In writing this book, I re-lived my childhood imaginings: a world peopled with mysterious characters out of Enid Blyton and replete with fun-filled adventures out of Richmal Crompton—I confabulated with the Secret Seven, I cycled with the Famous Five, I crept around with the Five Find-Outers, and adventured with William and his Outlaws.
Growing up in a small railway town, where the main mode of transport was a bicycle, learning to swim in the river Tapti, going pigeon-shooting in the surrounding fields, I always imagined that what I read in books could happen to me. Alas! It didn’t. And so in this book I made it happen.
While I wrote the book – even now when I re-read it – I feel a small frisson of excitement, the nostalgic call of an irresistible thrill of adventure.
To paraphrase Hilary Clinton: it takes a village to write a book. Banpuri, the setting for my story, is a thin disguise for Bhusaval, the town in which I was born and brought up; the circle of family, friends, teachers and neighbours made the town what it was, and are all therefore instrumental in the creation of this book.
I wrote the first draft some years ago, at a time when, for a few months, I had no office chamber, no desk, no computer—and no work. I am grateful to my friend and batch-mate in the IAS, Pukhraj Maroo, for so readily lending me the use of his office and computer, and for so often sharing his afternoon tiffin with me, while I wrote this.
And then my assignment with the United Nations came through, and one hectic year of work followed another. The manuscript lay untouched, and almost forgotten. After three very busy years as Chief Secretary of Madhya Pradesh, almost on a whim, I sent in an entry to the Times of India Write India national short story competition. I won the first prize, and then began a frenzy of writing a short story a month, until I had enough stories to publish my first book, The Disrobing of Draupadi and Other Stories. This was followed in quick succession by my next volume of short stories set in Goa, One For Sorrow, Two For Joy. Another first prize in Write India 3 engendered my third volume, The Day Nehru Died and Other Stories, which should be released shortly.
When I read of the Reado Junior imprint being launched, it struck me that I had a story that would be suitable. I located it, tucked away somewhere in the memory of my hard disc, and I sounded Dipankar Mukherjee, the ebullient publisher and director of Readomania. It was then called The Mystery of the Nawab’s Title Deeds, and was a bit shorter than it is now. I worked with my meticulous and patient editor, Indrani Ganguly, and the Readomania team, added a couple of twists and turns, and we chose a new name for it: The Curious Case of the Nandikote Nawab.
The icing on the cake was when Ruskin Bond, the doyen of Indian adventure storytellers, endorsed the book with a comment in his own hand: ‘Non-stop action.....never a dull moment!” I couldn’t have felt more encouraged.
Of course, Nik and Tara, Theeq and Mike and Zee have tons of more adventures to their credit – they’re only waiting for me to write about them. I will.
You can buy his latest book, The Curious Case of the Nandikote Nawab from Readomania
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