The visuals of the procession showed hundreds of men wearing masks cut out of the photo of the same politician. Each mask was smiling the same blank smile and the men behind the masks threw their hands up in the air and shouted slogans.
Novelist Tarun J Tejpal said he was spellbound seeing these visuals one day. From them evolved the theme of his latest novel ‘The Valley of Masks.’
He was conversing with Sanjoy Roy of Teamwork Productions, festival producers, in one of the sessions of the Alchemist Hay Festival here on Saturday.
Mr. Tejpal said he was struck by the truth of the scene. On the one side, everyone speaks of the freedom of the individual, the individual identity of the individual being. At the same time, all through history there had been this tendency to go after patterns…
He said the structure of a book, in his case, tended to evolve at a subliminal level, the elements that constituted it constantly falling into an order. Telling stories within the story had come into his style subconsciously. The Indian epic Mahabharata is the greatest novel ever, flashing light into every conceivable human predicament. The influence of Indian philosophy is natural for an Indian writer, growing up listening to the stories and situations in the epics long before one actually reads the great works, he said.
