About The Author: A journalist-turned-entrepreneur-turned-academician, Arindam Basu’s life is a caravan of experience, tossed with spicy anecdotes and riveting tales. A topper in his Master from the University of Calcutta and an English Honours Graduate from St. Xavier’s College, he also carries a diploma in Public Relations.
Insatiable by nature, after honing his skill sets in journalism for over a decade and a half, he launched his white-collar PR Agency Carpe Diem Communique Pvt Ltd. But he soon outgrew his interest in it and handed over the reins of the agency to the love of his life and better half DolonBasu and went into academics.
He now teaches at Sister Nivedita University in the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism as a Senior Faculty and spends his leisure reading everything and anything printed and still legible. When not reading, he writes. He resides in one of those old lazy streets on the outskirts of Kolkata with his wife Dolon and two fur babies Nemo and Coco. He can be reached either through his email [email protected] or courier pigeons.
Summary Of The Book: This is a book about characters imperfect and broken. A heart transplant patient who has unearthly visions, a parasomniac girl frantically looking for answers to her sleeplessness, and a germophobic man ploughing the furrows of his sins, make for some of these personalities.
There are others also like a mythomaniac teacher who can’t handle her lies, a claustrophobic man stuck in an elevator, and a patient suffering from persecutory delusion. A lifer looking for retribution and finally a trilogy of a hired gun complete the eight central figures in a book of unexpected twists and turns.
A Box Full of Darkness will bring out your worst fears and land you face to face with your murkiest secrets.
1. Can you tell us a little about your book?
This is a collection of short stories that are based on human frailties in regular people. These are people we meet every day when we go to the office or a departmental store, in between our daily haggles in the fish market or sipping a cold drink sitting inside the multiplex. We never realize that these are people broken from inside by something that goes beyond their own comprehension and when they confront the fissures that run through their hearts sometimes all hell breaks loose. The ten tales locked away in these pages are the kind of story that will give you goosebumps, make you ponder, and rock you out of your smugness.
2. Is there a specific event that inspired this story or was this an out-of-the-blue idea?
Yes, a couple of stories have their seeds in reality. Actually, nothing comes completely from thin air, it’s always what your mind spins out of crumbs of information that lie somewhere deep within, something you heard somewhere and had completely forgotten. It’s like the moss you gather as you roll through life.
3. What got you writing in the first place?
Writing is something that has been very close to my heart. In school, it was writing essays and then 16 years in journalism, I wrote. It’s an itch that will never go I guess.
4. What was your impression of your first draft when you read it?
Clumsy. Impressive. Needed a good edit.
5. What makes your book the one to read?
Without trying to be pompous, the book reads itself once you start reading. It’s a page-turner. Each story with its twists turns and uncertain ends.
6. What was the best advice you got while writing?
My wife asked me one day, am I married to my laptop? And then flashing a smile said stay that way if you wanted a good book out.
7. Who’s your all-time favorite author? Which book of his/hers made you fall in love with them?
A lot of them. Won’t be proper to single anyone out. I read a lot of Turkish, Scandinavian, Japanese, African, and Spanish authors, besides the regular English ones. One author I would like to mention here is Jeffrey Archer. I am a member of his fan club. When he had come to India I interviewed him. Completely floored.
8. What is your evergreen tip to the writers out there?
If you have a story to tell. Write. Like a river in spate, let it flow.
9. What was your hardest scene to write?
It Hard was to find time, in between my commitments at the University and the Cricket Association of Bengal.
10. Do you have another plot brewing?
Yes. It’s going to be my first Novel. First Long fiction if you like to say that.
Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.in/dp/9357764321?ref=myi_title_dp
