Hyderabad: We met in a café in Khan Market, New Delhi. It could have been the same café where Idha, the protagonist of Deepti Kapoor’s A Bad Character, meets the charismatic, dangerous young man who exposes her to the thrilling pleasures of the city, and her body. It could have been the very same café because as I took a tour of the place, the words in her book came alive.
The words about how you are immune to ‘the thousands of horns and voices of the city, the scorching heat, the frying food, the sewer smells, exhaust fumes and staring people’. As long as you are inside, in the cool of the AC ‘with the windows politely shuttered, you forget the city’. But the moment you step outside, the city crawls onto you.
The café was her place of choice, perhaps, because she wanted me to realise that the words in her book not only tell the story of Idha, but also chronicle the city that Delhi is, inside and outside the café.
“Delhi has been such an important part of my life, and suddenly after marriage, I wasn’t there anymore. And so, I had this burning desire to write a fictional Delhi novel,” shares the author.
“I wanted to write a story of a relationship — a girl, a guy and the city. But it wasn’t going to be a love story, but much more dark, incorporating all the other ideas that I had: the aggression and the violence that I see in the city; the female desire; and then of course, my personal experiences. It was the idea of taking what I’ve seen and transforming it into an art that really fascinated me.”
The story of Idha goes back and forth in time and through her, shows a glimpse of the different facets of the city and its people. She also dissects the different personalities of the city through the male character. “This guy is just like the city which is seductive, but dangerous. The relationship between the two characters is very much intertwined with the city. So the violence and aggression which you see in Delhi, is also ultimately there in the relationship. You can’t separate the two,” says Deepti.
While she started writing the book in third person, Deepti later decided to change it to first person to create a sense of danger and also to make the writing, a thrilling experience.
