Home / ENTERTAINMENT / Interview with Sabarna Roy on his latest book: A Marriage, an Affair, and a Friendship
Interview with Sabarna Roy on his latest book: A Marriage, an Affair, and a Friendship

Interview with Sabarna Roy on his latest book: A Marriage, an Affair, and a Friendship

Sabarna Roy is Senior Vice President [Business Development] at Electrosteel Castings Limited, an author of eight Literary and three Technical bestselling books, TEDx Speaker, Champions of Change Award 2020 Winner, Times Excellence Award 2021 Winner in Indian Literature, and Golden Glory Award Winner for Critically Acclaimed Bestselling Author of the Year 2021. Sabarna Roy has been awarded the Right Choice Award for Author of Eminence of 2022. Sabarna Roy has been selected among the India Today Group: Icons of India. Presently, he is writing his ninth Literary work: an epistolary novel, which is likely to be published in the winter of 2022/23.

  1. Can you share with us something about your latest book, “A Marriage, an Affair, and a Friendship”, that isn’t in the blurb?

A Marriage, an Affair, and a Friendship is a crisp, fast paced cocktail of different perspectives of an open marriage told from the point of view of Rahul, Paromita, his wife, Suroma, the ‘other’ woman, and Samaresh, the ‘silent’ eager paramour. The narration weaves in and out of their points of view as they are confronted with different challenges, including the moral judgement of their sons, Proloy and Ratul.

  1. Your book deals with a very sensitive subject matter exploring the complexities of a marriage. What made you want to tell this particular story? How did the idea for this book spark?

My belief is, in the post-modern age with 360-degree intervention of technology, the boundaries created by marriages will become redundant. Secondly, in the urban milieu, as women are getting more and more empowered because of economic independence, the traditional structure of marriages will not succeed. Marriages succeed on sustenance of monogamy which is itself a false idea. According to the iconic anthropologist Desmond Morris, men and women are naturally polygamous and polyandrous, respectively. It is the moral code of the civil society that has built up over ages through institutions that restrict our actions in a stifling manner. It is with this ethos in mind that I planned to write this book, which would depict the various contours of a marriage, an affair, and a friendship intermingling with each other. I believe this is the future if the human race has to survive peacefully.

  1. In the relationship between Rahul and Paromita, they are both relatively equal. Much of their relationship in the novel consists of the inside/outside struggle of wanting what you want for your relationships, but not quite being able to ignore societal wants as well. Is this something you see often—the battle between what is traditional and personal desires?

This I have more or less answered in my answer to question number 2. However, I would like to remind you that human beings, with the help of technology and capital, can become more individualistic than ever before. This will be a root cause of explosion of communal traditions.

Interview with Sabarna Roy on his latest book: A Marriage, an Affair, and a Friendship

  1. When we meet Suroma and we quickly learn that she’s a highly independent woman, a fighter both literally and figuratively, and very sure of herself. She is married. But there are a lot of things that marriage doesn’t always bring, like happiness, or honesty, or children. In some ways, the story begins with the threat of the broken marriage. Why did you decide to start here?

There is a mistake in your question, Suroma is unmarried and not married. Marriages force people to stay together and cohabit under one roof for years together. Familiarity in all kinds of relationships breeds contempt and kills imagination, innovation, and intuition in tackling individuals involved in the relationships. Happy marriages exist on the bedrock of extreme tragic sacrifices of individuals involved, which mostly go untold.

  1. One of the most poignant aspects of Rahul and Paromita’s story is that they loved each other deeply, and yet, their marriage is at the brink of shattering. A marriage can be tested, can fall apart for reasons big and small, despite the couple still loving each other. What did you hope to explore?

It is not love that keeps a marriage ticking. It is tact and killing of your personal desires that keeps marriages rocking.

  1. Well, whatever magic you worked in your writing process definitely worked, because this book is amazing. I think my favorite thing about this story was the idea of an open marriage in a modernist setting. This couple is going through a rough patch, even if they were very much in love. How does the couple’s relationship change?

Suroma, who started this relationship with the confidence that she could stay detached, is confused to find that she cares for Rahul. She had assured him at the start that it was a transactional relationship and that she was going to raise a child by herself. She wonders if it is going to stay that way. It takes a village to raise a child, and she has to form her own village.

 Samaresh sees Paromita’s anguish at Proloy’s departure. Should he have gone looking for Proloy and dragged him back to his mother? How much should he interfere in this conflict? After so many years of longing for Paromita, what is left for him? Will he draw up the dregs or rekindle a fresh stream? It does not matter to him as long as he doesn’t lose Paromita as a friend, a companion.

 Paromita has the ability to switch off from events in her life and plunge into her work. At least at work, she can contribute and see the positive results of her efforts. The week after Proloy leaves the house, she travels into the rural districts on work and invites Samaresh to accompany her. Does she feel better that she exercises her choice of partners away from the city and the bourgeoisie conventions and expectations that dog her every step? Is she expected to feel the same amount of passion for each man? It seems quite exhausting. She is dogged by resentment that Rahul has in an indirect way forced this lifestyle on them. She sees it as a betrayal of their comfortable status quo. And she does not want to lose the relationship she has with her sons. She has spent more time with them than with Rahul. Their trust and faith in her have eroded. They are young. Isn’t it their life that should matter to her?

 Rahul admits he turned his family life around on its head. He wonders if Paromita is following a script that she has written for herself just to try out and sign up to his point of view. Or if she had also thought about straying and grabbed at the lifeline he threw into her life of matrimonial expectations. What are Suroma’s expectations of him? If Suroma decides the show is over, he will have to go back to life before Suroma. But that would be hard on him. He has got used to the youthful exuberance of Suroma, the unconventional life she leads, her relentless dependence on her own abilities. To think that he started this whole stream of events, shouldn’t he have all the answers? Instead, he is the one who has so many questions…

  1. What is the one of the main ways that most people sabotage joy in marriage? What advice would you give newly married couples?

The institution of marriage was built to smoothen inheritance laws in a patriarchal society. A simple telling of individual truth can sabotage the joy in marriage. Marriages are fragile by nature. Yet tough to break because the contract of marriage is sealed by the Nation-state.

 Frankly, I have no advice to give to newly married couples.

  1. Is there anything you are currently working on that may intrigue the interest of your readers?

I am currently working on an epistolary novel, which is based on a ballad titled: Tara, written in 2009, and this was published in my first book, Pentacles. In the ballad, Tara and Sandy, who are high schoolmates, meet at the Delhi Airport after 26 years of leaving the high school. In the novel, Tara and Sandy start writing to each other letters after 12 years of having met at the Delhi Airport. The manuscript is likely to be completed by the middle of this year and will go for publication by the winter of 2022-23.

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