Negotiating The Price You Pay
Novice reporter Abhishek Dutta gets lucky his first day on the job covering a routine press conference when he overhears an exchange between two police officers in the men's washroom – “Babloo Shankar is planning a comeback”. Using this as leverage, he makes his way into the privileged nexus of the police and media and quickly rises to fame as a crime reporter in Delhi's print, then television, media. Reporting crime is not easy, however, and, from rubbing his powerful superiors the wrong way to becoming embroiled in a kidnapping rescue mission almost gone wrong, Abhishek must negotiate, even compromise, with his influential bosses, his competitive peers, his vital contacts and himself to make it as a journalist in Delhi.
While Abhishek remains the main protagonist and the Babloo Shankar case the main plot, Somnath Batabyal's debut novel The Price You Pay, is about several lives in and outside of Delhi's newsrooms: The committed chief reporter and the self-proclaimed “middling corrupt, but efficient” deputy commissioner of police; the petty thief climbing the underground ladder who acts as a journalistic source and one of Interpol's most wanted criminals and his sexy partner with multiple identities, Madame X. The underhanded ways to get everything from fake licenses to foreign visas and amateur to professional kidnappings all contribute to the raciness of this part thriller, part mystery, which may even be seen as a social critique of urban India.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. 
In fact, the vivid descriptions of the city, from the crowds, “a critical mass that… surge forward, arms outstretched, to stop the rush of speeding vehicles with a collective willpower” to the “pavement space for which pedestrians had long ago abandoned hope” will resonate with city-dwellers across the subcontinent, including Dhakaites, as will the milky tea and kababs of the teeming streets of Delhi, as well as the fancy joints of the more privileged.
The insight into the newsroom as well as out on assignment – following leads and meeting deadlines, the long hours and office politics, and, most importantly, the rush of seeing one's byline on the front page – is obviously that of an insider. The book illustrates through fiction what is often taught in journalism courses – developing a nose for news, cultivating sources, respecting confidence, etc., – while also depicting the finer distinctions and decisions between making big news and maintaining silence, which can buy “loyalties and [keep] friendships”. While the author maintains that the novel is in no way autobiographical and that he identifies with none of the characters, he acknowledges that the cases referred to are well known and some of them he himself was involved in during his decade in print and television journalism.
Batabyal says he had the book as a film script in his mind “for ages”. But it was only after reassurance from the likes of writer Vikram Seth and V K Karthika, the chief editor and publisher of Harper Collins India, that he felt he had a novel and started to pen it, spanning over two years of writing and editing in Heidelberg, Goa and Delhi. The author's background as journalist and academician combined well in his journalistic practice of everyday writing with academic rigour.
“The strategy was to write a book which should have nothing if it was not absolutely needed,” says Batabyal and in this he has surely succeeded. In fact, as the reader approaches the end, they worry about how the story can be wound up in the few remaining pages, but it is and is done so with a realistic flourish.
Batabyal's next novel is in the making, and deals with “migration and the refugee, identity and the State”, spanning the 1940s, East Pakistan via the muktijuddho and Assam through the 1980s, to present day London. Given the context, it is sure to connect with readers here as well as across the region and world.
Meanwhile, Batabyal has sold the Bollywood rights for The Price You Pay to director Ajay Bahl, whose first film BA Pass, adapted from a short story called “The Railway Aunty”, created a stir. Batabyal found it to be a “classic Delhi noir” and was delighted when Bahl approached him about making his novel into a film. The author has little role in the script and dialogue and is only in occasional touch with the team turning the novel into a film. “I must say, I'm excited to see how my work is interpreted by others,” he says.
The Price You Pay is being distributed in Bangladesh by Bengal Lights, priced at Tk. 750 and will be launched at the upcoming Hay Festival where the writer will be present to talk about the book.
Comments