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| Rajiv Singh |
Read
up, Interview with Rajiv Singh. In
this part of his Interview, he describes his journey of writing the
book, which character he feels most close to, what role the love angle has in the book, what he thought was the
most challenging part of the book and how India's economic and the socio-political
background influenced his writing, Folks...
How did ‘The Unsolicited Billionaire’ happen?
Could you describe the journey?
In fact the
journey of ‘The Unsolicited Billionaire’ is many decades long. I felt and urge to write, from my
perspective, about the factual mindset towards Dalits, their plight, addressing
the issue through reservation and other policies; relevance of caste based
reservation, benefit of the reservation to the target class, its use as a
political and an appeasement tool.
Slowly, Dalit has become a product, a privileged class; just to
exploit them by the political classes. It is one of the reasons for the rise of
Dalit politics in North India.
The drama after the unfortunate incident of suicide,
recently, committed by a Dalit research scholar in Hyderabad is a fitting
example; how the political classes are using the incident as a product to take
political mileage. Had he been a student belonging to a general caste; would the
hue and cry have made?
Whereas, the fact is there are just two
classes; Good and Bad, and they may belong to any caste, creed or race. If the
good has the purity, patience, perseverance and love for the fellow beings, he
or she would succeed and win over the bad and that is the message of this book.
How did the main character, Godna come about? How much of you, was in
there?
The character Godna
stands for this: 'I am a human being first, a Dalit later.' The character has been
shown, belonging to an extreme backward underprivileged Dalit labour community
so anyone who cries for opportunities and feels victimised can relate to him.
Anyone who has a strong
character and a strong dream, for which he’s ready to do whatever it takes, he will succeed irrespective
of his caste and socio-economic status; like Godna.
I belong to the
feudal Thakur class depicted in the story. Though the system and the customs
are not followed anymore and therefore not much of me is there in Godna, but my
aspirations match his achievements, somewhere.
How did the love angle come
into the picture and why?
Love sees no bar; the
love angle was quite natural to carry the story with its essence.
Ultimately,
it’s the love which drives the protagonist to hit the peak.
What
according to you is different about your book?
The
narration with actual socio-economic
background of the time sets the book apart.
Secondly,
the books deals with a very sensitive
issue while keeping the entertainment alive throughout the actual story.
What
was the most challenging part about writing, ‘The Unsolicited Billionaire’?
Not to go overboard, while writing a caste-based drama
and still be able to communicate the prevailing practices was a challenge.
Secondly,
finding a climax to the love story was a
real challenge, as I have never heard of a Dalit boy marrying an upper caste
girl in north India, though the vice-versa happens.
And hold on for the Second part of this Interview, as well.
You can Read the Review, right here and Buy the Book, here as well.
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