“Most of my childhood was in Agra and I had to move to Bangalore for my engineering. My father believed that writing could only be a hobby and not something that we could do fulltime. So while It wasn’t my thing, I told my parents that though I would finish engineering as a degree, I wouldn’t be called an engineer”

“I used to write in 8th grade and I had written a poem for a friend of mine and then wrote a small piece on my school memory. But by the time I moved to Ramaiah, I had stopped writing and I didn’t do it for a year. I remember there were these inter-collegiate competitions and my friends always asked me to participate in them. Years later, I started noticing people around me who continued doing what they loved, continued their passion even though they were doing their engineering. This was a huge motivation for me and I thought to myself, why can’t I do it?”

“Back then, my writing had a vision and I could think straight but when I picked it up again, I didn’t really know what I could write. I started reading books and tried to figure out what I wanted to write about. Soon  I realized I was into micro tales and anthologies. When I told my parents, they initially had some reservations but then they kind of mellowed down.”

“Every writer has this dream of finishing a book and during 2018, I realized that it was time to start mine.  I could only pen down everything I felt, I couldn’t express it. A writer could show you the world through their words but couldn’t tell you verbally how they feel and maybe that is what keeps us going. I’ve always felt that our generation of people do not read enough and I hope they do.”

“In 2017, I suffered from a skin disease and because of that  I couldn’t really look at a book and write something, the whole year. I couldn’t do anything but my friends were there for me, they told me to stick to it, not to lose hope on something that I always wanted. Maybe that kept me going. The next year I was one of the top 100 debut Indian authors 18-19. I am Roobal Gupta.”