April 23, 2025 • 40 mins
Tara talks to journalist and debut author Atharva Pandit, whose novel Hurda is inspired by a real-life case that briefly made headlines in 2013, and then vanished.
What begins as a mystery about three missing girls from a village in Maharashtra becomes a statement on what gets remembered and what gets buried.
Atharva shares how a two-page newspaper feature became the seed for a decade-long creative journey. He discusses the blurry boundaries between fact and fiction, and how he built an entire village of voices, each with their own secrets and silences. The episode also delves into the quiet power of clothing, especially that green top that became a symbol of much more. Tara and Atharva explore why rural women’s lives so often go unheard, and how fiction can offer them space, dignity, and depth.
‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.
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Episode Transcript
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Tara Khandelwal (00:02):
Welcome to Books and Beyond. With bound I'm
Tara Khandelwal and I'm MichelleD'Costa, in this podcast, we
talk to India's finest authorsand uncover the stories. We hide
the best written book anddissect how these books shape
our lives and world views today.
So let's dive in. Helloeveryone. Welcome to Books and
(00:23):
Beyond. So I'm very, veryexcited for today's guest. He's
a journalist, and actually hisdebut book. I picked it up at
the Jaipur Lit Fest this year. Iactually attended a talk with
him. I hadn't heard of the bookbefore, and then I saw all the
accolades and read thedescription, and just had to
pick it up. His first book,Hurda, is inspired by real life
(00:46):
events. So the story begins withthese three sisters in the
village of murwani, and they aremissing and nobody knows what
has happened to them. This wasactually inspired by a news
piece all the way back in 2013for a very brief time. And
obviously, as it happens, thingsget replaced by the news cycle.
(01:09):
But it's stuck with Atharva, andhe wanted to write about it, and
the story has stayed in hisbrain for so long. And what I
really loved about this book. Ireally like sort of true crime,
but this is so much more thanthat, because it takes you into
rural India. It looks at women'slives. It has so many different
characters, so and I love theprecision with which each of the
(01:33):
characters have been related. Sowelcome Atharva,
Atharva Pandit (01:39):
thank you. Thank you so much Tara for that
wonderful introduction. I'm soglad, you know, you like the
book and you know, you found thenuances in them. You know worth
your while, yeah.
Tara Khandelwal (01:52):
So I, you know, as I mentioned, like I picked it
up with Jaipur. So let's juststart with the you know, the
most obvious thing is that yourinterest in the story, which is
itself in a very fascinatingstory, you know, and why did the
story, out of all these stories,stick with you, you know? How
have you then try to incorporatethese elements? Because it's,
(02:12):
this is also fiction, yeah,yeah, based on a, you know, it's
not sort of like two prime inthat way, because it's based on
this very real story. But thenyou completely made it your own
right story, and sort of, howdoes that transpire? So,
Atharva Pandit (02:27):
you know, one of the like I keep saying, one of
the reasons I wrote the book wasbecause I wanted to understand
why this story. And, you know,why is it that, you know,
reading that newspaper report,that two page feature by Sunita
Nair in the Indian Express. Whydid that, really, you know,
(02:47):
affect me so much. I genuinely,you know, did not have an answer
for that. And you know, when youdon't have answers, when you
when you have all thosequestions swirling around your
head, and basically, when youare confused about something, or
you know, you you don't know,you don't understand something.
As writers, I think we tend to,you know, sort of write about
(03:09):
it, try and write about it, oneof the, perhaps the most
important way that we try andmake sense of what we are
feeling, and can make sense ofthe world outside. And I when I
read the report, I was 16, and,you know, I had all these
ambitions of becoming a writer,and, you know, that sort of
then. And I've always beenwriting, ever since I can
(03:30):
remember. I've always beencreating stories and stuff like
that. So writing has always beena part of and so I wrote about
it like, in the sense that, youknow, I was very, very, to begin
with. I was very, very affectedby the story. I mean, by the
incident. I was really disturbedand disgusted, and, you know,
(03:50):
all of those emotions. But Iwasn't really, you know, I
wasn't really clear about thoseemotions, in the sense that, why
was I, you know, so disturbedabout something that happened so
many kilometers away, like in,I'm in Mumbai, this happened in
Bandar. What? What has that gotto do with so I was trying to
find answers to those questions,you know, why? Why is it that
(04:13):
certain things, you know, leaveyou so affected that you you're
sort of, you know, you're sortof changed because of, and I
would say, of course, thisincident sort of changed
something in me, even though Idid not report on it, you know,
or I did not go to the go to theplace where this happened at
that time. So, but it readingabout it basically, really,
(04:37):
really drove me to ask certainquestions about myself, about
the society, about the way weare living, about our opinions,
our culture, and, you know, allthose sort of things. But this
did not happen immediately, ofcourse. The immediate reaction
was, of course, I mean, allthose emotions, and then trying
to, trying to express all ofthat through, through what.
(04:59):
Hours by writing about it. AndI've always written by hand. I
mean, the first drafts arebasically whatever I write there
by hand. So I wrote this, youknow, the first draft of it by
hand. And I remember that firstdraft was also, you know, I sort
of create my own covers and, youknow, design my own covers, very
(05:23):
bad designs, of course. And thenI start writing. And I wrote
that draft, but I remember, Imean, that draft was obviously
first. Draft was obviously verybad. And I was 16 at that time,
so I didn't know anything aboutwriting. I still do by then. But
you know, that draft it had. Itwasn't the way I wrote. It
(05:43):
wasn't very straightforward, youknow, not a linear it wasn't a
linear narrative. And that sortof, you know, that is something
that has carried forward fromright from the first draft to
the last, that I didn't want thestory to be this one linear kind
of, you know, structure, thestructure had to be different.
But yeah, that that's how Ireacted to it, and that's how it
(06:06):
sort of started. So
Tara Khandelwal (06:08):
basically, you didn't know why that. You know,
you were so intrigued by a lotof all the new stories, and
yeah, you just wanted to sort ofexplore that. Yeah, what I liked
about the book was that, youknow, the book has multiple
voices. So, yeah, so the storybegins with, you know, the three
sisters, the three sisters whowere missing. You know each of
(06:29):
them have their own personality.
And I was really intrigued bythe way that you describe the
elder sister, because this greentop that she was wearing all of
the different villagers, fromher grandfather to, you know,
the middle sisters, best friend,to the teachers. Everyone has
commented on this green top, andit became sort of symbolic for
(06:51):
something that is quiteunsavory, you know. And in other
words, sort of the green top isimplying that this girl is up to
no good. Whereas, you know, wehave interviews of a mother and
a grandfather and nobody knewwhat they were up to, in this
case, is in real life, alsounsolved, and in your book, also
unsolved. So yeah, could youtell me a little bit more about
(07:14):
sort of that, you know,symbolism of, you know, Anita,
the eldest daughter, and howthis green top became such a big
thing in all of the villagersheads. And why?
Atharva Pandit (07:30):
Yeah, I mean, so as the symbolism aspect of it
is, of course, that, you know, Ithink one of the one of the
character also says it as muchthat you know what? You know,
green. What does green mean? Itmeans green signal, you know. So
it's, it's like, it's a signalthat she was, she was, she
wanted it, she was asking forit. So, I mean, of course,
(07:51):
that's, it's, it's sort ofimplied. And this one of the
characters says it. But the onething that I really wanted,
like, of course, one of thethings that I really wanted to
sort of show cars through thatdetail was the fact. And this
was something that I, you know,picked up when I went to the
place where this happened, andsort of spoke to people over
(08:11):
there. People remembered, youknow, what they were wearing,
what the girls were wearing,particularly what the elder
sister was wearing. But nobodyremembers where they like,
people remember this, thedressing, the way they were
dressed, the, you know, thesignals that were, that they
were sort of, you know, giving,but the very important details,
(08:34):
details, or the observationsthat would actually matter, such
as, where these girls were atcertain point in time, and where
did they go, who they were with,or whether they were alone,
what, what they were doing, andall of those things, those
things are, you know, thosethings? Nobody, nobody remember.
Nobody had any interest in thatthey were they. They remembered
(08:55):
the top, they remembered howthey were dressed. They
remembered all of those things,but the Not, not the things that
would help the police with thecase, so that that the, you
know, the as a society, thethings that we sort of
prioritize, or the things thatwe remember, and the things that
we should remember, but we don'tdo that was the sort of, you
(09:17):
know, that was one of the thingsthat I was really Interested in,
not not revealing, but sort ofdisplaying that, okay, this is,
this is how this is whathappens, and this is how it
happens. And of course, thereare other, you know, other sorts
of symbolisms about, about thetop being green, and Hurda being
green, and all those sort ofthings. But, yeah, I mean, the
main thing was that peopleremembered it because, because
(09:39):
of the way they looked at herbecause of the because what
their priorities were while theywere looking at her, you know,
when, when, when they wereobserving her, you know, leering
at her, that's, that's what theysaw. That's what they remember.
Then what happened to her, andwhere was she? And, you know,
those sort of details whichwould actually help with the
crime, solving the crime. Nobodyremembers that. Nothing of that,
(10:00):
and they are not even interestedin remembering that. Yeah, I
think that was the that was oneof my main motives. It was like
I was, I was very disturbed, andI was very angry because, and
then it also taught me a lotabout what we tend to remember,
and what we, you know, tend toforget, and basically forget,
perhaps intentionally orunintentionally, but you know
(10:23):
how our memory sort of workswhen it comes to things like
these?
Tara Khandelwal (10:28):
Yeah, that's that's really interesting that,
you know, because they were soworried about, sort of, because
it's such a close knitcommunity. There were so many
rumors, half truths, you know,and they were more worried about
the value system that thesegirls were displaying than
actually, sort of the actualcase and where they went. And it
was almost like the girlsdisappearance was almost sort of
(10:51):
like warranted, because theywere clearly, according to the
villagers, up to no good, andwearing these sort of clothes,
which was, you know, really sadand completely untrue.
Obviously. What I liked aboutalso how you've done the work is
the multiple voices, as Imentioned, because there's so
many different voices, and eachone of them is very different
than the other. So you have thisInspector vigoli. He's just
(11:13):
completely incompetent. Hedoesn't care at all. He is very
unsavory character. You have,you know, the grandfather, the
poor grandfather, who's reallysort of trying to look for his
three granddaughters, and isgetting bullied. Then you and my
favorite out of all thecharacters was Jhanvi, who is
(11:36):
the middle sister's best friend,because the way that you
portrayed her, you know, senseof loss. She's a child. Her best
friend has left her bag, whichshe never does. Priyanka, the
girl who went missing, left herbag in school. And that's very,
very weird, because she neverdoes that usually. So they were,
they were signs of unusualbehavior. And then, you know,
(11:58):
later on, we find out, drawingher best friend. And, you know,
they obviously shared a lot, andthey had some secrets, and at
certain points, you almost thinkthat, yeah, she knows something,
or she can be the key to thiscase, but it was never revealed.
So, yeah, can you tell me aboutsort of, like, creating these
different characters? And, youknow, how, what was your process
(12:19):
on, like, getting into all thesedifferent voices, because
there's so many of them.
Atharva Pandit (12:23):
I'm so glad you found the voices distinctive,
because that was one of my mainconcerns, whether the voices
would be distinctive enough.
I've always loved all thesemultiple Narrator novels,
because that sort of, you know,it sort of gives the novel a
breadth, I think, in terms of,in terms of what the story, the
(12:44):
story that is being told, andalso how it is being told. So I
like, I like the I like themultiple narrate. I have always
loved it, and I always wanted totry it like, you know, whether
we can pull of something likethat. The savage detectives is
is right at the top of it byRoberto bolanyo. That was like
(13:04):
the first novel that I read,which was like a multiple
Narrator novel. And it reallyrevealed, I was, like, blown
away by it. And it reallyrevealed to me. I don't know
whether this is a trick, butthis this trick that you know
you don't have to narrate astory in a linear manner. You
can narrate a story any way thatyou want, any way that you like,
(13:25):
as long as you keep itinteresting. So yeah, I mean,
the multiple Narrator novelshave always wanted to sort of
try that, and I thought so. Iwrote a couple of, not a couple
of drafts, many drafts whichwere linear in nature, like
first person, you know, thirdperson singular, first person,
narrator, and all of thosethings. But they, they never
(13:47):
worked. I mean, they didn't seem
Tara Khandelwal (13:51):
narrator was a narrator, the journalist,
Atharva Pandit (13:53):
yeah. I mean, at one point it was chitranshu, and
at that point, chitranshu wassort of a savior, kind of a
character who, you know, whogoes and who sort of tries to
solve the case and but I think Iwas always clear that this, the
case is never going to besolved, you know, irrespective
of of the narrator, irrespectiveof whatever, you know, sort of,
(14:16):
whatever structure I give to thebook, the case won't, won't be
solved. Because that's one ofthe main aspects that I wanted
to explore, the unknowability ofit all. But I Yeah, so I tried
writing from differentperspectives. I tried writing
from from third person. Thirdperson was for a long time,
third person was something thatI went with. But then I thought,
(14:38):
I mean, it's not like the waythat I was writing the book. It
wasn't really, you know, itwasn't expressing what I wanted
to express, and it wasn'tindicative of the case was all
about, and also the things thatI wanted to, you know, sort of
incorporate in the book. So itwasn't working that way. And
then I basically. And I had allthese characters, and I thought
(15:02):
to, you know, why not let themjust have their see, you know,
let them just, you know, telltheir story, irrespective of
whether that story is relateddirectly to the incident or not.
It might, you know, it mightreveal something about them. It
might. And I didn't know. Ididn't go in, you know, wanting
to reveal particularly somethingabout the characters. Or no, I
(15:24):
just, as I went on writing, theyjust, you know, they just kept
on the characters just kept ondeveloping. And, you know, it's
sort of, it's, it was sort ofgiving them the voice that that
they wanted to be a littlecliche. But then again, the
problem was that everycharacter, then, because it was,
you know, because the characterswere narrating their their
(15:45):
experiences in first person andin English, the the narration or
the their voices were coming offas very sounding, very
unnatural, you know, in thesense that this is not how this
person would talk. Probably,this is what I sort of, I
realized, and I, you know, I, Iwas thinking about how to change
(16:05):
that. And so the first couple ofthe first couple of drafts were
all in, you know, properEnglish, so to speak, in the
sense that there were no Marathiwords or Hindi words, or nothing
of that sort, complete pure,sort of English. But that wasn't
working, because it is not, youknow, it's not it the context of
it and the surrounding and thebackground. It just doesn't work
(16:29):
like that, an English novelthere, setting an English novel
there, and writing it incomplete, proper sort of
English. It doesn't work. Sothen I decided, see, anyway, I
because I didn't know who'sgoing to, you know, who's going
to read it, or whether, at thatpoint, I had nothing, I had no,
you know, no inclination or nointention of finding an agent,
(16:51):
or, you know, going to apublisher. I just wanted to
write the story down. I justwanted it to be correct. Of
course, I had those ambitions.
Who doesn't, but at that point,my only thing was that I really,
really want to get this down,because it's been too long, 10
years. At least there has to besomething, some concrete thing
that I can like one draft andthen fine if I have to work on
(17:12):
it again, that's fine. But atleast there has to be something,
you know, that I can, I can besatisfied. So then I wrote it
that way, you know, includingall these Marathi words,
including all these swear words,and, you know, and it wasn't
even, you know, it wasn't evensomething that was planned in
(17:36):
the sense that this Marathi wordwould go here. No, I was just
writing and I was just thinking,okay, maybe this character would
say it like this, and when thischaracter, when they say it like
this, this would be the Marathiword that would probably be, you
know, probably be, probably fitinto that sentence, that English
sentence. And I just wrote itthat way. I didn't have any,
Tara Khandelwal (18:01):
yeah, how did you sort of like, because you've
grown up in Bombay, yeah, andbig city and all of that. And,
you know, the way that you havecaptured these voices, you know,
is so it feels so accurate. It'sstill literary fiction, but it
really feels like, you know, anovel that is set in rural India
(18:21):
with that kind of sort oftonality, language. It's very
technically all there. So howdid you do any How did you do
research, like when you say youincorporated Marathi words and
things like that, you know, isit just sort of all
fictionalized. Did you speak topeople? How did you do the deal?
So, did you go to that village,like Chitranshu, your
(18:42):
protagonist, you know, thejournalist went there. I
actually spoke to all thestakeholders of that village.
Did you also do that?
Atharva Pandit (18:50):
I actually did.
And I went there, you know, backin 2018 I because the thing was,
I had been writing and workingon this for for a long time,
five years, and I just couldn't,you know, I just couldn't write
it down without going there. Ithought, you know, that's
something that, that's somethingthat I, I did not sort of with.
(19:13):
I was, I always wanted to gothere, but I didn't know what
the right time would be.
Tara Khandelwal (19:23):
Your experience when you went.
Atharva Pandit (19:25):
I mean, that's the thing. People were sort of,
you know, dismissive, in thesense that they were, they were
like, this happened so so manyyears ago. This happened five
years ago. Why are you, youknow, why are you so concerned
about it. Now, what is so therewere, and there were some people
who were, you know, who weresuspicious. Why is this guy
(19:46):
here, and why is he going on,going around, asking questions.
Because, like you said, it's asmall community, right? And it
and a lot of people are alsomoved on in the sense that they
had moved away from the village,they had gone to some place else
And those who were there, theywere like, they were not very
interested in talking about iteither, because they did not
find, find it all thatinteresting. And there was also
(20:10):
this one, I mean, this onetheory that everybody had
latched on to, I think, which isthat it was an accident, not a
murder or anything, because thesisters were, anyway, you know,
very curious and very outgoingand all of those things. So they
might have been curious aboutthe wealth they went in. I mean,
(20:31):
they, you know, they, they sortof jumped in, or they, they had
an accident at the well, andnobody was there around to pull
them out, to rescue them, sothey died. That's one, you know,
that's one theory that that isfloating around. And I think
that theory is also somethingthat people, you know, accepted,
(20:53):
because it then nobody isguilty. It only the girls are
guilty, so then they don't haveto feel guilty about it. But, I
mean, I went there and I I gotthis feeling that I was not
really, you know, not reallywelcome there, which is natural,
quite natural, of course,because this guy is coming from
(21:13):
Mumbai, out of nowhere andasking on about, asking around
about a case that happened fiveyears ago. I that's obviously
going to, not going to be, youknow, acceptable. So then I
didn't, I didn't go there withthe purpose of, sort of solving
the case, or, you know,gathering more details about the
case itself. I went therebecause I wanted to understand
(21:35):
the atmosphere of the of the,you know, village, of that
particular village, and also theway that people express things,
the language that they use.
That's also one of therevelations that I had there,
which is, you know, we theMarathi that we speak in Mumbai,
the Marathi that we speak inPune. It's a very different kind
of Marathi than the one which isspoken in Bhandara, one which is
(21:59):
spoken in it's all, I mean, it'sall the same universe, right?
The language universe is thesame Marathi, but, and yet,
there are so many differences,like they the way they speak
Marathi, it becomes difficult tounderstand it. It's very, you
know, it's very rapid. Andthat's also, that, also the sort
of Marathi that is spoken indifferent parts of Maharashtra.
(22:22):
And so it's very it's fasterthan the way we speak, it the
way we converse. So that was a,you know, Revelation. I know
Marathi. This guy knows Marathi.
We are both conversing inMarathi, but I can't understand
what he said, right? And thatwas sort of fascinating to me.
And, yeah, I mean, so we'regoing there and talking to these
(22:45):
people and understanding the waythat they express, the language
that they use, the way they usethat language. That sort of, I
think, helped in terms of the,you know, tonality of the book,
and in terms of, you know,building an atmosphere for the
book, and also in in terms of,you know, giving different
voices to different characters,because I have sort of, you
(23:09):
know, jumbled up details, butsome, most of these details are
details which I've gathered byinterviewing people.
Tara Khandelwal (23:17):
So yeah, quite a rigorous process. One thing
that you know was reallyinteresting, and I read in
another interview of yours, isthat you were also a little
conflicted, right? Because whenyou when you sort of read about
the tragedy and, you know, andeven the journalist character,
you know, he is kind of wantingto He's ambitious, and he's sort
(23:41):
of really morally ambiguous, andhe wants to, sort of like, make
a book out of this. And you'veexplored that through the
journalist character, but I justwanted to speak a little bit
more about that, because even inan interview, you've said that,
you know, you were alsoconflicted that your first, you
know, like that, like you wantto write a book about it. So
where is the line between, youknow, reporting and exploiting
(24:02):
grief. What do you think?
Atharva Pandit (24:04):
I think that line is, that line is where
your, you know, empathy ends andwhere your ambition sort of
begins in the sense that, andI'm not saying that I, you know,
I am, I might not have done thatperhaps I might have, in the
sense that I was drawn to thecase, because I, to a certain
(24:26):
extent, I, you know, I empathizewith what had happened in one
sense, even though nothing ofthat sort had happened to me or
with me. Then, you know, Istarted writing about it. And,
like I said, I started writingabout it because that's the only
way to sort of make sense of ofour emotions and why, why we
(24:49):
feel them. But, you know, atcertain point, ambition also
takes over, right in in thesense that it was my choice to
not, you know, send. Doubt themanuscript to anybody. I mean, I
couldn't I it's, had, had I beenso, you know, so moral or
(25:10):
ethical about it, I wouldn'thave sent the manuscript out. I
would have just kept it in mydrawer, and I would have been
satisfied, okay, I wrote aboutit. But I don't want, you know,
I don't want it to go out. Idon't want it to, you know, be
become a book. But this is whereambition takes hold, and this is
where, you know, that's thatsort of, that sort of moral
(25:31):
ambiguity comes in, in the sensethat you want to become a
writer. Now you are. You're sortof writing this story which has
sort of got nothing to do withyou, and which is a very
sensitive story, very sensitivecase. And okay, you started
writing because you startedwriting it because you wanted to
understand it, and you wanted toget certain, you know, sort your
(25:53):
emotions out. But now you'resending it out into the world.
People are buying it, payingyour price for it. That is your
I mean, that's your choice,right? Ultimately, nobody has,
nobody has grabbed it or, youknow, stolen that manuscript and
published it without yourconsent. It's all happening
because you wanted it to happen,right? So I think that's,
that's, it's a very thin line. Idon't think ambition is a, you
(26:17):
know, it's, it's not wrong orit's a bad thing. I don't think
that's it's a bad thing. It's abad thing if you exploit this
kind of a story in, you know, indifferent ways. But again,
exploitation is subjective. How?
How do you, you know? How do youquantify exploitation? But I
think the you know, the way totell a story like this is that
(26:40):
you you be sensitive as as muchas you can. You tell it as
sensitively as you can. You tellit in a in a manner that is not,
you know, that is not exploitingagain, that story or their
story. How?
Tara Khandelwal (26:59):
How do you maintain that sensitivity.
That's a difficult
Atharva Pandit (27:03):
question to answer. I mean, some books use,
you know, use rape and murderand crime, basically, as, you
know, as just an entertainingaside and just as a method of or
means of entertainment, Isuppose, I think, as a writer,
(27:24):
you you try and explore, youknow, the the intricacies of why
this happened, why this keeps onhappening, and why perhaps this
will keep on happening no matterwhat you know, no matter what we
write, no matter what we make,No matter what we you know,
whatever laws we bring in,whatever it will keep on
(27:45):
happening. Because that's,that's an this is an integral
part of the way that our societyhas been built, right? So you
try and, you know, write aboutthat. I'm assuming that you are
writing about it, because atcertain point and in some way,
you also feel angry about it. Sothen you express that anger in
your work. You You know when,when you write it, have to, sort
(28:07):
of, you have to structure thatanger into that word. And you
have, I think, the at the end ofthe day, you have to come to
that story from a from the rightplace. Now, I don't know what
that right place is, but Ithink,
Tara Khandelwal (28:19):
yeah, yeah, like more intuitive, and yeah,
maybe, yeah. But I felt verysad, like, like, I really love
the book, but I also felt verysad like reading the book,
because, as you said, you know,this is like a it's a very
interesting reflection ofsociety, and especially society
that women live in in ruralIndia, which you know, their
lives are shaped by this, theseinvisible rules of safety and
(28:42):
caution and but I also want toask, you know, like, did any
character sort of while writingthis book, because there's so
many surprise you or take on alife their own in ways you don't
expect, if you in ways youdidn't expect.
Atharva Pandit (28:57):
I mean, I think almost every one of them did
that like just Jhanvi, you youspoke about Jhanvi. Jhanvi was a
very, I mean, she was a sidecharacter. She was a, you know,
she was someone who was afriend. But I didn't really give
that much importance to heruntil, you know, she sort of
(29:18):
started developing on her ownbecause she was, she was the
only friend out of the threesisters. I mean, she Priyanka,
only. Priyanka had a friend, andshe was like the only friend for
the three sisters, like she feltit more. She had that sort of
closeness with them, and nobodyunderstood the way that she felt
(29:42):
about this, and she didn'tunderstand the way that she was
feeling about this, but because,I mean, he all to see that kind
of brutal violence and murderand death at that age, and death
of a friend at that age, itreally, I mean, it would really
break. You and so Jhanvi wasvery, you know, it she, she sort
(30:04):
of took a life of her own, andshe symbolized, you know, the
value of friendships, you know,because she also has a friend in
Bushan. And Bushan is one of myfavorite characters, because he
is someone who is, you know, notinterested in all of these cars,
and like his brother, is hiselder brother, cars and busses
(30:26):
and all. He's interested innature. He's interested in
insects and snakes and all ofthose things. And he has this
different world of his, and thatworld, he has created, that
world because of the things thathe had seen, and which is
similar to, you know, Jhanvi, orthe, you know, the art that
(30:49):
Jhanvi takes, January is also,you know, she's she, she's also
someone who is in her own world,and she's also trying to process
what has happened and what Sheremembers through that, through,
you know, sketches and drawings,and, you know, by being alone
with herself, that sort of athing. And these two souls,
(31:09):
kindred spirits, sort of, then,you know, get, they have a
friendship of their own, whichwas not something that I had
envisioned. It just camethrough. I mean, it just, it,
just while I was writing, itjust, you know, it was very
spontaneous, so that that sortof surprised me, and that was
like I felt the within the worldof the book, everything is so
(31:34):
violent and, you know, brutaland depressing, sort of, this is
something that is, you know,that that gives hope, and this
is something that is hopeful,
Tara Khandelwal (31:45):
which was the hardest character for you to get
into, hardest
Atharva Pandit (31:49):
character, Chitranshu. Because he,
Chitranshu is, to a certainextent, my own reflection. I
mean, my it's, it's sort of semiautobiographical. He's a
journalist, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he's, I mean, similar age,similar journeys. And then, you
know, I had to, because whilewriting Chitranshu, the things
(32:11):
that you did, I had to sort ofconfront with myself, and like
you mentioned earlier, the wholemoral ambiguity aspect of it,
and I had to, sort of, you know,ask myself, Am I this person?
And the answers were not reallyencouraging in the sense that
(32:33):
perhaps I could be. I mean, Icould go that way. You never
know. I mean, we, everyonethinks that they are, you know,
sort of very ethically right andmorally superior, and we
whatever we do, we do, we do theright thing, and all of those
things. But there are elementswithin us, and there are, you
know, sort of, there might beinstances when we might end up
(32:56):
doing something that generallywe won't, or something that
would, that we would end upregretting not to the extent
that Chitranshu does it, buthe's also, I mean, because he's
a dick, he doesn't really, youknow, he doesn't really feel
guilty about it, or feels thathe has done anything wrong about
(33:19):
it, about what he did, butthat's that's his. His was the
character that sort of made meconfront my own emotions and
made me confront my own values,and whether I am what I sort of,
you know, think I am, and theanswers were not very
(33:42):
encouraging. So that was verydifficult.
Tara Khandelwal (33:46):
That's very interesting, because I would
have thought like because, youknow, he's a journalist
character, and he is the oneinvestigating and all of those
things. Yeah, he would have beeneasier. But that's quite a
different perspective. So onething that I also noticed that,
you know, the blurbs in the backof the book. Sonia Feller, I
think these are some of myfavorite authors. We've
(34:07):
interviewed them as well on thepodcast. Sonia Ferrero is doing
this amazing book, which isreally similar to this one,
except that this is fiction, andhers is sort of like a two prime
but also based on this case, youknow, in a rural village, case
of a missing, missing girl in arural village in up. So I wanted
(34:29):
to ask, you know, what was itlike being part of South Asia
speaks and working with Soniaand Prayag, and what kind of
inputs did you get from them?
Atharva Pandit (34:40):
It was incredible. And the good girls
by Sonia khalero, she it was,you know, one of the, one of the
influences behind Hurda. I mean,I was the I I had read the book
before. I was, you know, readingit while, while writing Hurda as
well. So and it was, it. SouthAsia speaks is incredible. I
(35:01):
mean, they, and I was very luckyto have Prayag as the men as as
my mentor, because Prayag is,you know, very chill. And he, he
doesn't have this, you know,this school master kind of
attitude that you have to, youknow, you have to do this within
this time frame, you know, to,because he understands that
writing doesn't probably doesn'thappen that way for everybody.
(35:25):
So he was very chill. He we usedto discuss books, we used to
discuss films, we used todiscuss writing. And you know
why this person is his favoritewriter, but this person, I hate
this person as a writer andthose sort of thing. And I came
to South Asia speaks actually,at a time when I wasn't really
(35:45):
very sure about my fictionwriting abilities. I was under
confident I'd been writing forfor quite a while, but I was
under confident about myability. And I was like, this is
the sort of the last attempt toget, get the fiction writing
sort of going, fiction going. Sozautesha speaks was actually a
(36:06):
push towards that, because it'ssort of when you discuss all of
these things, books and, youknow, writing and the
technicalities of it and themisery of it and the joys of it,
you sort of get somehow,somewhere, you get inspired, you
know, you start thinking aboutwriting again. And that that, I
(36:27):
think that was one of thebiggest contributions in terms
of, you know, in terms of howSouth Asia speaks, help my
writing. It basically bydiscussing all of these things
and by debating all of thesethings, it sort of made me
excited about writing again, youknow? And that, yeah, and that,
of course, it was complimentedby the fact that Prayag is very
(36:49):
like you write, and then yousend me whatever you've written.
And he's a good critic. Alsohe's a very, sometimes he can be
very, you know, a harsh critic,which is needed. But he, he
criticizes in the manner thatyou, you know, you never get
hurt about it. So that that wasreally helpful.
Tara Khandelwal (37:10):
I'm sure you would be a really good mentor.
And so Sonia, they're justfantastic authors. So, yeah, I
mean, this book took you areally long time to write, and I
can see why, you know, it's somultifaceted. It's so rich. I
really also like the fact thatyou have kept the case unsolved,
because when I was reading it, Ikept, kind of, like, also like
(37:32):
the way it's written, you kindof almost feel like we're
getting somewhere. We're gettingsomewhere. It's going to get
solved. It's going to getsolved. Like, is this a clue? Is
that a clue is, is, you knowwhat, this person said
something, but then it all kindof leads to nothing, and the
case doesn't get solved, whichis exactly what happens in real
life. You know, it's real. It'snot like a neat little bow that,
oh yeah, you know, they allthese cues and they add up and,
(37:53):
you know, that's it. So that'swhat I Yeah, that's what I
really like. And I love how thebook did that. I love the social
commentary. So, yeah, what areyou writing next now? What's on
your mind right now? That's,
Atharva Pandit (38:05):
that's a difficult question. I mean,
there are things, there are, youknow, there are things that I'm
writing, there are things that Ihave been thinking, but I think
I I've come to accept the factthat I'm not. I'm not, I'm not a
writer who is very, you know,who's going to be churning out
(38:26):
one book every two or threeyears. That's, I don't think
that's going to happen with me,because I procrastinate a lot.
I'm very lazy. I don't have any,you know, any schedule at such
for writing. I also have a fulltime job, yeah, yeah, yeah. So,
I mean, I was job is what? Butyou know what? I'll tell you
(38:48):
what I do get some time towrite, apart from the job, like,
sometimes the job can gethectic, but I do get time. But
within that time when I shouldbe writing, I'm scrolling on
Instagram and watching, watchingreels on Instagram, and I'm
like, should I go and I shouldgo and write, but should I and
(39:10):
so I sort of procrastinate.
Sometimes it so happens thatyou, I'm so charged up that you
I just go open the laptop andtap, tap, tap, tap it out. But I
mean to write a book. I think itit takes, it takes a different
sort of commitment, which Icould commit once. Now I'm like,
I'm taking some time to commitfor that again. So, I mean, I
(39:32):
hope it happens whenever ithappens, but I think I would
come, I'll come to accept thefact that, okay, it will happen
when it has to happen.
Tara Khandelwal (39:43):
Yeah. But then the books that you do, right,
they want to win prizes, andthey do so well, so then, yeah,
it's all about worth it, yeah,at the end. And like, the kind
of like you got Jerry Pinto got,like, sort of talking about and
then I really like books likethis, because it's something
different. You know, I don'treally come. Across multi
character books. I don't comeacross book set in this kind of
(40:04):
a place, you know, I need a lotof sort of, like single
protagonist novel set in openIndia, open Settings. So it was
a very refreshing and, yeah,thank you so much for coming on
the podcast.
Unknown (40:19):
And thank you. It's been a real pleasure. I didn't
even know when we got it's 350or the conversation just closed.
Hope
Tara Khandelwal (40:32):
you enjoy this episode of Books and Beyond with
bound. This podcast is createdby bound, a company that helps
you grow through stories. Findus at down India on all social
media platforms. Tune in everyWednesday as we peek into the
lives and minds of somebrilliant authors from India and
South Asia. You.
Welcome to Books and Beyond. With bound I'm
Tara Khandelwal and I'm MichelleD'Costa, in this podcast, we
talk to India's finest authorsand uncover the stories. We hide
the best written book anddissect how these books shape
our lives and world views today.
So let's dive in. Helloeveryone. Welcome to Books and
(00:23):
Beyond. So I'm very, veryexcited for today's guest. He's
a journalist, and actually hisdebut book. I picked it up at
the Jaipur Lit Fest this year. Iactually attended a talk with
him. I hadn't heard of the bookbefore, and then I saw all the
accolades and read thedescription, and just had to
pick it up. His first book,Hurda, is inspired by real life
(00:46):
events. So the story begins withthese three sisters in the
village of murwani, and they aremissing and nobody knows what
has happened to them. This wasactually inspired by a news
piece all the way back in 2013for a very brief time. And
obviously, as it happens, thingsget replaced by the news cycle.
(01:09):
But it's stuck with Atharva, andhe wanted to write about it, and
the story has stayed in hisbrain for so long. And what I
really loved about this book. Ireally like sort of true crime,
but this is so much more thanthat, because it takes you into
rural India. It looks at women'slives. It has so many different
characters, so and I love theprecision with which each of the
(01:33):
characters have been related. Sowelcome Atharva,
Atharva Pandit (01:39):
thank you. Thank you so much Tara for that
wonderful introduction. I'm soglad, you know, you like the
book and you know, you found thenuances in them. You know worth
your while, yeah.
Tara Khandelwal (01:52):
So I, you know, as I mentioned, like I picked it
up with Jaipur. So let's juststart with the you know, the
most obvious thing is that yourinterest in the story, which is
itself in a very fascinatingstory, you know, and why did the
story, out of all these stories,stick with you, you know? How
have you then try to incorporatethese elements? Because it's,
(02:12):
this is also fiction, yeah,yeah, based on a, you know, it's
not sort of like two prime inthat way, because it's based on
this very real story. But thenyou completely made it your own
right story, and sort of, howdoes that transpire? So,
Atharva Pandit (02:27):
you know, one of the like I keep saying, one of
the reasons I wrote the book wasbecause I wanted to understand
why this story. And, you know,why is it that, you know,
reading that newspaper report,that two page feature by Sunita
Nair in the Indian Express. Whydid that, really, you know,
(02:47):
affect me so much. I genuinely,you know, did not have an answer
for that. And you know, when youdon't have answers, when you
when you have all thosequestions swirling around your
head, and basically, when youare confused about something, or
you know, you you don't know,you don't understand something.
As writers, I think we tend to,you know, sort of write about
(03:09):
it, try and write about it, oneof the, perhaps the most
important way that we try andmake sense of what we are
feeling, and can make sense ofthe world outside. And I when I
read the report, I was 16, and,you know, I had all these
ambitions of becoming a writer,and, you know, that sort of
then. And I've always beenwriting, ever since I can
(03:30):
remember. I've always beencreating stories and stuff like
that. So writing has always beena part of and so I wrote about
it like, in the sense that, youknow, I was very, very, to begin
with. I was very, very affectedby the story. I mean, by the
incident. I was really disturbedand disgusted, and, you know,
(03:50):
all of those emotions. But Iwasn't really, you know, I
wasn't really clear about thoseemotions, in the sense that, why
was I, you know, so disturbedabout something that happened so
many kilometers away, like in,I'm in Mumbai, this happened in
Bandar. What? What has that gotto do with so I was trying to
find answers to those questions,you know, why? Why is it that
(04:13):
certain things, you know, leaveyou so affected that you you're
sort of, you know, you're sortof changed because of, and I
would say, of course, thisincident sort of changed
something in me, even though Idid not report on it, you know,
or I did not go to the go to theplace where this happened at
that time. So, but it readingabout it basically, really,
(04:37):
really drove me to ask certainquestions about myself, about
the society, about the way weare living, about our opinions,
our culture, and, you know, allthose sort of things. But this
did not happen immediately, ofcourse. The immediate reaction
was, of course, I mean, allthose emotions, and then trying
to, trying to express all ofthat through, through what.
(04:59):
Hours by writing about it. AndI've always written by hand. I
mean, the first drafts arebasically whatever I write there
by hand. So I wrote this, youknow, the first draft of it by
hand. And I remember that firstdraft was also, you know, I sort
of create my own covers and, youknow, design my own covers, very
(05:23):
bad designs, of course. And thenI start writing. And I wrote
that draft, but I remember, Imean, that draft was obviously
first. Draft was obviously verybad. And I was 16 at that time,
so I didn't know anything aboutwriting. I still do by then. But
you know, that draft it had. Itwasn't the way I wrote. It
(05:43):
wasn't very straightforward, youknow, not a linear it wasn't a
linear narrative. And that sortof, you know, that is something
that has carried forward fromright from the first draft to
the last, that I didn't want thestory to be this one linear kind
of, you know, structure, thestructure had to be different.
But yeah, that that's how Ireacted to it, and that's how it
(06:06):
sort of started. So
Tara Khandelwal (06:08):
basically, you didn't know why that. You know,
you were so intrigued by a lotof all the new stories, and
yeah, you just wanted to sort ofexplore that. Yeah, what I liked
about the book was that, youknow, the book has multiple
voices. So, yeah, so the storybegins with, you know, the three
sisters, the three sisters whowere missing. You know each of
(06:29):
them have their own personality.
And I was really intrigued bythe way that you describe the
elder sister, because this greentop that she was wearing all of
the different villagers, fromher grandfather to, you know,
the middle sisters, best friend,to the teachers. Everyone has
commented on this green top, andit became sort of symbolic for
(06:51):
something that is quiteunsavory, you know. And in other
words, sort of the green top isimplying that this girl is up to
no good. Whereas, you know, wehave interviews of a mother and
a grandfather and nobody knewwhat they were up to, in this
case, is in real life, alsounsolved, and in your book, also
unsolved. So yeah, could youtell me a little bit more about
(07:14):
sort of that, you know,symbolism of, you know, Anita,
the eldest daughter, and howthis green top became such a big
thing in all of the villagersheads. And why?
Atharva Pandit (07:30):
Yeah, I mean, so as the symbolism aspect of it
is, of course, that, you know, Ithink one of the one of the
character also says it as muchthat you know what? You know,
green. What does green mean? Itmeans green signal, you know. So
it's, it's like, it's a signalthat she was, she was, she
wanted it, she was asking forit. So, I mean, of course,
(07:51):
that's, it's, it's sort ofimplied. And this one of the
characters says it. But the onething that I really wanted,
like, of course, one of thethings that I really wanted to
sort of show cars through thatdetail was the fact. And this
was something that I, you know,picked up when I went to the
place where this happened, andsort of spoke to people over
(08:11):
there. People remembered, youknow, what they were wearing,
what the girls were wearing,particularly what the elder
sister was wearing. But nobodyremembers where they like,
people remember this, thedressing, the way they were
dressed, the, you know, thesignals that were, that they
were sort of, you know, giving,but the very important details,
(08:34):
details, or the observationsthat would actually matter, such
as, where these girls were atcertain point in time, and where
did they go, who they were with,or whether they were alone,
what, what they were doing, andall of those things, those
things are, you know, thosethings? Nobody, nobody remember.
Nobody had any interest in thatthey were they. They remembered
(08:55):
the top, they remembered howthey were dressed. They
remembered all of those things,but the Not, not the things that
would help the police with thecase, so that that the, you
know, the as a society, thethings that we sort of
prioritize, or the things thatwe remember, and the things that
we should remember, but we don'tdo that was the sort of, you
(09:17):
know, that was one of the thingsthat I was really Interested in,
not not revealing, but sort ofdisplaying that, okay, this is,
this is how this is whathappens, and this is how it
happens. And of course, thereare other, you know, other sorts
of symbolisms about, about thetop being green, and Hurda being
green, and all those sort ofthings. But, yeah, I mean, the
main thing was that peopleremembered it because, because
(09:39):
of the way they looked at herbecause of the because what
their priorities were while theywere looking at her, you know,
when, when, when they wereobserving her, you know, leering
at her, that's, that's what theysaw. That's what they remember.
Then what happened to her, andwhere was she? And, you know,
those sort of details whichwould actually help with the
crime, solving the crime. Nobodyremembers that. Nothing of that,
(10:00):
and they are not even interestedin remembering that. Yeah, I
think that was the that was oneof my main motives. It was like
I was, I was very disturbed, andI was very angry because, and
then it also taught me a lotabout what we tend to remember,
and what we, you know, tend toforget, and basically forget,
perhaps intentionally orunintentionally, but you know
(10:23):
how our memory sort of workswhen it comes to things like
these?
Tara Khandelwal (10:28):
Yeah, that's that's really interesting that,
you know, because they were soworried about, sort of, because
it's such a close knitcommunity. There were so many
rumors, half truths, you know,and they were more worried about
the value system that thesegirls were displaying than
actually, sort of the actualcase and where they went. And it
was almost like the girlsdisappearance was almost sort of
(10:51):
like warranted, because theywere clearly, according to the
villagers, up to no good, andwearing these sort of clothes,
which was, you know, really sadand completely untrue.
Obviously. What I liked aboutalso how you've done the work is
the multiple voices, as Imentioned, because there's so
many different voices, and eachone of them is very different
than the other. So you have thisInspector vigoli. He's just
(11:13):
completely incompetent. Hedoesn't care at all. He is very
unsavory character. You have,you know, the grandfather, the
poor grandfather, who's reallysort of trying to look for his
three granddaughters, and isgetting bullied. Then you and my
favorite out of all thecharacters was Jhanvi, who is
(11:36):
the middle sister's best friend,because the way that you
portrayed her, you know, senseof loss. She's a child. Her best
friend has left her bag, whichshe never does. Priyanka, the
girl who went missing, left herbag in school. And that's very,
very weird, because she neverdoes that usually. So they were,
they were signs of unusualbehavior. And then, you know,
(11:58):
later on, we find out, drawingher best friend. And, you know,
they obviously shared a lot, andthey had some secrets, and at
certain points, you almost thinkthat, yeah, she knows something,
or she can be the key to thiscase, but it was never revealed.
So, yeah, can you tell me aboutsort of, like, creating these
different characters? And, youknow, how, what was your process
(12:19):
on, like, getting into all thesedifferent voices, because
there's so many of them.
Atharva Pandit (12:23):
I'm so glad you found the voices distinctive,
because that was one of my mainconcerns, whether the voices
would be distinctive enough.
I've always loved all thesemultiple Narrator novels,
because that sort of, you know,it sort of gives the novel a
breadth, I think, in terms of,in terms of what the story, the
(12:44):
story that is being told, andalso how it is being told. So I
like, I like the I like themultiple narrate. I have always
loved it, and I always wanted totry it like, you know, whether
we can pull of something likethat. The savage detectives is
is right at the top of it byRoberto bolanyo. That was like
(13:04):
the first novel that I read,which was like a multiple
Narrator novel. And it reallyrevealed, I was, like, blown
away by it. And it reallyrevealed to me. I don't know
whether this is a trick, butthis this trick that you know
you don't have to narrate astory in a linear manner. You
can narrate a story any way thatyou want, any way that you like,
(13:25):
as long as you keep itinteresting. So yeah, I mean,
the multiple Narrator novelshave always wanted to sort of
try that, and I thought so. Iwrote a couple of, not a couple
of drafts, many drafts whichwere linear in nature, like
first person, you know, thirdperson singular, first person,
narrator, and all of thosethings. But they, they never
(13:47):
worked. I mean, they didn't seem
Tara Khandelwal (13:51):
narrator was a narrator, the journalist,
Atharva Pandit (13:53):
yeah. I mean, at one point it was chitranshu, and
at that point, chitranshu wassort of a savior, kind of a
character who, you know, whogoes and who sort of tries to
solve the case and but I think Iwas always clear that this, the
case is never going to besolved, you know, irrespective
of of the narrator, irrespectiveof whatever, you know, sort of,
(14:16):
whatever structure I give to thebook, the case won't, won't be
solved. Because that's one ofthe main aspects that I wanted
to explore, the unknowability ofit all. But I Yeah, so I tried
writing from differentperspectives. I tried writing
from from third person. Thirdperson was for a long time,
third person was something thatI went with. But then I thought,
(14:38):
I mean, it's not like the waythat I was writing the book. It
wasn't really, you know, itwasn't expressing what I wanted
to express, and it wasn'tindicative of the case was all
about, and also the things thatI wanted to, you know, sort of
incorporate in the book. So itwasn't working that way. And
then I basically. And I had allthese characters, and I thought
(15:02):
to, you know, why not let themjust have their see, you know,
let them just, you know, telltheir story, irrespective of
whether that story is relateddirectly to the incident or not.
It might, you know, it mightreveal something about them. It
might. And I didn't know. Ididn't go in, you know, wanting
to reveal particularly somethingabout the characters. Or no, I
(15:24):
just, as I went on writing, theyjust, you know, they just kept
on the characters just kept ondeveloping. And, you know, it's
sort of, it's, it was sort ofgiving them the voice that that
they wanted to be a littlecliche. But then again, the
problem was that everycharacter, then, because it was,
you know, because the characterswere narrating their their
(15:45):
experiences in first person andin English, the the narration or
the their voices were coming offas very sounding, very
unnatural, you know, in thesense that this is not how this
person would talk. Probably,this is what I sort of, I
realized, and I, you know, I, Iwas thinking about how to change
(16:05):
that. And so the first couple ofthe first couple of drafts were
all in, you know, properEnglish, so to speak, in the
sense that there were no Marathiwords or Hindi words, or nothing
of that sort, complete pure,sort of English. But that wasn't
working, because it is not, youknow, it's not it the context of
it and the surrounding and thebackground. It just doesn't work
(16:29):
like that, an English novelthere, setting an English novel
there, and writing it incomplete, proper sort of
English. It doesn't work. Sothen I decided, see, anyway, I
because I didn't know who'sgoing to, you know, who's going
to read it, or whether, at thatpoint, I had nothing, I had no,
you know, no inclination or nointention of finding an agent,
(16:51):
or, you know, going to apublisher. I just wanted to
write the story down. I justwanted it to be correct. Of
course, I had those ambitions.
Who doesn't, but at that point,my only thing was that I really,
really want to get this down,because it's been too long, 10
years. At least there has to besomething, some concrete thing
that I can like one draft andthen fine if I have to work on
(17:12):
it again, that's fine. But atleast there has to be something,
you know, that I can, I can besatisfied. So then I wrote it
that way, you know, includingall these Marathi words,
including all these swear words,and, you know, and it wasn't
even, you know, it wasn't evensomething that was planned in
(17:36):
the sense that this Marathi wordwould go here. No, I was just
writing and I was just thinking,okay, maybe this character would
say it like this, and when thischaracter, when they say it like
this, this would be the Marathiword that would probably be, you
know, probably be, probably fitinto that sentence, that English
sentence. And I just wrote itthat way. I didn't have any,
Tara Khandelwal (18:01):
yeah, how did you sort of like, because you've
grown up in Bombay, yeah, andbig city and all of that. And,
you know, the way that you havecaptured these voices, you know,
is so it feels so accurate. It'sstill literary fiction, but it
really feels like, you know, anovel that is set in rural India
(18:21):
with that kind of sort oftonality, language. It's very
technically all there. So howdid you do any How did you do
research, like when you say youincorporated Marathi words and
things like that, you know, isit just sort of all
fictionalized. Did you speak topeople? How did you do the deal?
So, did you go to that village,like Chitranshu, your
(18:42):
protagonist, you know, thejournalist went there. I
actually spoke to all thestakeholders of that village.
Did you also do that?
Atharva Pandit (18:50):
I actually did.
And I went there, you know, backin 2018 I because the thing was,
I had been writing and workingon this for for a long time,
five years, and I just couldn't,you know, I just couldn't write
it down without going there. Ithought, you know, that's
something that, that's somethingthat I, I did not sort of with.
(19:13):
I was, I always wanted to gothere, but I didn't know what
the right time would be.
Tara Khandelwal (19:23):
Your experience when you went.
Atharva Pandit (19:25):
I mean, that's the thing. People were sort of,
you know, dismissive, in thesense that they were, they were
like, this happened so so manyyears ago. This happened five
years ago. Why are you, youknow, why are you so concerned
about it. Now, what is so therewere, and there were some people
who were, you know, who weresuspicious. Why is this guy
(19:46):
here, and why is he going on,going around, asking questions.
Because, like you said, it's asmall community, right? And it
and a lot of people are alsomoved on in the sense that they
had moved away from the village,they had gone to some place else
And those who were there, theywere like, they were not very
interested in talking about iteither, because they did not
find, find it all thatinteresting. And there was also
(20:10):
this one, I mean, this onetheory that everybody had
latched on to, I think, which isthat it was an accident, not a
murder or anything, because thesisters were, anyway, you know,
very curious and very outgoingand all of those things. So they
might have been curious aboutthe wealth they went in. I mean,
(20:31):
they, you know, they, they sortof jumped in, or they, they had
an accident at the well, andnobody was there around to pull
them out, to rescue them, sothey died. That's one, you know,
that's one theory that that isfloating around. And I think
that theory is also somethingthat people, you know, accepted,
(20:53):
because it then nobody isguilty. It only the girls are
guilty, so then they don't haveto feel guilty about it. But, I
mean, I went there and I I gotthis feeling that I was not
really, you know, not reallywelcome there, which is natural,
quite natural, of course,because this guy is coming from
(21:13):
Mumbai, out of nowhere andasking on about, asking around
about a case that happened fiveyears ago. I that's obviously
going to, not going to be, youknow, acceptable. So then I
didn't, I didn't go there withthe purpose of, sort of solving
the case, or, you know,gathering more details about the
case itself. I went therebecause I wanted to understand
(21:35):
the atmosphere of the of the,you know, village, of that
particular village, and also theway that people express things,
the language that they use.
That's also one of therevelations that I had there,
which is, you know, we theMarathi that we speak in Mumbai,
the Marathi that we speak inPune. It's a very different kind
of Marathi than the one which isspoken in Bhandara, one which is
(21:59):
spoken in it's all, I mean, it'sall the same universe, right?
The language universe is thesame Marathi, but, and yet,
there are so many differences,like they the way they speak
Marathi, it becomes difficult tounderstand it. It's very, you
know, it's very rapid. Andthat's also, that, also the sort
of Marathi that is spoken indifferent parts of Maharashtra.
(22:22):
And so it's very it's fasterthan the way we speak, it the
way we converse. So that was a,you know, Revelation. I know
Marathi. This guy knows Marathi.
We are both conversing inMarathi, but I can't understand
what he said, right? And thatwas sort of fascinating to me.
And, yeah, I mean, so we'regoing there and talking to these
(22:45):
people and understanding the waythat they express, the language
that they use, the way they usethat language. That sort of, I
think, helped in terms of the,you know, tonality of the book,
and in terms of, you know,building an atmosphere for the
book, and also in in terms of,you know, giving different
voices to different characters,because I have sort of, you
(23:09):
know, jumbled up details, butsome, most of these details are
details which I've gathered byinterviewing people.
Tara Khandelwal (23:17):
So yeah, quite a rigorous process. One thing
that you know was reallyinteresting, and I read in
another interview of yours, isthat you were also a little
conflicted, right? Because whenyou when you sort of read about
the tragedy and, you know, andeven the journalist character,
you know, he is kind of wantingto He's ambitious, and he's sort
(23:41):
of really morally ambiguous, andhe wants to, sort of like, make
a book out of this. And you'veexplored that through the
journalist character, but I justwanted to speak a little bit
more about that, because even inan interview, you've said that,
you know, you were alsoconflicted that your first, you
know, like that, like you wantto write a book about it. So
where is the line between, youknow, reporting and exploiting
(24:02):
grief. What do you think?
Atharva Pandit (24:04):
I think that line is, that line is where
your, you know, empathy ends andwhere your ambition sort of
begins in the sense that, andI'm not saying that I, you know,
I am, I might not have done thatperhaps I might have, in the
sense that I was drawn to thecase, because I, to a certain
(24:26):
extent, I, you know, I empathizewith what had happened in one
sense, even though nothing ofthat sort had happened to me or
with me. Then, you know, Istarted writing about it. And,
like I said, I started writingabout it because that's the only
way to sort of make sense of ofour emotions and why, why we
(24:49):
feel them. But, you know, atcertain point, ambition also
takes over, right in in thesense that it was my choice to
not, you know, send. Doubt themanuscript to anybody. I mean, I
couldn't I it's, had, had I beenso, you know, so moral or
(25:10):
ethical about it, I wouldn'thave sent the manuscript out. I
would have just kept it in mydrawer, and I would have been
satisfied, okay, I wrote aboutit. But I don't want, you know,
I don't want it to go out. Idon't want it to, you know, be
become a book. But this is whereambition takes hold, and this is
where, you know, that's thatsort of, that sort of moral
(25:31):
ambiguity comes in, in the sensethat you want to become a
writer. Now you are. You're sortof writing this story which has
sort of got nothing to do withyou, and which is a very
sensitive story, very sensitivecase. And okay, you started
writing because you startedwriting it because you wanted to
understand it, and you wanted toget certain, you know, sort your
(25:53):
emotions out. But now you'resending it out into the world.
People are buying it, payingyour price for it. That is your
I mean, that's your choice,right? Ultimately, nobody has,
nobody has grabbed it or, youknow, stolen that manuscript and
published it without yourconsent. It's all happening
because you wanted it to happen,right? So I think that's,
that's, it's a very thin line. Idon't think ambition is a, you
(26:17):
know, it's, it's not wrong orit's a bad thing. I don't think
that's it's a bad thing. It's abad thing if you exploit this
kind of a story in, you know, indifferent ways. But again,
exploitation is subjective. How?
How do you, you know? How do youquantify exploitation? But I
think the you know, the way totell a story like this is that
(26:40):
you you be sensitive as as muchas you can. You tell it as
sensitively as you can. You tellit in a in a manner that is not,
you know, that is not exploitingagain, that story or their
story. How?
Tara Khandelwal (26:59):
How do you maintain that sensitivity.
That's a difficult
Atharva Pandit (27:03):
question to answer. I mean, some books use,
you know, use rape and murderand crime, basically, as, you
know, as just an entertainingaside and just as a method of or
means of entertainment, Isuppose, I think, as a writer,
(27:24):
you you try and explore, youknow, the the intricacies of why
this happened, why this keeps onhappening, and why perhaps this
will keep on happening no matterwhat you know, no matter what we
write, no matter what we make,No matter what we you know,
whatever laws we bring in,whatever it will keep on
(27:45):
happening. Because that's,that's an this is an integral
part of the way that our societyhas been built, right? So you
try and, you know, write aboutthat. I'm assuming that you are
writing about it, because atcertain point and in some way,
you also feel angry about it. Sothen you express that anger in
your work. You You know when,when you write it, have to, sort
(28:07):
of, you have to structure thatanger into that word. And you
have, I think, the at the end ofthe day, you have to come to
that story from a from the rightplace. Now, I don't know what
that right place is, but Ithink,
Tara Khandelwal (28:19):
yeah, yeah, like more intuitive, and yeah,
maybe, yeah. But I felt verysad, like, like, I really love
the book, but I also felt verysad like reading the book,
because, as you said, you know,this is like a it's a very
interesting reflection ofsociety, and especially society
that women live in in ruralIndia, which you know, their
lives are shaped by this, theseinvisible rules of safety and
(28:42):
caution and but I also want toask, you know, like, did any
character sort of while writingthis book, because there's so
many surprise you or take on alife their own in ways you don't
expect, if you in ways youdidn't expect.
Atharva Pandit (28:57):
I mean, I think almost every one of them did
that like just Jhanvi, you youspoke about Jhanvi. Jhanvi was a
very, I mean, she was a sidecharacter. She was a, you know,
she was someone who was afriend. But I didn't really give
that much importance to heruntil, you know, she sort of
(29:18):
started developing on her ownbecause she was, she was the
only friend out of the threesisters. I mean, she Priyanka,
only. Priyanka had a friend, andshe was like the only friend for
the three sisters, like she feltit more. She had that sort of
closeness with them, and nobodyunderstood the way that she felt
(29:42):
about this, and she didn'tunderstand the way that she was
feeling about this, but because,I mean, he all to see that kind
of brutal violence and murderand death at that age, and death
of a friend at that age, itreally, I mean, it would really
break. You and so Jhanvi wasvery, you know, it she, she sort
(30:04):
of took a life of her own, andshe symbolized, you know, the
value of friendships, you know,because she also has a friend in
Bushan. And Bushan is one of myfavorite characters, because he
is someone who is, you know, notinterested in all of these cars,
and like his brother, is hiselder brother, cars and busses
(30:26):
and all. He's interested innature. He's interested in
insects and snakes and all ofthose things. And he has this
different world of his, and thatworld, he has created, that
world because of the things thathe had seen, and which is
similar to, you know, Jhanvi, orthe, you know, the art that
(30:49):
Jhanvi takes, January is also,you know, she's she, she's also
someone who is in her own world,and she's also trying to process
what has happened and what Sheremembers through that, through,
you know, sketches and drawings,and, you know, by being alone
with herself, that sort of athing. And these two souls,
(31:09):
kindred spirits, sort of, then,you know, get, they have a
friendship of their own, whichwas not something that I had
envisioned. It just camethrough. I mean, it just, it,
just while I was writing, itjust, you know, it was very
spontaneous, so that that sortof surprised me, and that was
like I felt the within the worldof the book, everything is so
(31:34):
violent and, you know, brutaland depressing, sort of, this is
something that is, you know,that that gives hope, and this
is something that is hopeful,
Tara Khandelwal (31:45):
which was the hardest character for you to get
into, hardest
Atharva Pandit (31:49):
character, Chitranshu. Because he,
Chitranshu is, to a certainextent, my own reflection. I
mean, my it's, it's sort of semiautobiographical. He's a
journalist, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he's, I mean, similar age,similar journeys. And then, you
know, I had to, because whilewriting Chitranshu, the things
(32:11):
that you did, I had to sort ofconfront with myself, and like
you mentioned earlier, the wholemoral ambiguity aspect of it,
and I had to, sort of, you know,ask myself, Am I this person?
And the answers were not reallyencouraging in the sense that
(32:33):
perhaps I could be. I mean, Icould go that way. You never
know. I mean, we, everyonethinks that they are, you know,
sort of very ethically right andmorally superior, and we
whatever we do, we do, we do theright thing, and all of those
things. But there are elementswithin us, and there are, you
know, sort of, there might beinstances when we might end up
(32:56):
doing something that generallywe won't, or something that
would, that we would end upregretting not to the extent
that Chitranshu does it, buthe's also, I mean, because he's
a dick, he doesn't really, youknow, he doesn't really feel
guilty about it, or feels thathe has done anything wrong about
(33:19):
it, about what he did, butthat's that's his. His was the
character that sort of made meconfront my own emotions and
made me confront my own values,and whether I am what I sort of,
you know, think I am, and theanswers were not very
(33:42):
encouraging. So that was verydifficult.
Tara Khandelwal (33:46):
That's very interesting, because I would
have thought like because, youknow, he's a journalist
character, and he is the oneinvestigating and all of those
things. Yeah, he would have beeneasier. But that's quite a
different perspective. So onething that I also noticed that,
you know, the blurbs in the backof the book. Sonia Feller, I
think these are some of myfavorite authors. We've
(34:07):
interviewed them as well on thepodcast. Sonia Ferrero is doing
this amazing book, which isreally similar to this one,
except that this is fiction, andhers is sort of like a two prime
but also based on this case, youknow, in a rural village, case
of a missing, missing girl in arural village in up. So I wanted
(34:29):
to ask, you know, what was itlike being part of South Asia
speaks and working with Soniaand Prayag, and what kind of
inputs did you get from them?
Atharva Pandit (34:40):
It was incredible. And the good girls
by Sonia khalero, she it was,you know, one of the, one of the
influences behind Hurda. I mean,I was the I I had read the book
before. I was, you know, readingit while, while writing Hurda as
well. So and it was, it. SouthAsia speaks is incredible. I
(35:01):
mean, they, and I was very luckyto have Prayag as the men as as
my mentor, because Prayag is,you know, very chill. And he, he
doesn't have this, you know,this school master kind of
attitude that you have to, youknow, you have to do this within
this time frame, you know, to,because he understands that
writing doesn't probably doesn'thappen that way for everybody.
(35:25):
So he was very chill. He we usedto discuss books, we used to
discuss films, we used todiscuss writing. And you know
why this person is his favoritewriter, but this person, I hate
this person as a writer andthose sort of thing. And I came
to South Asia speaks actually,at a time when I wasn't really
(35:45):
very sure about my fictionwriting abilities. I was under
confident I'd been writing forfor quite a while, but I was
under confident about myability. And I was like, this is
the sort of the last attempt toget, get the fiction writing
sort of going, fiction going. Sozautesha speaks was actually a
(36:06):
push towards that, because it'ssort of when you discuss all of
these things, books and, youknow, writing and the
technicalities of it and themisery of it and the joys of it,
you sort of get somehow,somewhere, you get inspired, you
know, you start thinking aboutwriting again. And that that, I
(36:27):
think that was one of thebiggest contributions in terms
of, you know, in terms of howSouth Asia speaks, help my
writing. It basically bydiscussing all of these things
and by debating all of thesethings, it sort of made me
excited about writing again, youknow? And that, yeah, and that,
of course, it was complimentedby the fact that Prayag is very
(36:49):
like you write, and then yousend me whatever you've written.
And he's a good critic. Alsohe's a very, sometimes he can be
very, you know, a harsh critic,which is needed. But he, he
criticizes in the manner thatyou, you know, you never get
hurt about it. So that that wasreally helpful.
Tara Khandelwal (37:10):
I'm sure you would be a really good mentor.
And so Sonia, they're justfantastic authors. So, yeah, I
mean, this book took you areally long time to write, and I
can see why, you know, it's somultifaceted. It's so rich. I
really also like the fact thatyou have kept the case unsolved,
because when I was reading it, Ikept, kind of, like, also like
(37:32):
the way it's written, you kindof almost feel like we're
getting somewhere. We're gettingsomewhere. It's going to get
solved. It's going to getsolved. Like, is this a clue? Is
that a clue is, is, you knowwhat, this person said
something, but then it all kindof leads to nothing, and the
case doesn't get solved, whichis exactly what happens in real
life. You know, it's real. It'snot like a neat little bow that,
oh yeah, you know, they allthese cues and they add up and,
(37:53):
you know, that's it. So that'swhat I Yeah, that's what I
really like. And I love how thebook did that. I love the social
commentary. So, yeah, what areyou writing next now? What's on
your mind right now? That's,
Atharva Pandit (38:05):
that's a difficult question. I mean,
there are things, there are, youknow, there are things that I'm
writing, there are things that Ihave been thinking, but I think
I I've come to accept the factthat I'm not. I'm not, I'm not a
writer who is very, you know,who's going to be churning out
(38:26):
one book every two or threeyears. That's, I don't think
that's going to happen with me,because I procrastinate a lot.
I'm very lazy. I don't have any,you know, any schedule at such
for writing. I also have a fulltime job, yeah, yeah, yeah. So,
I mean, I was job is what? Butyou know what? I'll tell you
(38:48):
what I do get some time towrite, apart from the job, like,
sometimes the job can gethectic, but I do get time. But
within that time when I shouldbe writing, I'm scrolling on
Instagram and watching, watchingreels on Instagram, and I'm
like, should I go and I shouldgo and write, but should I and
(39:10):
so I sort of procrastinate.
Sometimes it so happens thatyou, I'm so charged up that you
I just go open the laptop andtap, tap, tap, tap it out. But I
mean to write a book. I think itit takes, it takes a different
sort of commitment, which Icould commit once. Now I'm like,
I'm taking some time to commitfor that again. So, I mean, I
(39:32):
hope it happens whenever ithappens, but I think I would
come, I'll come to accept thefact that, okay, it will happen
when it has to happen.
Tara Khandelwal (39:43):
Yeah. But then the books that you do, right,
they want to win prizes, andthey do so well, so then, yeah,
it's all about worth it, yeah,at the end. And like, the kind
of like you got Jerry Pinto got,like, sort of talking about and
then I really like books likethis, because it's something
different. You know, I don'treally come. Across multi
character books. I don't comeacross book set in this kind of
(40:04):
a place, you know, I need a lotof sort of, like single
protagonist novel set in openIndia, open Settings. So it was
a very refreshing and, yeah,thank you so much for coming on
the podcast.
Unknown (40:19):
And thank you. It's been a real pleasure. I didn't
even know when we got it's 350or the conversation just closed.
Hope
Tara Khandelwal (40:32):
you enjoy this episode of Books and Beyond with
bound. This podcast is createdby bound, a company that helps
you grow through stories. Findus at down India on all social
media platforms. Tune in everyWednesday as we peek into the
lives and minds of somebrilliant authors from India and
South Asia. You.
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