The Lounge Chair Interview: 10 Questions with Siddharth Dasgupta

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Why do you write?

What started off life as an enjoyable interest before stepping up to becoming an engaging addiction before slowly metamorphosing into an all-consuming passion has now reached that state of potent urgency where ‘why do I write?’ and ‘why do I breathe?’ appear to be conjoined twins of sorts.

Tell us about your most recent book. What were you trying to say or achieve with it?

My novel Letters from an Indian Summer tells the story of an Indian photographer and a French artist caught in a tidal wave of romance, repentance, destiny… and serendipity. It spreads itself across a global canvas of cities and epiphanies, with the nearly extinct art of letters forming important focal points to the journey. What was I trying to achieve with it… well, would Nirvana suffice? I suppose in the littlest of ways I was trying to impart a sense of bohemian bliss and a light sprinkling of lyrical cadence onto a world increasingly bereft of such. I was also attracted to an India not mired in cliché but instead, unafraid of diving often and rebelliously into pools of pleasure.

Describe your writing aesthetic.

Due to the words and the people and the imagery and the memories I’ve grown up with, much of my writing, irrespective of medium, technique or genre, has a poetic and somewhat rhythmic cadence to it. While this aesthetic lends itself well to tales dripping with wanderlust and sensuality, I’ve found that it lends itself especially well to sorrow and to characters drowning under the weight of very human failings.