FIVE QUESTIONS WITH ANIRBAN BHATTACHARYYA

Santosh: Welcome to Five Questions, Anirban. 

I just finished reading your path-breaking, bestselling book, The Deadly Dozen: India's Most Notorious Serial Killers, [Penguin, India 2019].

Let me make an honest confession, gruesomeness and gore have always given me goosebumps, but I was glued to this book and found the style very crisp, making the book a very riveting read. Hearty Congratulations.

A little bird tells me that you do standup comedy and acting when not delving deep into true crime stories. This obsession with comedy and crime is a weird mix.  I have yet to come across a person who is passionate about crime and comedy with the same amount of passion. How do you explain this?

Anirban: You know in standup comedy parlance when you flop on stage - we say, we bombed... and if we really have a great response from the crowd - we say - we killed it! So you see, violence subconsciously exists even in the world of comedy. But jokes aside, I think we all love crime... Our reading habits from our younger days prime our subconscious to love crime... we read Secret 7, Famous 5, hardy Boys, Nancy Drew - aren't they all crime books - crime gets committed and they have to solve the case... then we move to Sherlock Holmes, Byomkesh Bakshi, Feluda, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Perry Mason... again these are crime books. Crime is all around us 24x7 and it is difficult to ignore it. And standup comedy is something I do when I get the time and to get away from all the crime. I love being on stage and I love making people laugh. You can follow my standup comedy videos at youtube.com/c/abstandupcomedy.

And now I have combined my standup and my life experiences into motivational talks. I travel to colleges to speak to kids, interact with them, do professional writing workshops, and more. 

Santosh: You talk of serial killers and psychopaths like Gowri Shankar, A.K.A  Auto Shankar, the Beer- Man, the first woman killer of India, Nathari killers, etc, with what appears to the reader a poker-faced nonchalance, which is actually, not the case. It is not at all easy to write and research about such depraved characters.

What did you find lurking inside these sick, twisted minds? What sort of research went into this book?

Anirban: The two biggest challenges of writing non-fiction books are: 

1. Research - you have to get the right stuff - and you can't muck about trying to wing it. You have to get the facts right.

2. By stringing the facts and research together should not make the narrative sound like a news article or a report... you are telling a story and you have to ensure that the narrative grips the reader.

So the research was something that really challenged me. For eg. Thug Behram - he was involved in thuggee in the 18th century - and there's not much written about him. And all that's written is mired in folklore, rumours, hearsay accounts. So how can I be sure about the facts... and I searched various sources including ancient library archives, online and offline for months finally and Providence intervened and I came across two books written by the same gentleman who actually arrested Thug Behram - Capt Sleeman - and those two books really gave me the inside view of the thuggee world - their code languages, their ethics, about Behram and his friend Firangee and more... 

So, though it was challenging, the research was fun - because it was like solving a mystery - one article would lead me to the next book to the next journalist...

Nithari was one more story that had a tremendous amount of research. And when one reads my book they will realize that the Nithari case is not exactly what you see - and there are various questions and theories that are obvious. I remember reading through hundreds and hundreds of pages of legal documents trying to read between the lines to unravel the truth. 

And my writing time is from 11 in the night to 6 in the morning - so for a year that was my timetable. And then I would wake up at 10 and head to work. 

So for each story, I took about 2 weeks to write and research on average. But with Nithari I took about two months I think and Thug Behram took me four weeks. So for every story, I would get into the heads of the criminals that I was writing about - I started thinking like them, trying to read their body language, their supposed dialogues, their actions - the motives. It was exhausting. And I wanted the reader to embody the killers as well - and to put the reader right at the heart of their world. And so I wrote dialogues in the various Indian languages that the killers spoke. I wanted the reader to say those dialogues while reading so that they would eerily be transposed into the shoes of the killers. And perhaps this is the first book that has dialogues in 10 Indian languages - Marathi, English, Bangla, Assamese, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, and Ramaseena. 

What I found was that these killers had no moral compass. Also, they were very different from the serial killers of the West where sex was one of the primary driving forces. Here, in India, it was greed and an urge for money that drove most of them to kill.

Santosh: While one is involved in research, one tends to become a part of the scenario the characters are moving in, and it often becomes very difficult to yank oneself away from the experience that the characters are involved in.  

I speak from experience. While writing my biography on Martin Luther King Jr., I would often dream that I was part of the March on Washington or plowing forth on bruised feet singing songs of freedom during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. While writing Ballad of Bapu, I saw myself joining the Dandi March, or mutated into a speck in the tide of humanity walking with Gandhi’s funeral procession.

Honestly, the sort of research that you were involved in - delving into devious minds could prove very nightmarish for the researcher.  Did you suffer from any such nightmares, killers chasing you with swords, choppers, daggers, stones, and beer cans?

Anirban: I remember vomitting at 3am while doing the research for the story about Anjanabai, Seema Gavit, and Renuka Shinde. The court documents describe the way in which they killed multiple children. And the descriptions are gory, raw, brutal, and nauseous. As a parent I felt sick to my stomach wondering why these children had to die - infants... they had not done anything wrong - and yet here they were... their skulls being smashed and their bodies being swung like a pendulum from the rafters...

Santosh: I mean, if one writes things like, “as he was picking up the ball, he almost fell back in fear. Right in front of him was a plastic bag containing what looked like a severed human hand. It cannot be, his inner voice screamed. But it is, his logical voice insisted” [The Nithari Kaand Killers] - how can one sleep at night?

Anirban: I had disturbed sleep for a year. And because I was channeling each killer while writing about them - I was living and breathing them - my mind was constantly churning - thinking about their actions, the research. 

I can very confidently say that The Deadly Dozen is probably one of the best true crime books written because of the authenticity of the extensive research and of course the tight gripping narrative. And this is not me boasting... read the reviews on Amazon written by readers - these two things are always the highlights. And I am so relieved, happy, and blessed that I could do justice to the book. 

Santosh: And then with effortless ease, you switch to poetry, which is something considered so soft, so tender. How did it feel changing gears from the macabre to the sublime?  Please tell us something about your just launched book of poetry, Mumblings, and Musings, which is already creating ripples, and heading towards the highest rungs of the Amazon bestselling chart.   I have also read the book, [in fact it is right here in front of me], and let me take this opportunity to congratulate you for the brilliantly- crafted, poems, characterized by a raw intensity. Let me also applaud  Ashish Bakshi for his stunning images.
Tell me, did verse come as easily to you as prose?

Anirban: I started writing poetry when I was studying my BA Eng Lit at St Xavier's Calcutta. This was 92. Surrounded by Shakespeare, Beowulf, TS Eliot, Frost, Byron... writing poetry just happened... and I  continued to write over the years.
During the lockdown, I found the red diary from 1991 in which I had written all my poetry. And on a hunch, I decided to type some of them out. So these are poems that I have written over the past 25 years or so. But I had very little hope of them being published. Mainstream publishers stay away from publishing poetry - 'it doesn't sell' is their gripe. And people will congratulate you on the launch of your poetry book but very few people actually buy poetry books... and so future poets find it harder to get published - it's a vicious circle.

But anyway, I got my manuscript ready deciding that I need to make the project feasible/possible/attractive for the publisher. And so I contacted my childhood school friend,  Ashish Bakshi who was thrilled at the idea of his photos accompanying each poem. The trump card I had was The Book Bakers and Suhail Mathur. He immediately said, "Don't worry, we will get it published." 

Within three weeks I was stunned, relieved, blessed, ecstatic to hear that Harpreet Makkar of Petals Publishers wanted to print my work! Here was a publisher who wasn't wary of publishing poetry - he believed in the power of poetry! And within another month and a half, the book was published!! So the total duration was two and a half months between the submission of the pitch to publication - I think it's a record time!! Really thankful to The Book Bakers and Harpreet for giving me this opportunity to send my work into the ether.

Now here's the interesting part...

29 years ago when I started writing poems in the old red diary,  I was even hopeful that someday it would get published and I gave the 'collection' a tentative name - Petals (photo attached). And I had forgotten this detail. After my book was published this fact suddenly came back to me... And when I realized what had happened - my knees felt weak and I was overwhelmed - the name of my publisher was Petals Publishers & Distributors!!! I realized the power of manifestation and the universe conspiring to make it happen... 

And this is not some PR story that I have concocted to sell the book... this is true and I usually don't believe in such things but I guess the Universe has other plans!

The Red Diary

Santosh: This incident about your diary is indeed something pretty uncanny, and yes, the universe did conspire to make it happen! A creative person like you cannot be expected to rest on his laurels. So, what is next in the pipeline?

Anirban: Next is a YA fiction set in the 80's - five kids trying to solve a mystery in an era when no technology or mobile phones existed. This is going to be published by Om Books.

Santosh: Oh that is wonderful!

I also have a fabulous book called The Hills Are Burning to be published by Fingerprint. This is a memoir of my growing up years in boarding school in Kalimpong set against the Gorkhaland agitation of the late '80s. So this is a slice of life - falling in love, growing up pains meets political horror. It's The Wonder Years meets The Killing Fields. It is again a thoroughly researched book that is going to shock a lot of people - but again at the heart of the book is a story of friendship, growing up, love and death.

Both the above are being edited.

Santosh: This promises to be very intriguing!

Anirban: Next, I have a full-blown true crime book with one of the leading publishers in the country. We are just getting the paperwork done for that. This one is a cracker!   

I also have a horror-genre book, and another slice of life book about teenagers and growing up in Calcutta in the '80s and 90's - again a memoir. 

I love writing - and don't want to limit myself to a particular genre - I want to tell stories - it could be gangster, it could be mythology, it could be a comedy, horror, true crime... And I want to do justice in each genre - take up the challenge and deliver the goods!

Santosh: Well, I too believe that someone who is fond of writing, can write anything! So, I have been audacious enough to try my hand at all genres, delivering the goods to the best of my ability, and honestly, I don't like it when I am labeled a poet. I believe that am a writer, who also happens to write poetry.

It was great interacting with you, Anirban. Here is wishing you all the best for all your creative ventures and may the universe always conspire to make things happen for you in a big way.
Looking forward to all your future books. Hearty Congratulations to The Book Bakers, Suhail Mathur, and to Harpreet Makkar and Petals Publishers for doing a tremendous job.

Anirban Bhattacharyya is the author of the No.1 true crime bestseller The Deadly Dozen: India's Most Notorious Serial Killers published by Penguin India. His debut collection of poetry titled Mumblings & Musings has just been published by Petals Publishers and has received rave reviews. He has three books lined up for release in 2022.

He is the Co-Creator, Producer, and Writer of one of India's most loved crime shows on Television - Savdhaan India. His day job is as a television content producer having produced Crime Patrol, Fear Files, and Ishq Kills. 

Anirban spent his childhood at Dr. Graham’s Homes, a boarding school in Kalimpong

Anirban is an alumnus of St. Xavier's College, Kolkata where he graduated in English Literature. 

He then went on to do his Masters in Mass Communication from MCRC, Jamia, New Delhi. 

He has been the Content Head at Channel [v] India, and Head of Brand Solutions and Non-Fiction at The Walt Disney Company (India).

He is an actor having acted in Sui Dhaaga and Mission Mangal. He is also a standup comedian when he is not deep diving into crime for his television shows or his books.