9.3 More Than Just Chick-lit ft. Deepanjana Pal

What if the most important love story in your life isn’t romantic at all?

In our brand new episode, journalist and author Deepanjana Pal talks about her novel, Lightning in a Shot Glass. It’s a witty, radical look at two Mumbai flatmates navigating love, life, and ambition on their own terms.

Tara and Deepanjana dive into why female friendships are often the real love stories of our lives and how having chosen family keeps us grounded. They challenge the notion of genre hierarchies while showing that love stories can be smart and fun.

Deepanjana also gets candid about the messier parts of life, from workplace politics and abuse of authority to age-gap and interfaith romance. By bringing these real-world messes into the conversation, she proves that fiction can be both joyful and deeply authentic at the same time.

If you’re looking to dive into something that's as smart and fun as it is unapologetically real, this episode is for you!

Books and TV Shows mentioned in the episode:

1. Younger (2015)
2. Four More Shots Please! (2019)
3. Call Me Bae (2024)
4. Fleabag (2016)
5. The Family Man (2019)
6. A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent by Marie Brennan
7. Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley
8. The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley
9. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
10. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

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‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Transcript

0:55

They come as a pair. Like the real love story in this book is actually between the two of them. The men are eye candy. Today's episode is very, very special because it celebrates one of my favourite things to read about, which is strong female friendships. You know, the kind of friendships that make you feel like home and hold you together when you feel like, okay, everything in your life is falling apart and make you laugh, right? So the book we're discussing today brings together friendship, chaos, ambition, modern love, wrapped together in a story that feels very real and relatable. And it's also the story of Mumbai. And as you guys know, that's my home city as well. I'm excited because we have a familiar voice back on the podcast, Deepanjana Pal, who's the author of the book, Lightning in a Shot Glass. And she's joining us again, this time. She was on the very first season of this podcast. So it's really a full circle moment to have her back here again. A little bit about the book. The book follows two Mumbai flatmates, Meera, a journalist, and Aalo, who is in her late 20s, and she's not sure of anything in her life. And kind of their friendship, they live together. They have interesting friends, they have a great group, they have interesting relationships in their lives. So we are going to explore more of that with Deepanjana. Welcome back to Books and Beyond. Thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to be on a podcast once. It's extra wonderful to be there twice. So, you know, and congratulations to you for all the wonderful things that have been happening with this podcast and the audiences it's been finding. And so yeah, happy to be here. Thank you so much. And yeah, you know, actually, it's very rare for me to also call an author back again. But because the books were so different, and I absolutely really, really enjoyed this book so much, I just had to talk to you about this. So let's start with diving into the book. Let's start with talking about Meera and Aalo, who are the main characters of this book. Meera is 41. She's a seasoned journalist. She has some work issues, relationship issues. Aalo, on the other hand, is in her late 20s. And they live together. They have this very deeply loyal chosen family style of friendship that has come together. So tell me a little bit about their dynamic and who came to you first. You know, one of the funny things about having written this book is that now I officially have no genre that anyone can classify me into. Hasha Bhai Baby was a crime thriller, unconventional crime thriller, but very much crime fiction. My first book was a biography of Raja Ravi Parma. In between, there are three children's books. And now we have what I think, it's a little bit difficult to define lightning in a shot glass in terms of genres, because I do think it's trying to do multiple things at the same time. But romance is very much a big part of it. So if we call it a romance, I'm not unhappy, but it just means that it's like going across the spectrum as it were. But you know what, what connects I think a lot of them, not Raja Ravi Parma, but even there to some extent, is that I'm interested in women's stories. I'm interested in what it's like to be a girl. I'm interested in what it's like to be a woman. I think that we don't get to explore enough of it outside of very clear stereotypes. So I'm constantly trying to push those a little bit and put slices of everyday life into a fictional frame, which is where Meera and Alo come from. They're young women, they're young urbane women. And I would like to believe that they're, well, I mean, I understand Potti is not young, but they're women who I feel you should be able to meet anywhere in Mumbai. You might be working alongside Meera, you might be going for drinks with someone like Alo. I wanted them to feel like women that you know, and to find the life that you know as a reader or a life that you think you would have in a city like Bombay for that to show up in fiction. Because as a reader myself, I feel very frustrated by not seeing enough of this. There's so much of fantastic urban women's fiction in foreign literature. But when it comes to Indian literature, we almost always go into a very literary fiction mode, which is wonderful, and it's poetic, and it's beautiful. And it addresses really important issues, all of which I'm here for. But it makes very little room for joy in women's lives. And almost no room for women's friendships. I can't remember the last time I've read an Indian novel, which celebrates women's friendships, which is bizarre to me, because I think for all of us who have grown up in cities, especially those of us who have come to work in cities and made our homes there, we live by these women who are by our side, you know, like they're the reasons we're able to make our way through the labyrinth of work and city and family and everything. So that's the very long winded answer to Meera and Alu. None of them came first. I mean, they came together. They come as a pair, like the real love story in this book is actually between the two of them. I think the men are eye candy. Yeah, I think that's why the book has been doing so well, and gaining the kind of reception it has, because it does speak to a certain sort of like urban female audience that is seeing themselves in the book, like even when I read the book, some parts of it felt very familiar to me as well, like exactly that you could see these women anywhere. Would you say this is your most autobiographical piece of work? Because you're also a journalist. How much of you is in these characters? It's true. I wear saris and I have been a journalist, but I have never covered politics in my life as a journalist. And I would probably give an arm and a leg to have men like Zeb and in my life. Neither of those are true. There's nothing autobiographical about it. This is my idea of fantasy, quite honestly. It's very rooted in reality while being optimistic, which I think is very hard to do these days when you're rooted in reality. But it is very deliberately and idealistically escapist. There's little bits of me that scattered throughout the book. But honestly, that was kind of true for Hasha by Baby as well. I think that's kind of inevitable when you're a writer, that your reality will somehow be translated into what you're writing, not necessarily in a direct way, though that also works for a lot of people. But no, it's not autobiographical at all. I mean, I would love to have, I would have loved to be as, I would say as brave as Alo is in her, you know, late 20s, early 30s, because I really admire how she's not daunted by how lost she is. It's a very, especially in these times, where the world of the internet and social media kind of expects you to have all your opinions in place, all your ducks in a row, your career, your home, your everything has to be picture perfect for anyone in this climate to be able to say, I don't know what's going on. I'm just going to try things and hope for the best. I do think it's incredibly brave. So I would have loved to have that kind of, I don't know, that kind of gusto and that kind of bravado, I think when I was Alo's age, and I would love to be Meera in a heartbeat, like she's so cool. So unfortunately, I'm neither, I write them. And I also want to find out a little more about you as well. But I really like that they're so chill. And I like how Alo is, is chill about her career, you know, and all the relationships and the girl gang. Even for me, the fantasy element was, of course, like one, one is, you know, these relationships that they're having. And the other fantasy element was honestly, the girl gang that they have, and how close and how like, tightly knit they are. Because as you know, like, we're all sort of like, in our 30s, getting married, people getting married, having kids, people are on different life trajectories. I found it very heartwarming that, you know, this sort of gang of friends is so united, and together. So that, for me, was also a really, really nice fantasy element in the book. I can tell you, as someone who's on the other side of the 40s, that and has had a group of girlfriends since I was in my late 20s, that yes, life gets in the way. But some people stay with you. Some women are there by your side, through it all. And you can't predict who it's going to be. Sometimes it's the, sometimes the people that you think that, oh, that's my bestie. And I'm going to be, you know, I don't know, pinky to pinky with them for the rest of my life. And it doesn't work out, because you grow and you change. And then there are these other friends who grow and change in a way that is a perfect complement. And that's what I wanted to show with Meera and Alo, but also the others, that they're all at very different stages in their lives. They're all at different stages in their careers. None of them is sacrificing anything to be a friend, because that's the other trope that we have, right? Like you can't have it all, that you're going to have to give some side up to have another, you know, aspect of your life feel fulfilling. And it's hard to do, because I don't think that perfect world where everything works out is obviously, that's not quite going to cut it. But if you can't have it in fiction, then what's the point, you know, like, at least in fiction, there should be place for this stuff so that we can imagine better. And that sort of applies not just to the women's friendships, but to many of the other things in the book, like, the book looks at me too, in the workplace, the book looks at freedom of press, the book looks at dissent in civil society, abusive authority, it looks at all of these things and offers you possibly the most optimistic end possible for each of these situations, while addressing that they exist. Because like I said, if it can't happen in fiction, then then you can't even imagine it. And if you can't imagine it, then you're never going to be able to move at least towards fixing reality. Yeah. And I remember in our last interview, you had said that, you know, you really like to explore important topics in fun and accessible narratives. And that's really important, too. And I really like that idea. Because I see that also happening in this book, you know, lightning in a shot glass. So can you tell me more about the kind of themes that you were trying to draw to? I know you already alluded to a few. And how do you sort of couch them in something that's fun and accessible and still get them across to a reader? Honestly, I've, I've been very committed, like you were saying, we talked about this the last time as well. But for me, it's something that, you know, over the years, I feel like it's all the more important to me, because I see so little, okay, so there is one part of my life where I'm a film reviewer as well, and popular films, right. And so, or at least films that want to be popular. The point is, commercial cinema is supposed to be as rooted in mainstream aspirations as pretty much any kind of pop content that we have, right? Or anything, any cultural product that we can talk of. And it really bothers me how stupid so often this stuff ends up being. When I look at literature that is equally true, even though it's not looking at the kind of scale that, that movies are. Popular fiction, in any country, this is not just us, though we are, I think, a little more guilty than a lot of others. But popular, the word popular almost immediately becomes synonymous with dumb. It's synonymous with flattening things out. It's synonymous, escapism becomes not just about that, that fact of escaping, but about being stupid in the process of escaping. And that's very frustrating to me, because I don't think that necessarily needs to be the case. We dumb society down when we assume the popular content has to be dumb as well. We are not stupid people. We shouldn't be considered stupid people. And therefore, we must have things that we can enjoy and that we can consume, like we do popular entertainment, while also engaging with intelligent ideas. You know, that's something that I really do feel. The other thing is that there's a kind of bias that comes in, right? Like with literature, particularly, we have an assumption that serious issues must be really difficult and dense, and the pros must be challenging. Again, nothing wrong with challenging pros. It's great. You know, authors who will do fantastic experimental inventive things with pros, things that make you feel like, my God, I'm not smart enough to get through this. And then you are smart enough to get through this, because it's brilliantly written. Absolutely here for all of that. But where is the simple, accessible pros? You know, the one that's not trying to do mad flights of fantasy, but just feels hopefully, hopefully compulsively readable. You know, the pros where you pick up a book, you open the page, and before you know it, you're on page 100, because you like the people and the prose is moving smoothly without giving you any obstacles. Like, what does this mean? Why is this sentence so long? What is the allusion to which great literary work is going on in here? Without those obstacles. That was one of the reasons why I wanted that style for this book, was that I'm looking at my protagonists are two people who are trying very hard to communicate information about like complex information to a lot of people through simplicity. That's essentially what we're doing in journalism. We're trying to get information to the public in a way that the public will find it useful and will not be intimidated by it. Given the state of our news, that's obviously quite hard to do these days. But yeah, so it was really important to me that this would be written in a way that wouldn't feel like an obstacle course to any reader of English. It's not foundational reading, obviously, I think you would have had to have read some of English before this. But I was very conscious of not trying to show you how much English I know. Because there are very few books, as you said, that do this, right? And a few pieces of even sort of like cinema that do this. But I do feel that even in literature, there's this sort of perceived hierarchy or bias that you're talking about, even sort of maybe within writers and things like that, is that, you know, the literary fiction has more cred, in a way, versus things that might be considered more commercial fiction. So do you ever feel sort of, you know, that pressure? What are your thoughts about that? Oh, there's very much of a hierarchy, undoubtedly. I felt it. I felt it with How Should I Baby, when I was told that really crime fiction, really paperback fiction, you know, that kind of thing. Why would you not want to write the hardcover literary novel of your types, you know, or try for it at least. I think with romance, there's the additional stigma of this being romance, of this being something that is for girls and women. It's chiclet. Oh, no, you know, that kind of thing. So there's definitely a hierarchy. And I suspect children's literature follows like the lowest in that pyramid. And women's, popular women's fiction probably is just a little bit above that, marginally. The hierarchy is dumb as rocks, of course, because, you know, the genre is not what makes something smart. The writing makes it smart. The story makes it smart. So you can, I mean, we've had enough duds in literary fiction, like there's enough of rubbish out there, which sometimes even gets nominated for things. But, you know, it's just not going to, it's not going to sail beyond a point. The hierarchy exists. How do I feel about it personally? I'm not that bothered by it, mostly because I think as a reader, I think centrally, my perspective is coloured by the fact that I'm a reader first and a writer second, right? I read across the board. And I know as a reader, how much joy and how much strength I gain from well-written, fluffy fiction, and well-written literary fiction. I know that as a reader, I'm capable of containing multitudes of reading within me. And I'm hardly unique. I am the average reader. So, I think for me, there isn't that, it makes me laugh a lot of the times when I see it, because I face the hierarchy more as a writer than anything else, right? Like, I see who's responding, even with a book like this, like there are people, like I forget anywhere else, my father was like, really, is this the book that I have to read? And I was like, yeah, you kind of do, because I wrote it. Because my father's like, you know, he's reading Flesh and feeling really happy about, oh my god, yes, and whatnot. You know, he's a very classical, old fashioned reader of the true fiction. He could just about expand his gaze to crime fiction because of Sherlock Holmes. But like, now having to read romance, I think he's like, what is this? Now I know this is Ghor Kalyug, surely Armageddon is around the corner. Yeah. But I think one of the things I like about this book, you know, we spoke about the female friendships, but it's also women at work, you know, women with, you know, relationships in their lives. So let's talk a little bit about the male characters, Zeeb and Jeet. So Zeeb is this very handsome war photographer, that kind of like Aalo and him slide into each other's insta DMs, and they start chatting. And, you know, it's almost like a little escape for Aalo, and we don't know where it's going to head. And then Jeet is Meera's kind of like employee, but he's junior than her, he's a colleague at the newspaper that they work at, and he is 28 years old, and Meera is in early 40s. So these are obviously not your typical relationships portrayed in literature. So what did you want to portray through these kinds of relationships for Meera and Aalo? Taboo relationships. That's fundamentally, I picked two taboos. One was age. First of all, we don't see, I mean, can you tell me the last time you saw an Indian novel in which a woman in her 40s is a protagonist and gets to be happy, no pleasure, express desire, and not get shamed for it, not have to be crucified for it. I can't remember that. So that's something that's sort of, you know, key to the character of Meera as well. But her relationship with Jeet is absolutely flouting the convention of always going for a man who's older than you, a man who's settled, a man who will, you know, sort of show you you're beautiful and things like that. And with Aalo and Zeb, it's an inter-religious relationship. It's an inter-political relationship because he's in another country. It's long distance. It's every taboo that I could think of. I basically slammed into these two relationships. And again, in the spirit of escapism that truly informs this book in and out, I said it's going to work. And not just that, it's not just going to work in the sense of, it's going to work for these two women. It's not going to work as per the standard romantic trope of they lived happily ever after by getting married and he goes down on one knee proposes to her. None of them get married. None of them, because I don't think marriage is an equitable institution. I don't think it gives women the rights that women need to have in order to function in familial spaces. So, you know, instead what you get is a happy ending where both women hold on to their individual spaces, literally. Like Meera has her own flat. Jeet has his own flat. Alo has her own place. Zed is in another country, another place. And I'm putting forward this fantasy that you can be your own person, have your own space, do your own work in which this other person has absolutely no role to play and it'll still be fine, you know. Invariably otherwise we have, particularly in romance as a genre, and this is something that frustrates me because I'm a huge fan of romance. I think it's one of the most, I think it's one of the most radical genres we have actually and it doesn't get credit for being as radical as it actually is because this is one literary genre where the female subject is at the centre. Her pleasure is at the centre. Her aspirations are at the centre and everything about the fictional narrative structure works to give her what she wants. That doesn't happen. That genuinely does not happen in any other genre. So it's very frustrating then to have this genre then undercut by a Prince Charming who must save the day. A Prince Charming who must open her eyes and be her passport to success in some form or the other. So with these two men and the romance in the Enlightening in a shot glass, I was trying to overturn this. I was trying to give you a story in which love is important, as is pleasure, as is everything that comes with a relationship, but it doesn't have to happen at the expense of your work. It doesn't have to happen at the expense of your other relationships either because that's unfortunately something that's true for a lot of women. Like when they get into a relationship, then their friendships, their familial pre-relationship familial bonds all get weakened because this man and his desires sort of become of tantamount importance. That doesn't happen in this book. They are constantly, these are multiple parallel plots that are happening and one may make the other, facilitate sometimes the other to some extent, but both Meera and Anu work and have a different side. Like they have a personal life and they have a professional life and the two don't undercut each other. So yeah, that's where Zeb and Jeet are coming from. They're essentially, they're embodiments of, I think again at the other point is that most of our heroes in romantic fiction are mostly examples of toxic masculinity, you know, kind of like not ever, very rarely do they make the feminist heart flutter. These guys on the other hand, I wanted to write male characters who I wouldn't be ashamed of saying that, you know, this one made me feel good. Reading about this guy and how he is with this woman makes me feel good. So they're non-toxic and they embody every taboo that I could think of and despite that, that's not going to make my women unhappy. Instead, that's going to give them joy. It's quite an impossible feat that you've put on. And I love the way that it happens because there's so many times in the book that you feel, okay, this is not going to work out, right? Because Jeet is working in the same organisation. How does that work? Zeb is off in other countries, you know, then there's Aalo's father that he clearly has a problem with this inter-religious kind of relationship and he's very conservative in that way. So there are all of these obstacles that you feel like, okay, you know, at the end, it's not going to work out. But then obviously, you know, somehow finds a way to do that and not in a very contrived way at all, but in a way that just unfolds kind of organically. So it's very interesting to hear from you because that's how deliberately that has been done. And another thing I really enjoy and I always love to see and read about is women and work. Because I used to also work as a journalist at She The People TV and we used to cover a lot of, you know, working lives of women. So I love reading about that. I really enjoy it. And both these women have very interesting working lives. So especially Meera, because she kind of was rehired by her newspaper. And she's rehired as a political editor. And by that hire, the erstwhile political editor who's a guy kind of gets sidelined. And then he's come back to work after a break. And he's making her life hell because he's jealous that she has a position that she's in now. I found that so interesting, that whole dynamic and how he's kind of like even sabotaging her and how she goes about that. So can you talk a little bit more about that part of the book? So the thing with both Meera and Alo are opposites to one another. And this applies even on the professional side of things. Because Meera is, you know, she's focused, she's successful. She's at the top of her game, as it were, you know, in newspapers, particularly, but also generally in media, news media, when very few senior people remain reporters, they usually go behind a desk of some sort. So like they will become anchors, or they will become editors. It keeps them in the office rather than being on the field, because that's the hierarchy that media has set up where you can't just keep reporting and keep climbing the ranks. In India, you could absolutely do it abroad. This is very specific to, I think, Indian media. So Meera, when we meet her, Meera's making that transition from being the person who was out on the field to becoming an editor who works from within the office and has to navigate the politics within the office. Alo, on the other hand, because she's lost and has no idea what she's doing, she literally joins as an intern. So she's the bottomest of the pile. And I wanted to show through these two women how it's like to be in a workplace, one that is not supportive, and one that is good for a person and allows them to grow. I wanted them to be at two ends of the spectrum, and to show what it's like to be a woman in a workplace when you're very junior and when you're not junior. And the usual, the conventional understanding is that the person who's junior will have a terrible time. And by the time that you've climbed up some ranks, you're going to rule the roost, and therefore it'll be easier. The reality is usually not that simple. To my experience, and not my personal experience, but from what I've seen in offices around me, and to some extent, a little bit of what I've seen as well, it's the other way around. When you join as a promising, bright, young person, everyone is really encouraging and nobody's threatened by you, and it flows beautifully. Now on top of that, if you're lucky to have a really good boss, then this is not going to stop you from growing either. But when you start at a low level in the hierarchy, it's okay. Nobody gets in your way. The higher you climb up this hierarchy, different people get in your way. And no one wants you to succeed beyond a point. The assumption is you've already done everything, now it's time for me to get in your way and cut you down to size. Because how dare you be so big in your boots to think that you can, I don't know, tell a guy who's like 10 years older than you, and so much more senior, what they're going to do, you know. So Meeda's problem is one that is essential to the women, the female workforce in this country. If you look up the data, and I'm forgetting the exact specific percentages, so I'm not going to say how much, but a really large number of women who are either in the mid to high range, or in their 40s, drop out of the workforce. This is a problem that the Indian economy is yet to figure out an answer for. The number of women journalists who have set up their own, you know, their own ventures after quitting at around, you know, their late 30s, early 40s is surprisingly large, considering what our English media, you know, mediascape is like, it's a rather large number of women who have felt that the only way they can actually have, or rather retain agency and do what they want to do, get the kind of assignments that they want to do, do the kind of work that they want to do, they've got to have their own outfit. Now, this is not possible for every person. This is actually possible for a very small number of people. So Meera is, Meera's problems, I think, and I would like to believe that this is something that a lot of working women can relate to, you know, which is why there are multiple points in the book where, you know, the reason why she is not going to disrupt her professional life with this romance with a younger man isn't just because he's younger, but because it discredits her professionally. That's something that she can't risk. Now, that is also something that the older you get, your personal life becomes like the lines are not even existent. Women are constantly attacked for things that have nothing to do with their professional life, for personal decisions that they've taken, as though women in their 40s particularly are the only ones who ever make any mistakes in their personal lives or make questionable decisions. The male landscape is filled with men who make like bizarre choices, and yet they never have to face any consequences for it. Women, on the other hand, are immediately faced with like, you know, she did, she had four drinks at that office party at like one o'clock in the morning. How will you trust her to take a decision the next day at 10 a.m., whether or not she's in at work, you know? So, yeah, the workplace part is actually really important to me, like it's central to the book. More than centrality, the fact of work is a really important part in our realities as well. It shapes the people we become, you know, the kind of environments we get to grow in professionally actually does have a very important effect on us personally as well, individually, emotionally, from mental health to everything else, you know. So, again, I find it bizarre that popular fiction, the moment a woman falls in love in popular fiction, work goes out of the window, like it's not important anymore, you know, like it's not making any difference to her life. She will now be, you know, she will be only by what this man and the relationship do to her. So, a lot of this is sort of countering, honestly, I've written this book to counter everything that's annoyed me and everything else I've read. Oh, I agree and actually, you know, but I've been seeing that this thing is reversing a little bit now because I'm seeing there's a lot more movies where, you know, women's work life is very, very central to the plot and even shows, there's a show called Younger, I don't know if you know it, where sort of, I mean, it's a funny show, but the premise is all about, you know, this 40-year-old woman who wants to go back to work. So, work is the main sort of driving factor of the show. But yeah, I wanted to actually ask you, what do you think? Because there are a lot of, I think people have also realised that, you know, there is a demand for books that showcase female friendship and there's a lot of stuff happening around it, like Four More Shorts Please and TV shows being made around. What do you think of all of those and the way that they portray women's lives in India? I'm very conflicted by this as an idea because on one hand, I'm happy to see that anyone thinks this is commercially viable because for the longest time, that was the obstacle that we faced for writing about women characters and writing women's stories, the assumption that it would not sell. I think now there's far greater awareness that women have the buying power, whether it's for a Netflix subscription, whatever, for an OTT subscription or a book or a ticket to the theatre. There's acknowledgement that she makes these choices herself and therefore stuff that is targeted and looking at her as a source of income, you know, there's more of that coming out. That's good and bad because one of the problems of becoming commercially viable is that you become typecast as a set. Now, in any case, there's very little awareness that women are not one homogenous blob with breasts. Now, we have to work much harder to establish that there are many kinds of women and women's, the diversity of the feminine experience, I don't think comes across the way I would like to see it. For instance, and again, like a lot of this boils really down to what I said right at the beginning, I think we need to imagine better when we think of, I think when writers in OTT in India, at least, think of women characters, they immediately think that they need to have high heels, abs, be very cool, very beautiful, and that's what will work. Whereas, you know, you look at something like a younger or even, I mean, Fleabag is possibly the landmark show to have established this. But, you know, while the central protagonist is gorgeous, beautiful and all of that, she's also a mess. And the fact that she's a mess is underscored to you again and again, more than how attractive she is and how great her wardrobe is or whatever else, you know. The notion of the imperfect woman, I don't think has caught on as well as one would hope. Now, of course, in English literature and English entertainment, thanks to Austen, thanks really from Shakespeare downwards, probably, if we look at it, but certainly in the novel from Austen onwards, the imperfect heroine is a tremendously popular trope, like she's established her marketability repeatedly. And different kinds of things have made her imperfect. We've not had that much, unfortunately. You know, we've got the, we've got the English literature, sort of imports, as it were, but it's important for us to figure out what is imperfect for us in our contexts as well, you know. So, I would like to see more of this happening. I'm happy to see more of these shows. I just wish, I've not yet seen anybody who's watched four more shots, please, and said, that's my life. I mean, which is not to say women don't, you know, meet up and drink at bars, but that nobody feels like that's their life. And, and you can have a glamorised version, you can have a non-glamorised version. There's many ways to do this, but it just doesn't feel authentic in the same way that newsrooms in movies are frustratingly unrealistic, you know, which, and I say frustratingly, because particularly in Hindi cinema and shows, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of cross-breeding between journalism and entertainment. There are lots of people who've left journalism to join the entertainment sector frequently as writers. How on earth do they not peel over and want to stab themselves in the eyes when they look at what version of a newsroom is showing up or what is passing as an editor, God forbid, a female editor? So, so yeah, I don't know. I mean, I'm not very enthusiastic about what I'm seeing right now, but I would like to hope that the fact that, that it's considered commercially viable, the fact that there are more and more women reviewers and more women, even in the influencer space, the people who will just, you know, sit up and say that, guys, this is not who we are, or this is what I liked about it. Like, because the other thing is that there's a lot to be gained from truly crap entertainment as well. It gives you something, and it's important to know what is that something that the bad entertainment is feeding? Is it feeding an insecurity? Is it feeding a victim complex? Is it feeding a fantasy? What are you tapping onto or into, rather, when there's some atrocious bit of writing or atrocious bit of cinema that nonetheless becomes incredibly popular? So, I, but generally, I feel like a little more analysis would, would hold us all in good stead, both for the creative side of things, but also from the consumer side of things, you know? Like, surely we would all like to have stories, which is why also, I think, when there's half a story with something a little bit promising for a female character, particularly, they invariably do really well, you know? The numbers are good for it. We don't necessarily see that in the cinema, and I don't know why that might have something to do with the kind of restrictions a lot of women across the country face about stepping out of the house. You can't, very few women feel free to go to a film alone in a theatre, for instance. There's a stigma about it, aside from safety and all of those other things. But, you know, watching something on your phone, watching something at home on an OTT platform, there's a certain amount of freedom to that, and we see good numbers for that. So, hopefully, that will push whoever the powers that are to just do a little better in terms of showing us Indian women and their stories. Yeah, actually, the question that you asked, what are we getting out of it as a consumer? When you asked that, I asked myself that, because I've watched former shorts, I've watched Colmeen Bay, pretty much watched all women-centric content out there. And I was like, why am I watching this, right? What am I getting out of this? This is not reflecting my life in any way. I'm not like any of these characters. I think it's exactly what you said. There's such few women's stories out there. Whatever there is, I'm gonna watch it. That's just it, you know? Exactly. And keeping in mind how little there is, it's urban, it's modern, it's a woman who's working. You know, there are these little signifiers that we tap into. And because we have so little of it, we'll ignore all the other things and be like, okay, just give me a good story with her. And then, of course, it devolves in various directions. But it is absolutely natural that you would either want to see something that reflects your reality, or something that reflects your fantasy. At a very basic level, these are the two things that we look for in entertainment. This is true across genders. This is why we have so many spy films that do so well, because men would like to fantasise that they can do this sort of thing. Now, again, this is not necessary. I think it's actually quite gender agnostic as a situation. I'm very happy to watch a Bourne Ultimatum, and I would love to imagine myself being able to pull off stunts like that, right? It's not gender specific. But even if we were going to break it down gender-wise, men like to see either reflection of themselves or a reflection of their fantasies. A show like Family Man, for example, brings both of them together, right? He is the everyday boring family man, and he's saving the country without having to flash ads or I don't know what else, have designer clothing or whatnot. That's the kind of thing I don't see enough of that for women. Even in a show like Family Man, which is a wonderful show, by the way, even the less impressive third season is very watchable. But look at the women, what role are they playing? And look at them next to the male characters and see how little layering and nuance they get. When I started writing Lightning in a Short Glass, one of the things I'd actually told myself was that I'm not going to bother to colour in Jeep and Zeb beyond being female fantasies. Because I was like, I'm going to do to them what is done to women all the damn time. I was going to ask you about that, yeah. They're just going to be hot and sexy, and that's it. They don't need to do anything else. And I've tried to stick to that brief to myself to some extent. But even so, a little bit of nuance comes in, a little bit of layering comes in. And if you want to fall in love with a character, they've got to be something a little bit more than just a fantasy. And so Zeb and Jeep both have things that make them real. They have angularities and insecurities and passions and obstacles that I'm not taking much time at delineating because they are not the focus of my story. There's not one point where you will find out what Zeb or Jeep are thinking, because I don't care. Yeah, and that did come across in the book. But it made sense for the book. And it did feel that this was an author's choice, where these characters are there and they're very interesting characters. But the focal point, obviously, is these two women and their lives and how they're going ahead with just navigating the daily lives of an urban woman. And I think I agree with what you said that there are very few stories of these urban women as well, which is what I think is making this book get the kind of reception it is getting. I feel like I'm seeing it all over social media and it's doing really well. So what is next for you? What are you writing next? Is it something completely different? I mean, I just want to talk about one thing that the fact of urbanity, you know, definitely in India, but I think this is true across the world. The city represents a place of freedom, particularly for women. It's a space that allows you to be something other than the traditional structures demand you be. So even if you're looking at sort of, you know, escapist content and literature from abroad, the palace or the fantastical thing is always feudal. It's away from the city. You know, the city, the modernity that the city embodies is very liberating, particularly for women who are constrained in more ways than men are by, you know, conventional structures. But whether it's a man or it's a woman, invariably, a man will come to the city, not just to make his fortunes, but to remake himself. You know, he will return to a city to avenge himself, for instance, you know, that it gives you space. That's one of the reasons why I think the city is a really important space in which to set stories. So even if you don't belong, because this is something that I think films have often grappled with, that the bulk of a country like India is non-urban, it may not be entirely rural, it's more urban in certain parts, but it's certainly not urban. So then why is the entertainment so overwhelmingly set in urban spaces? Because not just because they're aspirational, not because everyone's like, oh, I'm going to go to the city. That's the place that I'm going to go to. That also happens. But it's more that sense of freedom that a city gives its characters. That's the sense of freedom that we want, especially when we feel shackled by responsibilities and everyday conventions of society, of gender, of where you stand in society, like, you know, in the social hierarchy, what is expected of you, what you have to give to it and all of that. The other thing that I do wish we had more acknowledgement of is this thing, you know, this is why we're drawn to the city. So what kind of freedoms would you like to see in your city? You know, we invariably talk about realism that, oh, this is not realistically Delhi, or this is not realistically Bombay or whatever else. The point of a city in fiction, though, is not the realism. The point of a city in fiction is whether you as a reader can feel yourself inhabiting that space. Sometimes that happens from granular realistic detail. Sometimes it happens from full fantasy. You know, we don't give enough importance to that. We keep thinking that a rural audience will not relate to an urban story. And an urban story is meant only for the upper middle class, English speaking, blah, blah, blah, etc. The beauty of a city, though, is that especially a city like Mumbai in reality, but just the concept of the city is that everyone comes here, that it makes room for everyone, for the billionaire's heir, and the auto wala's kid, and the person who's completely unemployed and has just run away from home with like 200 rupees in their pocket. This is the fantasy that you can all come to the city, and the city will welcome you. It may not love you. And it may not like, you know, embrace you the way a family and a village will, but it will hold you together. And it will let you be that's enormous. That's so well articulated. And actually, this book is a Mumbai novel also, right? It's and what you say about freedom and just women's lives, I don't think, I mean, it didn't feel like a fantasy to me, because it was a Mumbai novel. Because I think this is the one city, I would even say in the world that is the safest for women. Touch wood. I mean, we can just, you know, go about everywhere, you know, wear whatever we want. Also, I think that's a very, very, very rare thing, all over the world. So for that to exist, especially in a country like India, it's just quite fascinating and amazing. Like you said, anywhere in the world, I've lived in a fair amount of places around the world, the global north, Asia, and they're wonderful cities everywhere. Truly great characters, great personality, different levels of energy, and blah, blah, blah. But this thing of like, at 3am, you can walk out in your pyjamas and you know, go for a walk. That's special. It doesn't happen in too many places. It really doesn't. So yeah, that's something that I think is very true to Bombay as an idea and Bandra, particularly within Bombay. But you could pretty much do this, in most neighbourhoods of the city. But that's also why I set it in Bandra. Partly, it was also a little bit of my love letter to the neighbourhood that I'd lived in for 20 years. And at the point of time when I was finishing up the book was also the time when I was, you know, packing up my house and I was leaving Bombay to move to Calcutta for family reasons. Um, so it felt very much like, you know, like, you know, thanks for all the fish kind of a book. And I like that you have this one night like, I mean, you don't glorify it either. You say that I, you know, Alu literally says, I live in Bandra and the streets are fire. I mean, yeah, it was funny because one of the things that this book let me do was by virtue of, you know, being set in the present, I could just put in whatever was coming out in the news into the thing. So like the point at which she says the streets, you know, there's a pillar of flame in the street was actually two days before that. There was a gas pipeline that had burst in Bandra and there was a tower of flame. And I was like, thanks, man. This is Pali. Like, this is Pali Hill. Aamir Khan lives around the corner from there. Shah Rukh Khan is like two kilometres. And there's a pillar of flame because they've dug the wrong pipe. First of all, why were you digging at pipes? Like that just seems like the wrong verb with the wrong object. But so, so a lot of these things are actually things that were happening. And I was like, oh, that sounds fun. We will insert this into the text. I really enjoyed those small details. And as yeah, like someone who's working living in Bombay did feel like you're reading part of your own life at times. Obviously, the characters are very different in my life, but it still did feel like those nuggets that as you said, you can hold on to. But yeah, I would love to know what's next for you. Is it something completely different? I mean, given my track record, it should be. Let's see. I mean, I haven't actually thought about anything right now. There are a couple of very ambitious plans that I have. But at the same time, I have to say I've really enjoyed writing whatever this mixed up genre that lightning in a shot glass is. I've really enjoyed it. I don't, I definitely don't want to write a sequel to it. Because I like where this book ends. And I would like for readers to imagine the next chapters for their characters, the characters that they like, let them just run with it. I'm very happy for that to happen. It's been one of the greatest joys of this book so far has been hearing what people connect to in the book and who they feel more closely aligned to what they hope for each of these characters. So that's been wonderful. And I don't want to write anything that will, you know, tiptoe or like step on the toes of anyone else's imagination. Now the characters and the story is out there. It will run its own thing. But I like the genre. I like whatever this mixed up genre is, I really like its plasticity. I like how much it can contain. I like how much darkness it can hold and not be consumed by that darkness. That's I think, quite rare because I don't think crime fiction is able to do that. I don't think a lot of the popular genres are able to do that. You know, the violence or the darkness or the negativity tends to overwhelm and sort of bring in despair into the fiction. This genre, possibly because of just how much joy the idea of a romance gives us, it doesn't get consumed by darkness. And I really liked that. So there's a part of me that wants to try doing this with another industry and another set of characters. So maybe that. If I do manage that, then it will be truly the first time in 20 years that I've stuck to the genre a second time in a row. Looking forward to it. Okay, so I have a few rapid fire fun questions for you. So if you were to make a group of girlfriends filled with any fictional characters from books or movies, who would you choose? Oh my god, that is so hard and so perfect. Lady Trent, dragon historian from A Natural History of Dragons on that series. The Mother of the Monster from Beowulf from Maria Davana Headley's translation. She also did an adaptation called The Mere Wife. It's fantastic. Highly, highly recommend. Sunny's mother from The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, because I love her. Sonia is fantastic as well. But that mother is so funny and so delicious. I would love to be friends with her. She would have all the gossip, everybody and has great drinks. So I think that's a great person to have on your side. And this is a bit of a cheat because she's not a fictional character, but she's no longer alive. So I think it counts. Ursula Le Guin, she's got to be there, man. If there's anyone who can make real life and fantasy come together, it's Ursula Le Guin. And I would love a girl gang with her in it. Yeah, sounds super fun. Already imagining what you guys would talk about. Okay. I mean, probably just eat our way through everything. But yes, go on. If you could live in only one place in Bombay, where would that be? For the longest time, I would have said Bandra. I'm not so sure anymore. But still, my heart beats in Bandra. If lightning in a shot was done into a movie, who would you cast as Meera and Alo? You know, a friend of mine came up with a really good casting, which was Konkona Sen Sharma for Meera, Ritasha for Alo, Dulkar for Jeet, and Fawad Khan for Zeb. And I'm like, this is never going to happen. But love. Yeah, just love. Did not have any of these faces in my mind while writing it. But now that she's put it in my head, I can't think of anyone else. Yeah, makes sense. Okay, a book you wish you could experience again for the first time? Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood. I mean, we spoke so much about women's friendship, but like the animosity and hostility of women's friendships, especially at a childhood friendship, Cordelia and Alo's relationship, I think was groundbreaking for me in that sense. I think I would happily reread anything practically Margaret Atwood has written, but that person is very special to me. Nice. Thank you so much. It's been a really fun conversation. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's really nice to see how, you know, you celebrate women friendship and, and Mumbai in this way. And congratulations on the book. Thank you so much. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. Like that was very nice to know. And to our listeners, think about your own circle of friends. Who's the Meera or the Alo in your life? Who's someone who keeps you grounded? Tell me in the comments. Okay, thank you. See you next time. Hope you enjoyed this episode of Books and Beyond with Bound. This podcast is created by Bound, a company that helps you grow through story. Find us at Bound India on all social media platforms. Tune in every Wednesday as we peek into the lives and minds of some brilliant authors from India and South Asia.