Beyond the boundaries of genre

Sanjay Chopra recently launched his new book, ‘Talespin’ at ITC Windsor. The author interacted freely with the audience, speaking about his childhood, why he became a storyteller, his journey with the book and how being a pilot helped him write it. Good evening, ladies and gentleman. This is your pilot speaking,” joked Sanjay.

   He added, “When you fly long enough, you get a different perspective of the world. It’s probably because of the lack of oxygen but you see the world rotating
under you, colours merging and time and space seeming to flex. That became fodder for a lot of these stories.

The past and future are collaborators to present the present.” The 14 stories in the collection don’t fit into one specific genre but include historical fiction, supernatural
elements and even crime and psychology, with each story having its own spin.

   In fact, as Sanjay informed, one of them is already being converted into a film script. “Script sessions on ‘The Last Gurkha’ have already started. It’s the coming-of-age story of a boy and his grandfather in the backdrop of the Gurkha service in the army,” he shared.

The highlight of the launch was the dramatised reading of one of the stories named ‘The Contractor’ by his wife, Tisca Chopra, a Bollywood actress known for her roles in films like Taare Zameen Par and Firaaq.

She read out the spine-chilling story with passion and drama while her facial expressions only added to the experience. Asked her honest opinion on the collection of stories, she said, “Frankly, some of the stories are the best short stories I’ve read. It takes a lot to create something out of a blank page.

A couple of them aren’t a genre I like — there’s one called ‘Betrayal’, which is a
bit psychological and scary. But there are others that I really love.”

Is she saying that only because she is his wife? She laughed and replied, “No, I think I have objectivity because I read a lot — as an actor, you have to go through scripts and besides, I’m a student of literature.”