Deepti Kapoor: “I write to show the inequality, abuse of power and immorality of our time”

“Why don’t you write about the rich people in Delhi? Write the stories of parties and night tours of the city that you always tell me about. It will work.” And it worked. Indeed, when the literary agent Deepti Kapoor (1980, Uttar Pradesh, India) gave him this advice, he could not imagine how far, because vice ageThe novel resulting from that recommendation has become the script that, to date, more companies are bidding to put it on screen.

Despite the impact of this news, the many translations, and the sudden rise to fame, Kapoor is natural and impulsive during our Monday afternoon conversation at the Madrid Bookstore, devoid of the armor that usually comes with success. , without spaces. or fraud, imbued with adverbs of naturalism so inconsistent with the volume of work you are now publishing, Novel novels With a microscopic and nuanced look at literature’s great themes – love, crime, youth and bitterness – which can be described without fear of exaggeration as extraordinary.

The Indian writer is in her early forties and has a first novel. Bad character, “with favorable reviews but with unspectacular implications”, he celebrated his agent’s words and began to reflect on them, to combine them with other elements of his reality. “It’s funny how the mind works… When I was 20, I worked by day as a journalist in Delhi, and at night, having fun with my high-society friends, but also those I met on my car rides around the city. Downtown. I listened to everyone’s stories.” And I felt that the city was transforming. It wanted to become a capital with international influence, but for that many things had to change.”

Thanks to these memories “I realized that it would not be enough to write about the billionaires of my country. I had to write and show the inequality, abuse of power and moral corruption of our time.” That’s how he was born vice age The first installment of A trilogy that aims to portray an urban epic based on three young characters, belongs to three planets revolving around the same world, Delhi: the servant Ajay; his master, Sunny Wadia, son of one of India’s most powerful gangsters; And Nada, a curious editor, is in love with Sunny, torn between her principles and her desire, unable not to get swept away.

The story begins with a mysterious incident that becomes the core of the story and acts as a… the great explosion that triggers the action. What we read looks like a excitement, but it does not correspond to the type. Much more. The plot violates the conventions of the crime novel to show the realities and hidden corners of India that are full of cliches. I know intimately each of the themes, the ones that define us as a spiritual place, but I forget the rooted violence and the insurmountable hierarchy, as a consequence of the class system, that characterize us. It has been 30 years since a significant economic change created a middle class and fostered great fortunes, but so many are left behind as I write about them: I wanted to tell how the life of luxury and opulence in India is based on poverty and extreme tyranny, hidden under a cloak. lusterthe spices and colors that obscure the royal city abroad; A dark picture that the natives don’t say either, but the novel does.”

P. does so through his heroes, with echoes of Dickens High hopes And Scott Fitzgerald The great Gatsby, But it was built from a voice of its own, that of Deepti Kapoor, which I imagine is hidden behind them all.

R was found. Yes, it is inevitable. Both pages and profiles have something of me. I think it’s a mixture of curiosity and negativity, especially in Nada’s case. I, like her, also lived for a while immersed in a kind of obscurity, in ideas that contradict each other. Aware of my inner struggle, I wondered what would come out of this uncertainty. Now I know that on my sleepless nights, walking around Delhi eating kebabs at dawn, I found germ nada. She is like me and does what I did. He knows that the beauty of Delhi is hidden in the night, in its people and in the life of the streets, behind the great temples. Delhi is also a character in the novel.

P. Delhi and Young People.

R was found. Youth allows us to maintain hope and I wanted to explore this belief in change, in evolving for the better that the city aspires to. This is why I decided that my characters had to be young, because in a society where the idea of ​​karma is so deeply rooted, where everything is believed to be scripted, youth is one of the very few weapons that keeps curiosity at bay. about what’s going on. To pass and fight fatalism. In addition, the sweeping wave of modernization that has reached India from the West in recent decades has questioned tradition and raised doubts in the most disadvantaged: they wonder if they are victims of the system and, in any case, if they are victims of the system. They can become agents of change.

Q: I imagine that’s the reason behind it vice age He plans a question, because he is condescending, we usually don’t ask ourselves often. Everyone, at one point or another in the narrative, ponders what is most important to them in life. Did you come to any conclusion?

R was found. I think it’s a very difficult question. As a novelist I have a thousand answers, but if I were to stick to the customs of my country, I would answer that family is very important.

Q: And if we stick to the mafia pulling the strings in the novel, I suppose they would choose the greatest vice of all: power.

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R was found. More than power and corruption. The corruption of society and mainly the moral corruption of the individual. For me, this is the key question vice age, beyond the scope of the vital importance of certain values: the question is, how far are we willing to approach the limits that violate our principles? What is our moral limit in the race to achieve whatever goal we set for ourselves?

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