Soumitro Das has been a journalist, working in an editorial capacity in newspapers including The Statesman, and is now an author. A postgraduate in comparative literature, Jadavpur University, he earned his doctorate in history and semiology of texts and documents, and his dissertation was on the Trilogy of Samuel Beckett from the University of Paris. Fluent in French, one would have expected him to write in that language. Instead, he returned to India and has been writing short stories in English. His just-published first novel, titled Bombay, a city he grew up in before coming to live in Kolkata, can be termed somewhat of a bildungsroman, though this is more of a coming-of-age story of a young man who has just entered college.

Set in the late seventies during the turbulent days of the Emergency, Bombay is about the protagonist Sam, who tries to make sense of his world through an introduction to drugs, rock and roll, free love, literature, films and theatre through his friends. As is often the case, he is desperately attracted to beautiful college student Isabella Gondola, who is into radical politics. His obsessive love for her set against the puritan values of his family, a middle-class Bengali family in Mumbai (then Bombay), internalises his own angst and agonies of growing up into adulthood. Should one be macho or sensitive is the conflict that is beautifully captured through lucid storytelling that holds you enthralled from beginning to end. This is definitely a welcome addition to bold writing in English by an Indian author.

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Here are some excerpts from an interview.

Congratulations on the publication of your very first novel, Bombay. How do you feel? 

Thank you. To be frank, I felt a bit apprehensive about the book, which is a no-holds-barred look at the adolescent condition in Bombay in the mid-70s. There is a lot of sexually explicit vocabulary since I am dealing with a bunch of guys who haven’t come under the civilising influence of girls at all.  It’s all about instinct, depravity, and as the book progresses and the love story comes to the foreground, the vocabulary improves, and instincts turn into emotions.

You must know that there is a similar book, The Education of Yuri, by Jerry Pinto, that has a similar theme of a young college student in the eighties in Bombay. His college is Elphinstone and yours is Sydenham. Have you read it? If so, how would you say your novel is different from Jerry’s?

I have read Pinto’s book and liked it. The similarities are superficial. For instance, Yuri is someone who is serious about his studies and about finding a career for himself after college. Whereas Sam is a bohemian who knows he is in the wrong place but decides to withdraw from all academic activity and instead pursue his own path. He has no idea what he wants to do in life, and the book is about how he discovers a possible vocation for himself in Sydenham. Besides, the atmospheres in the two books are entirely different. Yuri experiments with drugs and dabbles marginally with Naxalism, whereas in Bombay, there is a clear ideological choice made by Sam – he becomes a rock n roller. Also, Yuri is more or less on his own, while Sam is surrounded by a bunch of guys who are protective and supportive of him, both in his creative endeavours and in his love life.

You have written short stories on and off. What made you take to creative writing from journalistic writing? 

I just strayed into journalism almost accidentally. I had sent a longish letter to The Statesman about Rushdie, which was eventually published in the paper. Journalism was a means of earning a living, of bringing home the bacon, as it were. But I have been clear for a very long time that sooner or later, I would get down to writing fiction. Even during my brief career as a journalist, I continued writing short fiction. Some of it has appeared in The Statesman’s annual number. I have always wanted to be a writer of fiction.

I have read your short stories and I think they are very good.. Why did you not get a publisher for such a long time? 

I don’t know the answer to this question. I sent my stories all over the place, to all the major publishers, but it was always a no without any explanation. Some of them said they didn’t publish short fiction. But I don’t know. I am grateful to Vitasta for having published two of my short stories in their anthology, No Return Address.

Coming back to your novel, is it an autobiography? 

No, it is not an autobiography. It’s about 5 per cent fact and 95 per cent fiction. I did go to Sydenham, I did smoke a bit of weed and I did write a play, but there was no Isabella Gondola anywhere. I always put a bit of myself in all my writings. So…

Which authors have had an influence over your work, since, as a student of comparative literature myself, I find we have had more exposure to World literature than say only English or American writers? 

I don’t know about influence. There are writers who were crucial to impelling me towards a creative career. Kafka, Beckett come easily to mind. Joyce too. I think Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written, nobody has been able to put themselves into the minds of their characters and note everything that happens in their consciousness. Stupendous. My first book, written in Bengali, which is yet to be published, was very Joycean. But now I situate myself in the mainstream of realism and therefore am in direct line of succession to such writers as Flaubert, Zola and Proust. As far as influence goes, I must mention a little-known German author called Peter Bichsel, who wrote a book called Stories for Children, which is one of the funniest books I have ever read, funny in a dark sort of way. My short stories owe a lot to him and to Kafka as well. But my novels are my own thing.

Apart from questions of state brutality, etc., what other topics would you be interested in writing more fiction about? 

What I want to write about now is about the historical tension that has come to inhabit relations between the genders. As women emancipate themselves their attitude and behaviour towards men is undergoing a rapid change. And men also expect their women to be emancipated to a certain extent.

There are women who are not emancipated either. What happens to them when they meet a man who considers himself progressive? There is the phenomenon of masks. I would like to see the masks drop.

What are you working on now? 

Right now, I am working on a novel about the life and times of a politician of the Hindu Right. This is the first time I am writing about a character I completely loathe, and at times, I have to stop writing because of the nausea.

Lastly, on a lighter note, you are described as an eccentric person. Any comments on that? 

I guess you can call me an eccentric, literally, someone who is away from the centre, but someone who equally knows a lot about life in the centre. I have not lived the life of a person of my class. That is, get an education, get a career, get married, start a family, retire, etc. I wasted a lot of time trying to find my way in the world. But I have finally got to a place where I can write, if not full-time, that is really difficult and given only to some, but at least some of the time.

The interviewer is a freelance journalist and writer