Before I could ask Nilanjan Choudhury what prompted him, a former software professional educated at IIT Kanpur and IIM Ahmedabad, to write humour, he says, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t hold my corporate job against me!&rdquo;
<img title="Author Nilanjan Choudhury" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2015/jan/Nilanjan-Book-Launch.jpg" alt="Author Nilanjan Choudhury" /> Author Nilanjan Choudhury. Pic courtesy/ Vishnu Ratheesh
He chuckles on the other side of the telephone, from Bengaluru, and I promise to do my best.
&ldquo;The degrees are only one part &mdash; a small part &mdash; of me,&rdquo; he admits. Reading, he adds, before much else. As a boy growing up in Shillong in the &lsquo;70s, Choudhury grew up without television being at his beck and call. &ldquo;I grew up on Sherlock Holmes, PG Wodehouse, and John Mortimer&rsquo;s detective character, Rumpole, and came to love the mix of humour and mystery,&rdquo; he says.
That, and Choudhury&rsquo;s own experience when he was trying to get his daughter admitted to school, prompted him to begin writing his recently-written novel, The Case of The Secretive Sister, published by Niyogi Books. &ldquo;My daughter will be mortified that I am saying this, but she was having trouble with school admissions because she was shy and didn&rsquo;t pass through the hoops thrown her way.
Finally, one of the schools, we learnt, admitted students on a first-come-first-serve basis, and had 75 seats. Could you guess when parents began queuing up before the gates opened one Monday?
The Wednesday before!&rdquo; he chuckles.
That, he adds, got him thinking about how the seemingly-trivial issues that people face actually feel like the world to them, and, of course, serve themselves on a platter for a satire junkie. He began writing about the book&rsquo;s protagonist, Detective Chatterjee, who must get into the mind of a much-feared, capricious school principal to help his client&rsquo;s child get admission. Events, however, take unexpected turns and the detective must tie them all up in the end.
Choudhury&rsquo;s last book, Bali and the Churning Of Milk, also his debut novel, was a mythological thriller. He, however, was never tempted to churn out a mythological series like his peers. &ldquo;I cannot write with on eye on the market. I&rsquo;d love to create one, though,&rdquo; he says after some thought.
For all you know, Choudhury&rsquo;s new book might just do that &mdash; the book, he says, is inspired by Alexander McCall Smith&rsquo;s endearing Motswana character Mma Ramotswe of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency series (Mr Chatterjee gets by with bad coffee made by his assistant instead of Mma&rsquo;s excellent bush tea). &ldquo;I didn&rsquo;t want to plot this one too much. I wanted to do what a paleontologist does &mdash; brush a site lightly, and let the story emerge,&rdquo; he says.
What the author did plan, though, was to essay the Bengaluru he has known intimately since 12 years. &ldquo;This is my love letter to the city. I wondered what the old-timers of this city, who saw it as the idyllic place it once was, feel about migrants like me &mdash; non-Kannada speaking, disappearing into their boxed apartments at the end of the day&hellip;,&rdquo; says Choudhury.
Choudhury says the best feedback on the book is in the form of the cover, designed by Paul Fernandes, one of the finest chroniclers of Bengaluru. &ldquo;Some might feel I have stereotyped communities &mdash; the Punjabi wife, the Bengali detective &mdash; but I&rsquo;ll take that risk. I hope to have brought out the flavour of this melting pot of a city through the communities before giving them singular shades.&rdquo; elaborates Choudhury.

Author Nilanjan Choudhury&rsquo;s second book, The Case Of The Secretive Sister, hopes to breathe a new life into the mystery-humour genre. He speaks to Kareena Gianani about moving on from mythology, and why this book is an ode to Bangalore

The curious case of a detective

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The curious case of a detective

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