WriterStory Interviews of Writers
Kunal Bhardwaj is the author of romance fiction “Love was never Mine..”. By profession, he is a strategic research and marketing professional, previously being associated with firms such as Evalueserve, Genpact, Informatics and MarketsandMarkets. At present, he resides in Bangalore, and is heading the academic business division for Newshunt, including academic e-books and e-learning. He has a keen interest in entrepreneurship, and was one of the top finalists for previously held “Economic Times Power of Ideas”. He considers Munshi Premchand and Sharat Chandra as his idols, and hopes that the Indian readers and writers learn a lot from them, than aspiring for foreign authors or writing.
His Achievements:
- Editorial columns featured for Rajasthan Patrika in Hindi
- He has been featured in Yourstory article
- His book – Love was never Mine… was quoted by Rediff as one of the Top 5 romance novels by a debut author
What inspired you to start writing?
Writing just happened all of sudden. I never thought I would be a writer someday, to get that published and moderately being liked by people is something which I never thought even in my dreams.
It’s like you take seminal steps in the crossroads of life, and encounter something which you desperately want to put it across on paper. The same thing happened with me.
What did you like to read when you were a boy?
I remember the first story which I read was Kabuliwala. Even at that age, by the time I finished reading it, my eyes were wet and heart was heavy. Since then such stories were something which I always looked forward to, and loved reading. I used to travel by mostly trains in my childhood, and the wheeler book stalls at railway stations always caught my attention.
I read mostly short stories such as Godan, Kafan, Budhi Kaki, Panch Parmeshwar, Idgaah, Poos ki Raat, Devdas and numerous other such short stories in Hindi.
Besides these, I was quite fond of reading hindi comics and Rajan Iqbal novels.
What is the greatest challenge in writing a book?
Trust me, the single greatest challenge in writing a book is “to keep yourself motivated enough to write”. There will always be thousands of reasons for you for not getting time to write. But there will always be that one prominent reason which supercedes all those thousands of petty reasons, and compels you to sit and write.
How much research do you do before writing the book?
The first book was actually something for which I took inspirations from my surroundings. So mostly there was nothing for me to research upon. It was all based on personal experience or by closely analyzing the characters surrounding me. It’s like the story was chasing me rather than me chasing the story towards completion.
However, in my upcoming novel, there was just an idea – a one line idea – i.e. What happens when a prostitute falls in love with her Pimp or vice versa? What happens when a butcher falls in love with a goat he is about to slaughter?
The idea was compelling. I needed to develop that idea into a full fledged story. So I had to research a lot, talk to few people, understand the living conditions of prostitutes, their mindset, the psychology of pimps and prostitutes, how they come into the industry and all. For almost 2 years, I was only researching the topic. I bought a lot of books as well which could give me further insights on this. I talked to few NGOs who helps prostitutes in rehabilitation.
What motivated you to write the book “Love was never Mine…”?
Love was never Mine… just happened all of a sudden. I encountered few events in the lives of me and the people around me.
Can you tell us more about your latest book “Love was never Mine…”?
Love was never Mine… as stated above is basically nothing but a quest of a guy coming from a rural background to understand what is the definition of love in a metro city. It’s about how he mis-undestands close friendship as love, its about what he feels when his feelings are never being reciprocated by the other person, its about what are the numerous instances when he gets hurt emotionally. But still he believes in destiny and keeps moving.
It’s the story of Rahul, who comes from a background where he had not spoken to any girl till he joined a company in Delhi. When he meets Shreya, he mis-understands her frankness as love. What happens when Shreya does not reciprocate the same feelings for her? Does he go out of the way to change his destiny? Sometimes the destiny does not pay heed to your desires, sometimes it just may.
How did you came up with the idea of writing romantic fiction genre book?
As I told you – I din’t select this genre. Rather this genre selected me. Romance is something which is pure emotions. Being an emotional person by heart, I can relate to it, and express the feelings in a better way on paper. Thats what I have done in my novel.
Who are your favourite authors?
I grew up reading mostly Hindi novels, and drew inspiration from them. My favorite authors are Munshi Premchand, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Phanishwar Nath ‘Renu’, Surendra Mohan Pathak, and Ved Prakash Sharma. The kind of simplicity and emotional connect they have with their readers, it’s simply unimaginable.
How much time do you dedicate for writing on a daily basis?
Writing is not something where you can define a time frame on a daily basis. Its completely random. Some day you tend to write for 4-5 hours at one one stretch. While there will be days when you don’t feel like writing anything for months.
What words of wisdom would you like to give to aspiring writers?
Though I am not that qualified enough to give a word of wisdom to writers. However I can sugegst that they should keep themselves motivated enough to keep writing. You will find many people have unfinished stories which they started writing, but did not finish due to lack of motivation. Many of them do have the potential to be the next “Immortals of Meluha”, “5 Points Someone” etc. Just go back, take that pice, wipe off the dust and imagine the published book in your hands. You will definitely be compelled to finish it – if not for publishing it, at least for your inner satisfaction.
You can buy his book now:
