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Working
for any corporate giant is a dream for most IIT graduates, but not Rohit
Gupta. Taking charge suffocates him. Instead, the 26-year-old chemical
engineer from IIT Kharagpur turned to his hobby-writing. What started
as a weekly letter-writing ritual to his parents from Oak Grove School,
Mussoorie, has now taken a serious form. With Play-On Edward and Other
Stories (Embassy), Gupta wants to let people know, "I am not saying
'I'm a writer because I'm a jobless wannabe in the Mumbai social circuit'."
At the age of seven, Gupta wrote to his parents telling them how much
he loathed boarding school except the library where he could spend days,
even missing out on lunch or dinner. In college, he spent time adapting
stories for the annual cultural events instead of poring over engineering
books. "Every book opened a different world for me and I got hooked
on to it," says Gupta. Fascinated by the concept of the outer space,
Gupta chose to become a science writer-journalist interviewing the likes
of Stephen Hawking, Michael Greene, Asoke Sen and Mark Shuttleworth. He
was awarded the prestigious E-author 1.0 in 2001 by the Oxford Book Store
for The Oyster Club, India's first e-novel. The Gupta family's reaction
varied from anger to surprise. But now, he hopes, they might just begin
to understand that he was just following his instincts by choosing to
make a career out of his hobby.
Gupta, by his own admission "irritable, brooding, the silent type",
started out with a salary of Rs 2,000 in a web company in Mumbai, but
now he would like to trod the less difficult path. "I would like
to have the freedom to explore my entire potential without looking back
at the kitchen every second to see if it is still running." Even
while drawing heavily from real life, Gupta loves to build up on the imaginary.
So in Play-On Edward you have a boy in Goa witnessing the Mars landing
on TV, an Egyptian king with a silver fetish and a genetically-engineered
monkey threatening mass destruction. Now he's working on a scientific
biography and a novel. He's no longer a "jobless wannabe".
-Sheela Raval
 
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Terrorism's New Strategy
CURRENT
ISSUE OCTOBER 7, 2002
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