Vinaya Patil, a former IT professional turned full time writer with her first book, One life to Love . Set in Bangalore and Goa, the book tells the story of four engineering students Riya, Saachi, Manish and Aadi, who navigate their way through trying times in love and friendship and eventually emerge from the tribulations stronger. The book is peppered with humour, too.
“I have tried to keep each character unique. Saachi, Riya and Manish study together. Manish has a crush on Riya, but she only treats him as a friend. Vidit then comes into the scene. He is the villain, as such. Saachi and Aadi are good friends, but their relationship is much more than just friendship,” says Vinaya, a Bangalore-based writer.
Vinaya adds that writing about love and relationships comes naturally to her, and so the story in One Life to Love flowed quite smoothly. She says that valuable feedback from her well wishers helped her along the way. “My cousin helped me a lot in editing. My mother-in-law would read it everyday. She said she could visualise the characters. My husband gave me feedback. Youngsters, just out of college, told me what they thought of the story.”
Dating and relationships among teenagers are still considered taboo in India, contends Vinaya. “We still don’t talk about dating, because of that teenagers end up doing things which they wouldn’t normally do. If there was proper communication between children and their parents, teenagers could be led on the right path. Every teenager goes through parent and peer pressure.”
For a debutant writer, getting a book published is a difficult task. But Vinaya says she got lucky. She adds that writers shouldn’t get discouraged if their first book isn’t published. “Write a second one. Talk to people whose works have been published. If you run a search on the internet, you will find guidelines on how you should write your proposal letter. That is a deciding factor.”
Vinaya says that debutant authors should be encouraged more. She has a small advice for writers. “Don’t edit so much that the feel of the book goes away. And be patient. Getting a book published takes years. Also, writing books takes commitment,” Vinaya’s second book is at present a work in progress.
One life to Love is a Rupa publication, priced at Rs.250 and available in Flipkart, Amazon, Bookadda, Rediff Books, Homeshop 18 and Sapna Book stores.
