It takes great perseverance to pick up a pen to write after a long day at work; greater still if you are in a job which has little to do with poetry or fiction. But bureaucrat Mukul Kumar has been at it for more than a decade Passionate about expressing himself through the written word, not a day dies before he pens down a poem or strings together a story. On occasions, the result is As Boys Become Men, on others, Lost in the Love Maze, his latest work (published by Tree Shade Books) throbbing with the pulse of the young.
With the book beginning to reach book stalls, Kumar allows himself the luxury of nostalgia. “Before this book, I believed that writing was an independent endeavour, writers wrote by their own inspiration, and readers came into the picture only when a book came into being. But Lost in the Love Maze belied my belief.”
“I was bombarded with feedback from readers about As Boys Become Men (2016),. a multilayered work in which ambition and friendship were the widest layers, and romance remained peripheral to the plot. Still the readers were left hungry for much more about Mihir-Jyoti romance. Lost in the Love Maze took birth there and then. It was a bizarre realisation that the curiosity and commentary of readers could trigger a writer into writing. I feel this book was destined. “.
But it is not a sequel, he hastens to add. “Lost in the Love Maze makes an independent read, even though it draws the central characters, Mihir and Jyoti, from the earlier work. It takes their romance forward. It is their love story, but ends up being the story of love itself. It explores the two contrasting shades of love, one suffused with a sense of sacrifice, and another, powered by a sense of fierce possession. It also brings out the pain from the unrequited love that gets played out through two other characters, establishing in course that love doesn’t care for order, instead it can be anarchic in consequence.”
New book by Mukul Kumar | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
With such an interplay of requited and unrequited love, how does Kumar describe his latest fiction?
“I describe this novel as a matrix of love, duty, ambition, and passion that reveals the conflict between love and duty, and love and ambition. I believe a writer doesn’t consciously aim at judging human behaviour and establishing any truth. Every individual has their own truth that is the offspring of their sensibility and life experiences. This work juxtaposes familial love againstromantic love, bringing out not only the eternal conflict between duty and love, Dharma and desire, but also between the different shades of love as well.”
Even as Mukul soaks in the applause for this piece of romance, doesn’t he miss his first love, poetry? “Poetry and fiction are two contrasting forms of creativity. While poetry is spontaneous in emotions and thoughts, and majorly in words too, fiction is a planned venture, where inspiration or the guiding emotion may be spontaneous, but its creation has to be painstakingly crafted. I do believe that creation anyway is divine. Poetry is the sudden divine transfiguration of the man into poet, while in fiction, the writer feels to be the human incarnation of God on earth where He too has to go through the rigour and pain of living, constrained by human limitations. ”
Mukul confesses that being a civil servant entails a great responsibility and high level of engagement. “I find writing and managing poetry much easier, though I have been able to write three works of fiction so far. I feel the best is yet to come.”
