Durjoy Datta on his new novel and his continuing exploration of love

After “Of Course I Love You”, “If It’s Not Forever It’s Not Love” and “You Were My Crush Till You Said You Love Me”, popular fiction writer Durjoy Datta has come up with yet another book that mines the L word - “When Only Love Remains”.

In the Capital to launch the book, the author, explaining why he keeps coming back to love, says, “I’ve not unravelled what really love is and I never will. So it is something I really like to write about because I’m always in love with some person and it is a great feeling. In fact I've mentioned many incidents in my books from my own personal experiences.”

The novel starts with a young girl, Avanti, burdened with problems at various stages in her life – at the age of five she is harassed by her warden, she spends all her childhood with her grandmother and has a strained relationship with her father. To add to her misery, she has an over possessive boyfriend. The only thing that relieves her suffering is the songs of Devrat, the hero of the story. Devrat, despite being successful, is broken. When they meet, the story progresses along the track of love and mutual affection.

Talking about his novel Durjoy says, “It took me about eight months to write this novel and I stumbled upon this idea because I’ve been a part of this fan boy – fan girl culture for a really long time. When I think of J.K. Rowling, I think she is a hero, thus, she can't have any problems in her life. So I used to think what if it’s the other way round, what if your hero is more vulnerable. That kind of love story was what I wanted to explore.”

Contrary to popular perception, Durjoy’s idea of drawing the characters of his novels is not completely fictitious. Rather, certain traits of his characters are inspired by people around him.

In conclusion, he says, “I would love to write about my own story but not so early.

Prior to that, I want to explore more about my range of thoughts and quote them in right formation of words and introduce many more characters to people. Maybe till then I might discover the definition of love.”