In the shadows; redefining the boundaries of good and evil

In the shadows

1. Please tell us about your upcoming book and the genre?

The book is titled ‘In the Shadows' and is a suspense thriller that explores people's constant battle with darkness and the quest to emerge out of it. The narrative is set in Mumbai and follows the upper-middle-class protagonist as he goes about living and winning in life. Everything is smooth-sailing till an accident upends his life. In essence, everything the talented protagonist touches turn into gold, yet everything comes at a diabolical price which he is not sure he's ready to pay. As his life spirals almost out of control, the reader is taken down a giddying path where incidents unfold, characters are revealed, and there are distinctly uncomfortable sinister developments. The story deals with issues of trust, love and guilt alongside a plot of murder, drugs and rabbit holes. Several incidents in this book are loosely based on my experiences across university and professional cricket, though my co-author, Meghaa Ghosh, and I have stopped short of calling this autobiographical in any way. The biggest purpose of this book is to explore the relationship between good and evil. The book is expected in the market post-Christmas. The book will be available for pre-ordering on Amazon before the festival.

2. Your last bestseller book was from the self-help category; how difficult is it to write a fiction book after that?

Yes, Fetch Your Own Coffee was an entirely different ballgame. It was a book on management lessons learned by me while I lived and worked in different countries and with diverse sets of people. What is common between these books is that they both veer far away from the conventional. Fetch Your Own Coffee is a management book with no textbook definitions, while In the Shadows is a book that relooks the air-tight definitions of good and evil. To tell you the truth, for a brief period, I was wrapping up the management book and had already started work on In the Shadows, so it wasn't even doing one ‘after' the other. In my mind, while the format of delivery is very different in the two books, the essence of basic human connections, facing our own fears, putting ourselves out there, growing and exploring multi-cultural environments - is common. These have been recurring themes in my mind and, therefore, in both these books as well.

3. What message would you like to convey through your book?

In the Shadows is about exploring boundaries - between good and evil, between what's is acceptable and not, responsibility and freedom, love and control. It asks some very difficult questions about what you would do if you found yourself in circumstances that were far darker than you had ever imagined. The lesson at the end of it all is the importance of building will and strength of character. All of this is told through the life of an extremely relatable character, who happens to be a young and entitled man, but really could have been any gender, anywhere in the world, and certainly at any stage of life. However, the lessons are subtle. The book is meant to be a gripping and entertaining read - straddling murder, deceit, love, loyalty, victory, and loss.

4. Any more ideas in the pipeline?

I think In the Shadows lends itself excellently to a web-series adaptation; discussion is ongoing to sell the fiction rights of the book for OTT content consumption. After that, there are actually two ideas I have in mind, one of which is already underway. It is another fiction book, fast-paced and edgy. It will explore the issues of cross-border terrorism and politics through the eyes of a radical female protagonist. However, more on that later. The second idea is another management book on a new model of leadership, which is apt for the new way the world of business is evolving.