Ep 28: Aparna Sanyal: Twisted tales of love & torture
Apr 8, 2024 ·
48m 35s
TRIGGER WARNING: The interview contains mentions of mental illness, anxiety, clinical depression and suicide. In this episode, https://www.instagram.com/aparnasanyalwrites/ talks about her new book https://www.amazon.in/Instruments-Torture-Aparna-Upadhyaya-Sanyal/dp/9356296839/, a collection of short stories published...
show moreTRIGGER WARNING: The interview contains mentions of mental illness, anxiety, clinical depression and suicide.
In this episode, Aparna Sanyal talks about her new book Instruments of Torture, a collection of short stories published by HarperCollins India and how she has always been drawn to the “dark side”. She talks candidly about battling depression and anxiety, despite growing up as a seemingly happy, “jolly’ child. She shares a delightful anecdote about her friendship with an old man on the street, who kept a monkey for company. Her signature style, she remarks, is telling stories with a twist, exploring the character’s innermost demons.
Aparna lets us in on her creative process, where she often draws from characters in real life and then lets them reach their natural conclusion. Each story seeks inspiration from a medieval instrument of torture, going deep into the dark recesses of the mind. While the execution and resolution may be chilling, there is immense beauty and even love that creeps into the otherwise unsettling narratives.
The full-time mom and writer has dabbled in diverse fields, including animation. Instruments of Torture is Aparna’s first foray into fiction. She debuted with Circus Folk and Village Freaks in 2018, a book of witty, narrative poems that explores the absurd and the bizarre. She holds an MA from Kings College, London and is a recipient of the 14th Beullah Rose Poetry Prize by Smartish Pace. and was shortlisted for the 2018 Third Coast Fiction Prize. She has been awarded a place in the Hongkong Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology, 2020.
Find her work at www.aparnasanyal.in
Some of Aparna’s poems:
The Penn Review: My Husband Eats a Crocodile at the Bangkok Night Market
Visitant: Midnight in My Garden
Autumn Sky Poetry Daily: You, My Love
Poetry breakfast: The Well
Chapters:
02:20 Aparna’s vision for the book; fictionalised accounts of people she knows
04:24 Putting herself in a story; talking about her anxiety disorder, mental health
13:17 Need for mental health awareness
15:00 On social anxiety and how you feel
17:25 The story of the shallow beauty queen
20:00 Human trajectories of characters; love is at the core of the book
22:14 Excerpt from the book; drawing inspiration from agonising instruments of torture
25:20 How the stories came together
27:46 On her book of poems “Circus Folk and Village Freaks”
31:40 On her background; full-time parent and writer
35:30 Where the “dark side” and twisted humour comes from
39:20 A “strange friendship” — the “baba” and his monkey
43:14 Regular folk and the anguish within; family stories
46:00 Her next book – paranormal, feminist fiction
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