It all started when I found my interest in English literature in my 2nd standard. I remember the first novel I read was ‘Oliver Twist’ by the great author Charles Dickens. Many others followed thereafter, authors like Oscar Wilde, Julian Barnes, and Alexandre Dumas fascinated my passion to know the classics of literature more and more. Later on, I felt more connected with Oscar Wilde, and in my 10th standard, I got to read my favorite novel written by him – ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ and this particular story has inspired me a lot through the actions and thoughts of the protagonist of this novel and it has a lot of impacts in my personal life as well. I also admired Frederick Forsyth and one of my favorite novels written by him is ‘The Day of the Jackal’.
Reading such great novels gives me the capability to write something about myself. I wanted to write something short and complete it, so I started with short stories. My favorite short story writer is the French author Guy de Maupassant and as I had mentioned earlier, being a deep admirer of Oscar Wilde’s set of short stories, I found myself more fit in writing those. Back in 2010, there was an online community cum platform where I posted one of my early-days short stories as a piece of my work and to my great surprise, it was noticed and their team contacted me in return and asked me to give a bunch of more short stories to publish for their magazine. I was in my engineering then, so I used to write my stories on my hand-book during those boring classes and digitized it on my laptop after returning home and that’s how my 1st e-book got published on 15th August 2010.
Now, life does not always go on as we want. After graduating from college, back in 2012, I was posted in Infosys, Bhubaneswar. It was a short story competition based on a particular theme that was hosted by Infosys, then. After this long time, I thought of giving it a try and I wrote a story named “The Contract Killer” and when the result came out, guess what I had stood 1st. Infosys also used to have a poetry club back then, and yearly they used to have a poetry contest called ‘ Tinka Tinka Jurke’. They used to give 4 words in Hindi as well as English and the participants have to write a poem on either of them. I remember that I had written a poem completely on alliteration i.e. in AABB format. It was named ‘The Trapezium of Truth’ and it got me the 1st prize again.
If writing is my first passion to follow, I have a curve for music too. I was too much into one of the most popular classical music instruments, Tabla and I cracked its fifth-year exam with distinction during my 10th standard only, where other examinees were of my uncle’s age. From my childhood, I used to play several other music instruments like Khol, Mridangam, and Sitar, to mention a few. The real challenge I faced during my college days was, when our college music band members had asked me to play drums on stage show of the cultural fest of Camelia Group. Till now, every instrument I played was played by my fingers only. But for drums, one has to use his hands and legs at the same beat simultaneously. That was tough for me, but somehow by watching YouTube videos and some practice I got to learn that too. But on the final day of the performance, everything changed for me. Before our performance, there was
a popular rock band named “Fossils”, performing there and their drummer’s performance was too impeccable. I felt lost and was not prepared to face the audience. Fortunately, I had my girlfriend beside me who is my wife now. We were to perform the song “Pichle Saat Dinon Mein” from the Rock On album and when I was just starting the beats of that part “Na Na Na Na Na”, trust me everyone from the audience joined me in playing the beats and started to sing together. At the end of the performance, everyone applauded and we nailed it. This was a magical moment of my life and I would never forget that.
As I said earlier, if writing is my passion then music is my hobby. I learned guitar, composed a song as well as directed its music for the love of my life back in 2011. Learning new instruments and trying new songs was always my pleasure.
Last but not the least, my story is still incomplete as I have a lot of things still left to achieve but if someday in a hypothetical world, I would be asked to choose an author to write my biography, I would consider myself fortunate enough if I have my inspiration, the great author Oscar Wilde for this role.
Total Work Experience : 10 Years (Infosys, Wipro, BKFS)