Tanima Das has won the Write India competition thrice with huge accolades for her stories and has been published in quite a few magazines. The Sorcery of the Senses is the first of a fantasy series that has just released. Let’s hear more from her.
I am Tanima Das. I am a software engineer by profession but writing has always been my true calling. I remember that one of the first complaints of my parents was the fact that I always exaggerated facts and added new layers while narrating real incidents. My elder sister, however, encouraged me to express these additional layers as fiction on paper instead of trying to pass them off as true events! That is how my writing journey began. It started very early, perhaps a little too early, even before I had been formally taught to compose a grammatically correct sentence.
As of now, I have a full time career in IT and I also have the job of raising our 9 year old son; so that leaves very little time for writing. However, in life I believe we all have things that define us, things that we need to do in order to lend meaning to our existence and for me that thing is writing. So yes, it is hard to make time for writing but I still write regularly and intend to continue doing so.
Like every other work, I believe that writing too deserves serious attention and planning. I usually plan my writing schedule every week and stick to the routine I set for myself. If you keep adding drops persistently, you would eventually have an ocean. That my go-to motto when it comes to writing.
The central idea for ‘The Sorcery of the Senses’ has been with me since decades. I knew from my high school days that one day I will develop it into a novel. When my short stories found acceptance in popular magazines like Woman’s Era and various international journals, I took it as the first sign of hope. And after that, when I won the TOI Write India contest thrice, I knew that the time was right and I needed to write the novel.
If you ask me I would say that the originality of this novel is its strength. It is a completely original fantasy grounded in Indian settings. Readers who love to expand their imagination are likely to enjoy this book the most.
Also read : I am a storyteller – Kanchana Banerjee
Reading has been my other favourite hobby since childhood. It recharges me from within and has quite a therapeutic effect on me. Some of the authors whose books heavily influenced me at different points of life are Enid Blyton, Sidney Sheldon, Doris Lessing, Chinua Achebe, J.K. Rowling, Amish Tripathi, Carlo Rovelli and Haruki Murakami.
Three books that moved me deeply are Roots, Pachinko and The Wind-Up Birds Chronicle. I am sure that I am missing out listing many other phenomenally great books and authors. I would like to mention that I feel eternally thankful to all great authors who enriched my life by great measures.
Somehow, I have never faced writer’s block in my life. It is the paucity of time, on the other hand, that makes it difficult for me to write.
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