Sourabh Mukherjee's Blog

 

I finished reading Saikat Majumdar's 'The Firebird' last night. There are books you finish in one go, and then there are stories you wish did not end. You are in no rush to reach the destination, as you have fallen in love with the journey. This story is like that chocolate bar in your refrigerator, which an uncle coming home for the holidays from abroad, gifted you in your childhood. You would take bite-sized chunks every day, wrap the rest of it carefully, and keep it back inside the refriger...

 

Aarti was with Vikram in her one-bedroom flat. It had been raining for quite some time - the dirt washed away, street lights reflected on the wet roads. There were distant rumbles in the evening sky, sounding almost ominous. Very few cars sped down the empty road below. The room was half-lit by a single lamp on the study desk.

 It was just the two of them inside the flat. They had returned a while back after dining at the Marriott in Juhu.

 “I’ve been missing you for days, Vikram! I don’t reme...

 

The Sinners presents an eclectic mix of interesting characters.

 Central to the story is Vikram Oberoi, the head of India Operations of NexGen, which manufactures smart devices and has stood up to competition from global players. He is handsome and charismatic, a ruthless go-getter, and notorious for his dalliances outside his marriage with Manvi Oberoi. Vikram gets into a relationship with Sonal Verma, a new intern in NexGen, much to the chagrin of his secretary Aarti Bansal, with whom he had...

 

"Abani saw his mother working round the clock to make both the ends meet. She stitched dresses and made candles; when she found time from cooking in a working women’s hostel, travelling by train to Kolkata and back to their one-roomed rented house, every day of the year.

There was never enough to eat at home, electricity was unheard of, the roof leaked in the monsoons and the creaking windows failed to keep the chill at bay during winters. Everything that had been worth anything in the household...

 

"She knew she was not in the escort service for the money. She had tried to figure out, again and again, what was she in it for? She had failed to find an answer every time. As she sipped her coffee, she tried one more time.

Was it her way of getting back at the man who had been ignoring her emotions and her desires for years? Or, was it her way of assuring herself that, close to thirty-six, she still had it in her to turn a man into an animal blinded by lust, ready to tear her apart? She needed...

 

"He would love to live in a sleepy town in the hills teaching in a school. He dreamt of living in a small wooden house with a lawn in the front. He dreamt of idle evenings, watching the sun go down behind distant peaks laced with clouds, with the woman of his dreams in his arms, sharing his shawl.

And I would love to start my own small coffee shop there. We imagined him teaching in the school at the hill-top. He would walk wearily down that hill to my coffee shop when classes got over every even...

 

Most of us have a glorified idea about love. I think it comes from the staple diet of Bollywood movies we are all brought up on. Couples strolling on the beach, watching the sunset together, whispering promises of eternity into each other’s ear, and making love on satin sheets in wooden cottages overlooking the Swiss Alps.
But life does not play out like this. The movies do not show the truth, what happens backstage.
The love fades. The promises lose meaning. And the lovemaking goes from being a ...

 

"The show had been going on for years, gaining in popularity with every passing week. The masterchef Rajeev Roy was, of course, the star attraction. He was a celebrity in his own right. His healthy yet delicious recipes had re-defined the culinary habits of the country over the last decade. He was being increasingly seen in television commercials, in reality shows, in promotional events, making guest appearances in big-budget Bollywood movies and in music videos shaking his two left feet with s...

 

While conceiving the character of ACP Agni Mitra, I was very clear that he would be anything but a larger-than-life, infallible law enforcement machinery. I wanted a detective who would go about his job as a homicide investigator with a smart, analytical mind solving the trickiest of cases, but at the end of the day would be like anyone of us.

 And Agni Mitra ended up being just that.

 The first Agni Mitra thriller ‘In the Shadows of Death’ introduces him as a homicide investigator with sharp ...

 

Was it a desire to step out of the ‘shadows’ into a vibrant, ‘colourful’ milieu? To break free from the despondency of ‘death’ and savour the frenzy of ‘passion’? Maybe. Or, maybe not.

 Because, when you are hurtling down the murky path of crime, it probably does not matter whether it is broad daylight or there are shadows looming large. It is the greed, the insecurity, and the hurt of a tormented soul that is at the root of all evils since time immemorial. That does not change even as stories ...