that she wanted to be a writer from that point on.

College life

After spending good 10 years of her life in an all girl’s convent school, college was a welcome break. She shared, “Being in all girls convent scars you for life”. She wanted to pursue literature, but her tradition-al Gujrati parents pushed her in to Engineering. But the itch, made her write for almost all college maga-zines. Her best friend submitted one of her works in an online youth magazine called JAM. That entry was not accepted, but her writing was. She was thrilled to be writing pro-fessionally at the young age of 15. Since then, she wrote regularly for JAM throughout her college days.

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Komal with actor Neil Nitin Mukesh on a book launchstorizen.com | August 2014 | 11

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And by the time she completed her MBA, her articles were already be-ing published by the Times of India, DNA and Rediff.com. She still owes her writing career to her first editor of JAM Magazine – Rashmi Bansal. Amidst all writing, she still managed to score a Gold medal in Engineer-ing (in Maths), finished among the top ranks in MBA and had loads of fun along the way.

First break

She was picked up as part of Cam-pus Recruitment by Adlabs Films lim-ited (which then got acquired by Re-liance Big Entertainment). She was put in to Movie marketing, where she clocked 16 hours a day, 6 days a week. After 2 years, she realized that she had to get back to her first love – writing. She quit Adlabs and joined another job as TV Marketer.

The hole in the heart

Her job as a TV Marketer gave her enough space to pursue her pas-sions. It was then she decided to write a full length novel and also started learning swimming. Being

a dyslexic child, she was away from sport all this while, but that was past. To plug this hole in her heart, she focused furiously on swimming. She had set her eyes on the Olym-pic Gold in Swimming. Within a span of one year, she represented West Zone and won the bronze medal. She established herself as an Inter-national level swimmer. She said, “The stint at Adlabs taught me the value of time and how to stay focused”. It was because of that she completed writing her first novel - ‘Nick of time’ in flat 4 months while working as a TV Marketing Manager. With a full length manuscript by her side and the bronze medal in swim-ming at the age of 26, she felt at the top of the world.

The great debacle

She sent out her manuscript to all publishing houses in the country. She also did cold calling to almost all of them whose phone numbers she could find. As expected, she started receiving rejection letters one after another. She shared, “Every rejec-tion hurt and it was heart breaking and a confidence shattering

‘‘Komal Mehta suffered from dyslexia when she was a child. It was not diagnosed un-til she was in her twelfth standard. By that time, it had almost corrected itself.

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process that haunts me even till this day”. In the same year, she start-ed falling sick periodically, which didn’t help either. A routine check revealed that she was seriously ail-ing and was diagnosed with Critical Kidney Failure.

She recalled, “I was 27 years old when I was told that my life as I know it had ended. I had to get a high risk organ-transplant surgery to live at all and that even after the surgery my quality of life will probably nev-er be the same again. The cruel part of the deal was that I would need another person to donate their Kid-ney for me to become a full bodied person again. Coming to terms with how something like this had hap-pened to a completely healthy per-son like me was only one part of the problem, the other was whether I would ever be normal again, whole again. I had my whole life ahead of me – I wanted to get married, write books, have kids, travel the world...none of that seemed possible now. The loss of the life I hadn’t even lived yet was bearing down upon me. I was on dialysis, awaiting a donor,

when I had received a total of 14 rejections from all over the world. I was so close to death that at times, I actually felt that This was it. Game’s over for me. I thought I’d never be able to see my book being pub-lished or if it did, live to see that day. I could see my death reflected in my doctors and relatives faces.”

Mother India

The organ donation procedure in India is very tedious and even after all the basic tests are in place, legal-ities, such as an NOC from the gov-ernment, have to be obtained be-fore any surgery can be conducted. It took her nearly a month to clear the formalities before the surgery could finally proceed as planned. At this juncture, her mother, Asha Mehta decided to test her kidney for a match. Luckily her kidney was the best match with Komal’s and so, without a moment’s hesitation, she decided to donate one of her kid-neys. Asha knew she would do anything to see Komal healthy again, so no price was too high to pay.

‘‘Vaishali Mathur (Editor, Penguin Books) is the love of my life. She’s like my moth-er. If there’s a picture of me with Neil Nitin Mukesh, she would say, you’re more popu-lar than Neil.

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This decision, while easy to make, was difficult to execute. She had domestic responsibilities, a 15-year-old son giving his tenth standard exams and concerns of what would happen if she got sick, concerns of who would take care of Komal when she was recuperating and those of her husband, who was worried about having his wife and daughter in the operation theatre at the same time. It was nightmarish.

The silver lining

One day after coming back from initial hospitalization, she received ‘the call’ from the editor of Penguin Books India. The call was to con-firm that Penguin will publish her first book – Nick of Time. She adds, “I didn’t know how to react – I was living my greatest dream and my worst nightmare together. I pretty much signed my book deal on my hospital bed while I was on dialysis.”The transplant went as planned and with the help of family and friends they recuperated very fast. Both mother and daughter currently live a perfectly normal life with one kidney each. Asha Mehta pledges, “There is

no greater satisfaction than giving someone a second chance by do-nating a single organ of your body”.

The Highway

Exactly a year later from the day of Surgery, she launched her first book, Nick of Time in a star stud-ded event. Her connections in Bol-lywood came to good use. The book became a best seller within no time. In the mean time, she finished her second book ‘Spot Girl’. It was in-spired by her stint in the Bollywood movie marketing world. She prays to God, that her ex-bosses should not read this book. Spot Girl was released in June 2014. Neil Nitin Mukesh launched the book in an-other star-studded event.

The accolades

Being a book on Indian Cinema, Spot girl was profiled at 2014 Cannes Film Festival. The poster and cata-logue of the book was carried at the Indian Pavilion in Cannes as part of the official contingent.Post-surgery, Komal became more focused. She started writing for TV

‘‘I was living my greatest dream and my worst nightmare together. I pretty much signed my book deal on my hospital bed while I was on dialysis.

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Mukesh Rijhwani is a techie by heart and storyteller by soul. He is the co-founder of Storizen. He loves the scent of a book (new or old) and dreams of be-coming a librarian.

She’s writing for ‘Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya’ a TV serial that runs at 10 pm IST daily on ZEE TV. Also, she has fin-ished writing a Bollywood ROM COM script which is ready to go on the floors. She has finished her 3rd book which is soon to be published. She slogs hard for 5 days and par-ties every Saturday night till morn-ing. She’s taken a vow not to waste any minute of her life anymore. She has travelled; learnt Italian and has

a crush on an UK based Pop Sing-er. The Singer also admires her and sends the tickets of every concert to her.Her phone rings for the fiftieth time in that one hour. While on her way to the party, she dropped me off at Andheri station in an auto. This has to be one of those truly inspiring moments about working at Stori-zen for me. Have a happy long life Komal. You rock! n

Komal’s top 5 tips for wannabe authors: 1. You can’t make a living by being a full time author.2. Get a lot of feedback, not just from family and friends. Keep an open mind.3. Wait for a good publisher. If you’re convinced, just go self-publish. Don’t wait around forever.4. If you want to be a writer, there are enough writing oppor-tunities and many avenues like print, online, TV and Cinema.5. Write only if you have some story to tell. Don’t just do it for your ego boost.

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My path to

get publishedVishwas Mudagal

My path to

get publishedVishwas Mudagalstorizen.com | August 2014 | 19

Everyone rejected it, almost. One said it was a business book and not mainstream

fiction. Another didn’t like the narration. Some said they don’t print such fiction.

Few never replied. I was depressed.

it was a time

when I was about to go bankrupt. It was a time when my life was about to change completely; I just didn’t know it back then.In 2009, my Internet start-up went through a rough phase pushing me to a state of bankruptcy and I had no other option but to shut shop. All of this took a heavy toll on me emotionally and I didn’t know what to do next. One of those days, I happened to talk to an ex-colleague, who shared that he was going on a year-long journey on his bike across India. I was left amazed listening to this, and instantly wanted to do that myself . . . go away, kill all the tension inside me, and look at everything else later on. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do that for a host of reasons.However, a bizarre idea struck me, that of writing a book on the situa-tion I was in. I was so excited

suddenly. I

decided to make the pro-tagonist of my book go on a jour-ney; I could live that life and that freedom through him, I reasoned. On May 22, 2009, I wrote the first chapter of the book, and, I’d like to believe, my life changed that day.Losing My Religion, my novel, essen-tially became a rollercoaster of a sto-ry with three characters from differ-ent walks of life who come together on a journey that changes their lives forever. It took me around two years to complete the story, and in 2011, I started giving the book to my family and friends to read. Almost every-one loved the story. Most couldn’t believe I had actually written it. Curious to know what the experts thought about it, as a next step I sent the manuscript to few well-known critics and authors in Bangalore. Author Sumatheendra Nadig read it and said the book was brilliant. Sah-itya Akademi awardee CN Ramach-andran told me I was bound to be-come very popular. This gave a lot of confidence and I started sending

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Everyone rejected it, almost. One said it was a business book and not mainstream

fiction. Another didn’t like the narration. Some said they don’t print such fiction.

Few never replied. I was depressed.

the man-uscript to few top pub-

lishers. To my dismay, none revert-ed. It was really frustrating because coming from software industry, I was used to hearing a yes or no within days if not weeks. But in pub-lishing industry, months or years meant nothing. I reached out to Abhaya from Pothi.com who suggested connecting with agents as publishers take agents se-riously, at least somewhat. I reached out to a few agents but none replied. It didn’t come as a surprise; by then I had it figured out that after all even agents belong to the same indus-try… One of those days, someone introduced me to an agent called Kanishka Gupta, who wrote back within an hour asking for the com-plete manuscript. I was shocked. Is he even a real agent? I wondered back then. Reluctantly I sent him the manuscript, with his assurance that he will keep my manuscript safe.

(Again this had me in a real tizzy as no IP in software industry goes from one person to another without a signed NDA. But in publishing, there is no such thing called an NDA. And it’s also true that no one is actually bothered about your manuscript.)He wrote back to me within a day saying that though the manuscript needed work, the story was killer and fresh. For the first time, it felt good to hear that at least someone in the industry was actually read-ing my manuscript. He helped me edit the book and after it came to a good shape, he sent it to all the top publishers. Everyone rejected it, almost. One said it was a business book and not mainstream fiction. Another didn’t like the narration. Some said they don’t print such fiction. Few never replied. I was depressed. I lost all hope that my book would ever get published. Then one day I got a call from Kan-ishka that a Kolkata-based publisher was interested in the book. I couldn’t believe it. I was ecstatic. But then the next day he called back saying we had to drop it as the

Then one day I got a call from Kanishka that a

Kolkata-based publisher was interested in the book.

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publisher was asking us to put our money into printing it. They just wanted to market. I was more dis-appointed than ever. All hope went down the drain again. In a few months, a Delhi-based pub-lisher agreed to publish my book. This time I was more guarded and didn’t jump to celebrate. (Publishing industry teaches you stuff, I tell you.) We researched about the publisher and learned that they didn’t even sell books on Flipkart. We rejected the offer. And it felt strangely good that I had rejected a publisher. By then I was almost certain that I had to self-publish because none of the good publishers were left anymore to reject my book. In two months, Kanishka called again to tell me that a new publish-ing house called Fingerprint! has agreed to publish. What’s the catch? I asked getting straight to the point. He laughed and said that this was a good one, backed by the largest book distributor in India. He also mentioned they were keen not only because the story was good but also because I had a strong marketing plan for the book.After speaking to Arcopol Chaudhu-

ri, the commissioning editor, I real-ized that these were a bunch of pas-sionate folks. So I took the risk and agreed to go with Fingerprint! Pooja Dadwal was assigned as my editor and she saw a different potential in the book. For the first time, I saw someone as passionate about LMR as I was. We relentlessly worked on the story, the characters, the dialogues, and the end result was something that the team was proud of. Our immediate circle just loved the book once it was done. After re-jecting some 50 odd book cover de-signs, we finalized one and took it to print. The book was released in Feb 2014 and went on to debut as a bestseller on many charts in India, including Amazon. I was overwhelmed by the response from the readers; they had connected with my story and characters in a way I didn’t think was possible. When my readers now thank me for writing LMR, I feel all that hard work of five years was worth it. And that my theory was right—‘If you follow your passion, the world will follow yours…’ Storytelling is my passion. This is who I am… I am a storyteller. n

Vishwas Mudagal is a serial entrepreneur and a CEO with a history of building innovative technology brands and companies. Writing is his pas-sion, and he has embraced storytelling as his parallel career. Losing My Religion is his debut novel, which has become a sensational best-seller in India.

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get publishedMy path to

Indrani BhattacharyyaThe two most common tags people in science often get stuck with are nerdy and geeky. No matter what, you are destined to stay far from the esteemed world of creativity!

get publishedMy path to

Indrani BhattacharyyaThe two most common tags people in science often get stuck with are nerdy and geeky. No matter what, you are destined to stay far from the esteemed world of creativity!

Chetan Bhagat and few other prom-inent names in the field have defi-nitely brought in some much await-ed change but this perception runs too deep to be wiped off by such discrete attempts.Through twelve long years in school; my diary used to hold up all my se-crets. In Calcutta where my home was once, an old briefcase probably still lies in silence, filled with the cut-tings of me featuring in the student column of The Times of India, those letters of appreciation for winning Saturday short story competitions in Bangalore Asian Age, certificates received in essay writings and what not! They were undoubtedly my par-ents’ most prized possessions.And then the infamous battle of survival of the fittest, every Indian student religiously go through, be-gan for me too. Writing took a back seat. Like old scented pretty memo-ries; I kept it aside.

Time flew. I eventually settled in Montreal.The cruel weather-the rough real-ity-the loneliness-and I wanted to look back; to pick up my pen; once more.At first, most of what I wrote back then; started getting published on-line. Thankfully I really didn’t have to wait that way. Slowly, I could feel that I was being noticed. Known on-line sites started asking for more write ups. Just to gather some ex-tra experience, I started working as a freelancer with a Montreal based newspaper called Bharat Times for almost two years; apart from work-ing as a regular reporter, I had my own monthly column on lifestyle and relationship there. This phase gave me substantial idea about the nitty gritty of today’s print media.And finally that moment arrived; as a professional Biologist, when I un-derstood you can’t really defy your gene, perhaps my grandfather and father passed it onto and the baton is in my hand now. I couldn’t afford to let them down. There is this dis-tinct difference between just having a passion and letting your guard off for the true calling; it took me a while to get in tune with that realization. And it was indeed embarking on a new sojourn onwards. By this time, a German publication house got in touch with me. They wanted to make a compilation of twelve short pieces of non fictions I wrote, all of them were previously published online.

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Thus, my first book Rain Drops in Her Heart was born. A very strong connection got built up between me and my readers through Rain Drops in Her Heart. My readers started reaching out in facebook, through mails. The es-sences of their messages remained constant; that they were touched, as if I have told their stories.Given my age, probably I have wit-nessed a little too much of what you call life. I lost both my parents and granny within a span of five months. I couldn’t cry. I bled through my pen instead. One day, a friend from US floated the idea and asked me, “Why don’t you make it a memoir?”And my second book, Life as she sees it over a cup of latte, a memoir of molten images, came alive.My reader base took a giant leap with Life as she sees it over a cup of latte, honestly. Lines like “Indra-ni, my mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer stage II, when-ever I feel low, I read you” or “you

are probably of my daughter’s age but I have been learning so much from your thoughts” never stopped reaching me. And I couldn’t ask for more.It’s extremely different a feeling to come closer to few moist hearts through your own words.No, life doesn’t turn into any fairy-tale, problems don’t get solved over-night, the intense grief doesn’t leave either but the truth is writing sets me free with the soft white light of serene surrender on my shoulder.Like every creative soul, I run away only to find myself back adding up some more dimension every time. I love to lose myself the way a burn-ing candle leaves behind a silent aroma of aloneness only to love me back. And the story goes on like a soothing night song through which I destroy myself only to flourish in resilience. From tasting freedom to the road of independence-I have come pretty far with the wings of word. n

Indrani works as a journalist with IBTimes (Sidney). Her first book ‘Rain drops in her heart’ got published from Germany. She wrote for Hack-writers, Another Realm, Paragraph Planet, Bong Connect, eFiction India, Heartscapes- True stories of remembered love, TajMahal Review. Her poetries will be featured in International poetry festival 2014 .

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ProtagonistSketching the character

Satyarth Nayak

‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have great-ness thrust upon them’ wrote the Bard of Avon. For an author, his pro-tagonist belongs to the third category. A persona that they create and upon whom they need to thrust greatness. Easier said than done you may say but it ain’t really rocket science. So how do you do it?

ProtagonistSketching the character

,

First and foremost, make sure your protagonist is singular enough. In other words he or she must be such a unique specimen of humanity that instantly attracts attention. He must be an individual with qualities phys-ical, mental or emotional that com-pels reader interest. Having said that, your protagonist may also be someone with no striking traits at all and he may gain them on the way like a coming of age tale. But even a Plain Jane can have a certain virtue that puts her in the spotlight. Your reader must establish a relation with your hero and sympathize or at least empathise. Anything unusual will al-ways generate curiosity and that’s what you want at the beginning of the book. Think of the Spanish hero Don Quixote created by Cervantes and how he is fascinating because he is so hilariously misguided. Give your hero a good balance of good and bad virtues. Excess of ei-ther can alienate your reader. The protagonist cannot be a model of perfection or a pit of vices (unless you are deliberately creating an ex-aggerated character). Give him hu-man imperfections and he will come across as real and identifiable. Tra-ditionally protagonists have all the moral values in place, though we are increasingly witnessing charac-ters who are blurring the lines be-tween good and evil. Flaws create the scope for problems that lead to character development and conflict. Shakespearean heroes like Macbeth

and Othello are fabulous case stud-ies since they are great characters but with that one tragic flaw that leads to their downfall.

Your protagonist must be consis-tent. Once you have moulded them in a certain way, they should act with-in that framework. Any irregularity can irritate the reader and he might start doubting the integrity of your central character. It is this uniformity that familiarizes the protagonist to a reader. Of course once in a while, your hero can do something totally unexpected and unpredictable but keep these spurts within acceptable boundaries. There’s nothing more attractive than the protagonist at times contradicting himself or going through a sudden internal conflict. Remember we are human and can fall prey to unforeseen dilemmas.

Make sure your protagonist has a motive or a problem that needs to be tackled. An aim or ambition, that becomes the driving force for the character as well as the book’s nar-rative. It is this dream or goal that will be the plot of your book and the pivot around which all events shall revolve. The conflict will also make the protagonist an active trigger to cause things to happen. His actions and choices must direct the course of your tale. He might change along the way or come out unscathed but he must act. The grander his trial by fire,

,

the more majestic he becomes. The hero Frodo’s final triumph in The Lord of the Rings is spectacular be-cause he perseveres on and fulfils a task most gigantic. While it’s imperative that the protag-onist must act, he must have good reasons to do so. Make sure that the events in his life compel him to stand up and react. Unless you give them a good reason, the cred-ibility of your story will come under the scanner. The one that works ev-ery time is that he will stand to gain something or lose something price-less unless he acts. Everyone likes a hero to keep going despite odds and be rewarded in the end. The eighty years old detective, Miss Mar-ple trudges on and on to smoke out the murderer simply because the author Agatha Christie makes Mar-ple’s moral beliefs about murder crystal clear for us. Of course, you can make the hero lose everything and stand alone and desolate if you

are going for an absolute tragic end-ing.Your protagonist must have the ca-pacity to change and grow. Charac-ter development is the bloodline for any story. Whether it’s for the bet-ter or worse, your hero should be a different person in the end than what he was when his journey be-gan. Create experiences and events that react with your central char-acter and mould him as he travels through your book. To what extent you can change him depends on your vision but keep it within the realms of believability. Think of the heroes of Charles Dickens like Pip or David and how they evolve through the book from boys to men. Keep in mind that your protagonist is the foundation on which your en-tire edifice rests. Make him paper thin and your entire book will col-lapse. Thrust greatness upon him and your book will spread its wings and soar sky high. n

Satyarth Nayak is an author, script-writer & jour-nalist. Former SAARC award-winning Correspon-dent with CNN-IBN, he did Masters in English Literature from St. Stephen’s. His debut history meets mystery novel ‘The Emperor’s Riddles’ is out. Acclaimed by Amish Tripathi & Ashwin Sang-hi, the mystery thriller is already hitting several bestseller charts.

Thursday, 22nd May at 19:03, the India’s foremost noir crime-fiction novelist Piyush Jha’s Facebook friends were met with a dubious post on their feed that threatened to “get him”. A series of status updates in the form of random letters and symbols stringed together made them wonder whether it was a hack or merely his pocket typing for him by mistake. Fifteen minutes later, however, “@#$& ‘^ Kill Ķill Kill @+×÷#!!!!” appeared before somebody finally recognised that something might really be wrong. With cybercrime on the rise, these updates made his 3,000 followers wary of what may be going on. One of his closest per-sonal friends even wound up at Jha’s residence to check on him.

“I was flooded with calls and messages and I had to work really hard

at keeping a straight face while my friends were giving suggestions that

I should contact the cyber-cell of the Mumbai police etc.”

By Simran Taneja

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“Have you been hacked?” asked Jha’s buddy, the actor Arunoday Singh followed by even more of the suspi-cious messages from the writer’s ac-count. Within the hour, the readers witnessed a fairly scary upload of a blood-stained knife and the mes-sages became repetitive, a telltale sign of being dangerously hacked. What were those messages about? Was someone really out to get him? Would we be hacked similarly? Un-derstandably so, with these ques-tions, some of his friends decided to flee his network to remain clear of the potential threat of being similar-ly hacked including Vaishali Mathur of Penguin Random House.

One only realised the true inten-tion of the quick succession of the dodgy messages the next morning when Jha posted the cover of his latest novel, Anti-Social Network, the latest edition to his bestselling Mumbaistan series.Suddenly the penny dropped and people sheepishly realized that Jha had successfully made them believe that he was the target of Internet miscreants like those in his novel.“Timothy Fox, a college professor from Taiwan admitted online that it had been a “creepy”, but clever cam-paign. Upon being interviewed, the writ-er himself disclosed that the aim was to get the thought across “sim-ply and effectively” as his book is “about youngsters who use social

media for nefarious purposes”. When prodded further about how he dealt with his friends leaving his Facebook page because of his tactic he said, “I was flooded with calls and messages and I had to work really hard at keeping a straight face while my friends were giving suggestions that I should contact the cyber-cell of the Mumbai police etc.”. He final-ly had to personally message sev-eral of his friends to ‘re-friend’ him on Facebook, alongside a public announcement on his page calling the others back. Of course, the peo-ple were back soon saying that they were really taken in by his campaign and congratulating him on a job well done.

The third part of Inspector Virkar’s adventures- ‘Anti-Social Network’ is penned by the author in this charac-teristically off-beat style. In this edi-tion, the Inspector is seen hunting a group of teenagers who begin to use social networking platforms for purposes that are less-than friendly and genuinely life-threatening. The novel is edgy and layered with a va-riety of complications making it one that is hard to tear yourself away from. n

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Shobhan Bantwal is back with yet another scintillating read, The Full Moon Bride.After the success of The Sari Shop Widow, The Reluctant Matchmaker and The Unex-pected Son, bestselling au-thor Shobhan Bantwal is back with a new story, an emotion-ally compelling novel that ex-plores the fascinating subject of arranged marriage.The Full Moon Bride is the sto-ry of Siya Giri, a young Indi-an-American who has to make a choice between desire and tradition as she finally decides to get married. On one hand she has Roger, a self-pos-sessed, intelligent, and charm-ing man who is introduced to her in her bride- viewing, and on the other, there is Lou, a widowed colleague with whom Siya finds herself developing a flirtation.Caught between two men, two marriage concepts, and two cultures, Siya has to now de-cide what matters to her the MOST! Not in a husband, but also in a family, a culture, and a life. n

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Shobhan Bantwal is the author of six novels and co-author of two anthol-ogies. Her books combine contemporary women’s issues with romantic elements. Her articles have appeared in The Writer, Romantic Times, India Abroad, Little India, New Woman, and India Currents. Her short fiction has won honours/awards in contests sponsored by Writer’s Digest, New York Stories, and New Woman magazines. Her debut book, THE DOWRY BRIDE, won the 2008 Golden Leaf Award. THE UNEXPECTED SON won the 2012 National Indie Excellence Award. Shobhan lives in Arizona, USA.

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Piyush Jha ‘s novel “Anti Social Net-work “ is an action cum crime thrill-er. There is never a dull moment in the narrative. It is dedicated to his wife Priyanka for gently pushing him along. Towards the end of the book is the Acknowedgements wherein the author admits his gratefulness to many, especailly to his mother and Mumbai Devi, the deity of Mumbai. Piyush Jha is an ad film maker. He has made a name with advertise-ments for India’s biggest brands.He has made films like Chalo Amer-ica, King of Bollywood, Sikander etc.His earlier books Mumbaistan and Compass Box Killer have brought

him high acclaim. The publisher is Rupa. It is available as an e book as well. My book copy says that it is a digital copy. This goes hand in glove with the title “Anti So-cial Network “. The cover has been designed by Ni-tesh Mohanty. It shows a girls’ silhou-ette in black against a blood splat-tered background across the upper part of the book. The girl is wearing a short frock or skirt rising above her knees. She is playing with her hair with her left hand. In her right hand, is a knife from which blood is flowing.She is surrounded by the buildings of Mumbai at her feet.Maybe she is somewhere on a hill top or upper storey. Perhaps, she has Mumbai at her feet. The back page of the book shows the Mumbai stock exchange building, the Rajabhai clock tower & the Gateway of India. The Rupa logo is at the top right handside of the front cover page and also down at the back cover page. The cover page says that this is an Inspector Virkar crime thriller. It says that it is a Mumbaistan series. This sets the pace of the book.

Anti-Social NetworkPiyush Jha

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A young lad is found murdered with his penis missing.Another killing ensues. This body has the tongue cut out.Next in line, is a girl whose eyes have been gouged out.Inspec-tor Virkar who is assigned the case is dumb struck. He has seen bod-ies with parts missing and yet this all seems to be the crimes of a de-ranged mind. Or is it, very careful planning to confound the police. Is there one murderer or a gang on the loose ? There is Usman teacher, an informer turned criminal, who tips Inspector Virkar. He gets eliminated soon.Is that death linked to the se-ries of gruesome killings? Naina Rai, the student counseller becomes the comrade in arms, as Inspector Virk-ar falls for her charms. As the narra-tive gathers speed, it is clear that the net is being abused for coercion, so that money exchanges hands. Are the murders and the coercion part of the same racket? Inspector Virk-ar has to befriend a geek, Robert a hacker who has to be bribed with paid holidays. Moreover, Robert is always on a high, on drugs. Is Robert trustworthy? Is Inspector Virkar able

to match up to the cyber skills of the killers? Do Naina Rai and Inspector Virkar become a couple? Does Rob-ert deliver or is just playing along? The novel begins with an epilogue and ends with a prologue. There are forty four chapters in a book of 192 pages. Short chapters teeming with action and thrills. Mumbai slang is used effectively and makes for smiles. The author seems to know the lanes and bylanes of Mumbai too well. He describes them in great details. Hence, the narrative gets real! Inspector Virkar is a simple per-son who needs Jhinga Koliwada and branded beer. He seems to have a keen sense of observation as part of the job and even otherwise. He has an eye for detail, of the anatomy of humans, especially women! A fast paced thriller which can be read in just one night! Total paisa vasool for the price of Rs.195 n

Vasrao is a law graduate from Government Law Col-lege, Mumbai. She’s a fellow in General Insurance. She is a homemaker at present, having worked for nearly 16 years in General Insurance in the Public Sector. She is a voracious reader and maintains a wonderful book review blog.

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I want to be the froth of your coffeeAnd the caramel of your toffeeMake me that cherry on your mango mousseAnd the hangover of your boozeI should be the spice in your fish fryAnd that delicious icing on your pear pieI wish to be the fizz of your cokeAnd the high of your smokeI want to be the flavor of your milkshakeAnd the elixir for all your acheI-was the start of this poetic brew I want the end to be- you.

I want to be somethingPriya Nain

Residing in Gurgaon, studying in Computer Science at YMCAUST, Faridabad. She enjoys comput-er networking, creative writing, doodling and swimming. She is an optimist and always eager to learn new things. Her motto in life is live and let live.

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Lend me some money, will you?I will buy you 1: 20 pm.Yes when we shared lunch frommy steel tiffin boxin which the food was cold,alwaysyou remember? Lend me some money,I want to auction for 5 pmThe timeWhen wrapped in old newspapersYou brought me pakorasBefore picking the last oneOur eyes would noticeThe page stained with oilAnd forgot about the pakorasWhy did the part of the paper stain with oilCarry the most delicious piece of news Today, I have some change,Only to buy you 8 pmThe time when daddy went outto buy vegetablesand I stared at the landlineAnd cleared my voice before I picked upthe phoneWhat a signal! Lend me some money, will you?Not a lot but just change to borrowthese times, a few.

Lend me some moneyNivedita

Nivedita is a story teller, poet, book reviewer and a blogger. She has an awesome website.

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