Into the deep blue

A chat with author Nandan Gautam whose metaphysical novel is paired with companion musical albums.

While inspiration can sprout out of the strangest of corners, author Nandan Gautam believes the persistence to not let it go unexpressed is what makes the difference. His recent offering, The King of The Sea, is best described as a journey inward — to your core — in order to seek meaning in everything. Excerpts from an interview:

How did the impetus to write The King of the Sea come by?

An idea must be such that it grabs you and does not let you go unless you express it. By idea, I mean, a thought or a message or anything that you wish to communicate to the world. This book is unique because it is a stream of consciousness that also has a story and a narrative. So the first thing that grabbed me was the fact that I had started a story with no idea as to where it was going. Additionally, I also decided to pen down my thoughts about the process of writing, and also the events that were taking place in my life during that time. So, there is a sort of triangle here. It was interesting for me to explore and compare what happens to the characters in my book versus what was happening in my real life. There were definitely connections, and that was the impetus to keep going. The process took almost six years, before I felt that the book was complete.

If you had to sum up the essence of this book in not more than a few lines?

It’s an exploration into the deepest parts of ourselves, using both prose and poetry. Parts of the book are more like a personal diary as well. We are all searching for love, meaning, and success, but what does it all mean and how do we reach that perfect place — that is what it’s about.

If modern, mainstream storytelling is generally linear and logical, King of the Sea is certainly not...

Right from the beginning, I took the liberty of writing whatever appeared in my consciousness. I had no plan to write a novel. Nor was my intent to simply write a diary of my thoughts. So that challenge was to be free and yet tell a story that made complete sense in terms of the plot. Normally, we prefer to see life as moving in a linear manner. That’s what it appears to do. But our thoughts and our internal world can move from anywhere to anywhere — geographically as well as in time. Since this is the story of a soul’s journey, I felt it cannot be time-bound. And since I am exploring the mystical and existential aspects of life, I decided that this story would be like one big jigsaw puzzle. It may take some time, but it will eventually add up.

You’ve also created a soundtrack to accompany the ideas in the book. Tell us more…

What is a film without a soundtrack? When we talk about emotions and feelings, there are so many things that cannot be fully expressed with words. Of course, the great poets did manage to express the inexpressible, but for me, music is a language that simply bypasses the written and spoken forms of communication. Musical notes have no inherent meaning, so they speak to the soul without any filter. For this reason, I found that when I want to describe states of mind, feelings, and mixed emotions, music was a more direct way to express myself. So the idea is that while you’re horizontally moving with the characters in the book and their journey forwards, you are also able to feel what they are feeling.

Many themes and chapters have their own track, so if you were to play that specific track and then read that chapter, you would have the total experience of what that character was feeling at that moment. Why describe things when I can make you experience them directly for yourself?