Author Sakshama Puri Dhariwal’s stories are cheesy, entertaining, capture a good balance of escapism and old world charm despite their contemporary setting. As her second novel Man of her Match hits bookstores, the San-Francisco based writer wants people to disconnect from an otherwise gloomy world and make your airport-time worthy through what she writes.
Her writings are based on personal experiences, but she accepts they’re exaggerated and fictionalised versions of reality. For instance in Man of her Match, Vikram Walia, a belligerent cricketer with a bad-boy image is the female protagonist Nidhi’s neighbour (something she wished for in reality). Nidhi though is a part closer to Sakshama, a marketing professional-her advertising stint at a Delhi-daily was put to use here. “My editor mentioned that a real incident that went into an earlier draft of my debut novel wasn’t quite appealing, sometimes reality is stranger than fiction, it’s important to strike a balance to make it a worthy read,” she says.
In Man of her Match, there are unique- sometimes unlikely interactions between Nidhi and her boss that add spark to the narrative. “Even though free-flowing conversations with bosses may not happen often, these interactions are product of companies wanting to build an atmosphere where they want people to speak their mind.” Incidentally Nidhi and Vikram are supporting characters in her first novel, The Wedding Photographer. “Their story was stuck in my mind.”
Before Sakshama decides what she writes, she always has a broader sense of where the narrative would lead her to. “But the journey is a gradual one. Man of her Match was a tougher novel to write, there are fewer characters, larger complexities. Her favourite element in the story is the depiction of the father-daughter relationship, how a girl’s childhood is very different from that of a boy. It’s so gratifying to have calls from female readers that they had deeply connected with this thread.”
It’s imperative that her Hindi film references from the 90s add juice to her narrative, she’s quite unapologetic about watching and writing stuff with a ‘happily ever after’ tag. “They’re an integral fun element in my stories and the connect is quite instant.” Relocating from Delhi to San Francisco made her writing more desi than ever. “I missed home, the density of crowds, the nostalgia, the food. When in India, I tried hard to be perfect with my English; the moment I went abroad, my writing inherited an locational flavour and a deep connect to my roots.”
The Wedding Photographer was a novel that scored big in terms of commerce, but they weren’t a distraction for the second one. She feels it’s important for an author to distance away from numbers when they write. “There’s a certain yardstick I maintain, I have to laugh out loud in the humour I generate and I need to feel for the characters. If you stay true to your sensibilities regardless of how good or bad you write, a personal message on Twitter, Instagram or FB can be satisfying too.” She dreams about a writing a gritty crime thriller soon and is quite aware of Hindi film industry’s inrerest to adapt films from books.