With much intensity Faraaz Kazi read out the lines from his debut novel “Truly, Madly, Deeply…memoirs of a broken heart's first love” during the recent book launch at Reliance Time Out. Listening to him was no effort since the language was kept simple and lucid; sounded like teen spirit, young and high.
Young adult fiction “Truly, Madly, Deeply” is the story of two teenyboppers Rahul and Seema who are head over heels in love but refuse to confess their love for each other. Speaking about his book Faraaz said: “It enlivens the experience of falling in love for the first time. The book has a piece of my soul in it.” His idea on first love was as raw, young and fresh as any teenager's first tryst with high school love. What ensued in the conversation between him and author Shinie Antony gave an insight into the character of the protagonist Rahul.
“Faraaz has come up with a smart debut. He has not attempted anything beyond his age or imagination. He has captivated the very essence of first love,” said Shinie Antony. Faraaz quotes extensively from Urdu and English poetry and has added what he termed “Bollywood masala” to make it more “readable and marketable”.
Faraaz said the book is a mixture of fact and fiction. “It definitely has autobiographical shades like anyone's debut novel.” To Shinie's question of whether it is distinctively Indian to be “Truly Madly Deeply” in love, he promptly replied, “No, it is the same everywhere. But being in Indian society we have a very different approach towards love. We value relationships and never fail to give it a second chance.”
Faraaz took roughly four months to complete the novel. “During the time I was disconnected from the world and was shouted at by my dean,” he recalled. However, the book had its beginnings prior to his college days: Faraaz says how he had put down the plot of the book while he was in school itself with the intentions of getting into a short story contest. “What I did later was to put in the incidents inspired from real life and people, of course some are entirely fictitious.”
To aspiring writers he advised, “I'll suggest young writers to always maintain a diary. Read the genre which you prefer to write.” Faraaz has his future plans chalked out — two more novels are in the pipeline. He is also interested in fantasy writing for which he has one lined up.
The book is published by Cedar publishers and is priced at Rs 175.
