Every love story is unique

And We Walked Away is a novel that ends up with a twist because the author wants to give his readers something fresh and more than just ‘love’

Very often we hear of college romance and love stories that started in between classes. Every love story is unique, with some not always leading to a happy ending. Subrat Saurabh, an engineer turned poet-cum-author, recently launched his first novel, And We Walked Away. The book talks about a group of college friends and how the friendship of three stands the test of time with a college adolescence romance that falls prey at the hands of destiny.
 
Popularly known as Chicken Biryanii on social media, Saurabh is proficient in writing witty one-liners, and the skill he employs on Twitter and Facebook using his pen name. 

Here’s chatting him up:
Do you think the meaning of love has changed in recent times? 
I don’t think it has changed, rather it has become easier to find a partner these days due to easy connection with people because of social media. However, it was very difficult a decade ago. A decade ago, it used to take a lot of time and patience to make the first move and hence, couples tried hard to save their relationship as they knew how much pain they took. However, in current days people get connected and break up easily.

‘Love’ is something that has been written about a lot in novels. How is it different in And We Walked Away?
 And We Walked Away is a love story but it is not that typical love story which you might have read in many books where you find the usual Love-Sex-Dhoka kind of masala. Protagonist Abhimanyu will make you relate to yourself most of the time. The story doesn’t talk about love but talks more about family values, traditions, middle class struggles, practical problems in college life affairs etc in a rather practical way. Every college-going youngster should read this story to get the moral that love is not about being a Bollywood hero and ditching the family. It is about accepting your world and fighting for your love while also keeping your family around as your strength. Abhimanyu and Naina will explain you the real meaning of love with this story and I bet you will strongly connect with either of them.

What was the most challenging part of writing the book?
The most challenging part of writing any book is that you start living the character. Sometimes you build so much about fictional characters in your mind that you end up living that character in real life. You start behaving like that character until you finish writing the book.

Which is that one character in the book that you relate to the most and who is your personal favourite and why?
The female lead Naina is my favourite character as she lives her life on her own terms. She is practical and believes in traditional values. Her character is simple yet very powerful.

Is it important for romantic novels to have a happy ending? 
I would prefer not to say much on this as the ending of And We Walked Away is the USP of the book but I will say that the ending of a book should be practical and realistic. My readers often ask me what does And We Walked Away mean? Is it ‘And we walked away together’ or and ‘We walked away from each other’ and that’s the suspense.

For you, personally, how important is the written word?
In my personal life, I am a very organised person. I love to maintain a diary and keep a written track of everything. It helps me to be focused and disciplined. So yes, written words are very important for me.