Jayant is a Management Consultant and Corporate Trainer based in Seattle. His debut novel ‘Colours in the Spectrum’ published in 2013 by Leadstart Publishing India Pvt. Ltd under the Frog Books Imprint, garnered rave reviews from several publications and news portals, The Kirkus magazine review, The Hindu and The Bengaluru Chronicle, prominent among them. Jayant also has to his credit, two non-fiction publications – anthologies of true incidents from the life of a gifted humanitarian. He has written the script for a full-length feature film tentatively titled Apne Sapney and seeks serious takers. He successfully completed the Certificate
Program in Literary Fiction at the University of Washington.
Let’s get to know more about this new novel ‘Family Secret’
1. Why do you write novels? What are the top things that you do as part of the writing process?
Writing novels gives me the liberty to fictionalize fact and factualize fantasy. My imagination controls me. What-If and Why-not are the flag-bearers of my imagination. That’s why! Putting myself into fictional situations that my characters face, helps character development. Putting my characters into situations I may have faced, gives me plot points. Works both ways. My novels are character driven, with five or more principal characters whose emotional journeys are traced. When I am in the thick of my novel these characters become very real, living in my head. I can see them, touch them, talk to them, hear them . . .I start out with the end in mind and outline my stories at a high level. It’s not a blueprint, though. Once I build up traction with the writing, my characters take over, propel their own stories forward. Creativity flow has a mind of its own. It does not listen to me. When I experience this lull – I use that time to reorganize the logical flow of what I have already written, apply conceptual edits and experiment with book structure. To me, structure is as important as form. Writing is a process. Laborious, iterative, reiterative. I enjoy the process of writing, organizing and revising, as much as I enjoy holding the fresh copy of my published book in my hand! I believe in sending a well-edited manuscript to my agent/publisher.
2. What inspired you to write Family Secrets?
My debut novel Colours in the Spectrum was published in 2013. Around the same time, I took a Bangalore-Mysore day trip with family members. The genesis of Family Secrets can be traced to that trip, when I was made privy to family folklore – about a patriarch, who had, many-many decades ago, engaged in an extra-marital alliance. When the patriarch’s daughter found out about a half-sister to whom she had lost her father’s love, what did she feel? I decided to write Family Secrets, a fictional drama of two half-brothers who face-off under totally different circumstances, and delve deep into their mindsets, motivations and machinations. Family Secrets was released worldwide on October 26 2020. It is published by Vishwakarma Publications (Pune). My literary agency The Book Bakers has designed the cover and is spearheading the marketing campaign.
3. Family Secrets is a corporate thriller and a dynastic drama. Tell us about some
sequences that make it thrilling.
On Deepavali day, Siddhartha, an English teacher-turned-conman and his wife Sadhana, a seasoned theater artiste, rob a jewelry store belonging to Siddhartha’s nemesis Abhimanyu. Siddhartha and a heavily disguised Sadhana plot and steal a royal tiara, Abhimanyu’s cherished
family heirloom, during a college staging of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. A series of mini cons for research, reconnoiter and rehearsals, form part of Siddhartha’s
planning process to ensure the success of the bigger devious plots! Abhimanyu, the successful busines tycoon and an honorary bank chairman, resorting to boardroom politics, tweaks the bank’s financing policy to bring about Siddhartha’s financial ruin.
Abhimanyu masterminds the deposit of money into Siddhartha’s bank account, orchestrates an income tax raid, pulls off a hostile takeover of Siddhartha’s flailing business.
4. What makes Family Secrets unique? How do you create emotionally charged high-voltage drama in a corporate thriller?
Ordinary people resorting to extraordinary tactics, that appeal to both the cerebral and
emotional instincts – is what makes Family Secrets unique. There is no distinct protagonist or antagonist – all principal characters have shades of grey. Here are some key themes that make my novel refreshingly different. The mechanics of any con are a variation of a set of standard frameworks and they are rooted in basic human psychology. I adopt some such standard frameworks, and the details are entirely mine. A couple married for fifteen years can continue to be very much in love – as are Siddhartha and Sadhana. Their tender relationship unfolds in the opening scene even as they go conduct the heist, and continues through the end. Siddhartha’s rigorous planning make him a successful conman – how many movies haven’t we seen where the hero’s bravado for revenge falls flat in the first step, because he did not think it through? I wanted to change that! The powerful Abhimanyu operates from a sense of entitlement – based on the erroneous belief that his success is solely due to his superior intelligence. His lack of empathy becomes his undoing, with his half-brother and his newfound son. Rahul’s coming out story is devoid of the stereotypical angst. My debut novel Colours in the Spectrum contained the story of a gay man and it ended tragically. Members of a book club that took it up for a reading had humbly requested me to write a happier version next time! As far back as 1939, the Right to Property Act gave women equal rights! This serves as a major plot point for the budding extra-marital romance of a suave lawyer and the widowed descendant of an aristocratic family. The Hindu Marriage Act enacted provisions for divorce and bigamy only in the early fifties, several years after India had attained independence. Before that the law was silent on both! Non-existence of this law is at the very core of the Siddhartha-Abhimanyu conflict that drives the mains story.
5. You make up your own quotes, own metaphors. Four of your favorite quotes from Family Secrets?
‘You know my mantra; proof of the project lies in the planning.’ ‘You want me to be flawless. I have to be authentic. I choose authenticity over flawlessness.’ ‘Where there is trust, there should be truth. Where there is truth there will be trust.’ He was not the master of his own destiny, as he had believed. He was merely destiny’s chosen child.
6. What does happiness mean to you?Happiness is a soul-experience. Living every moment with a sense of vibrancy. Contentment. Inner harmony. Feeling fulfilled. Experiencing indescribable joy. In everything I do and in all my
relationships.
7. If you had to live a day of your life as one of the living or dead personalities, who would it be and why?
Gautama Buddha. Because I can then experience Nirvana – the highest form of happiness!
