‘You do not read alone. You live alongside the characters, you share what you read with friends and you read in companionship with the author,’ says eminent journalist and writer Nilanjana S Roy.

Roy, who talked about her latest crime fiction book “Black River”, emphasized the need to bring together reading communities.

A hybrid book club called ‘SUITABLY BOOKED’ was launched by the India Habitat Centre in collaboration with A Suitable Agency on May 18.

Roy was in conversation with Jai Arjun Singh, a writer and critic, on her genre-defining novel “Black River”.

“You don’t read alone. You live alongside the characters, you share what you read with friends and you read in companionship with the author. I love the idea of starting a book club to bring together a reading community,” she remarked at the event.

Framed as a police procedural, the crime fiction is set in a small village on the outskirts of Delhi. It is a thriller where an 8-year old girl is murdered, followed by the quest for justice. The book is a commentary on the current-day scenario of the power dynamics in society.

Asked about the story’s inspiration, Roy says, “While I was working as a gender reporter at the New York Times, Delhi and its borders came into my sight. It is then when I got to know about migrants and saw stories where people come here in search of a dream but find tremendous discomfort. After seeing how justice was seldom available for certain sections, the question that drove me was – What does justice look like to people on an everyday basis?”

When it comes to a line between fiction and reality, she says that she chose fiction because it was a matter about respect. For someone coming from a point of privilege, she found it better to work on the story based on her imagination. It is also inspired by similar crimes particularly related to the disappearance of young children and killing of young girls.

Why did she choose crime fiction?

“I have always seen crime as a capacious and smuggler genre where one can smuggle political situations into it. I knew I was taking a risk, but I wanted people to know where Chaand (father of the murdered girl) , a grieving father, was coming from”, answered Roy.

A huge portion of her research was based on her observations at the banks of the Yamuna river. She describes it as a world which has silvery water and small islands where marigold farmers, drunkards, gamblers and supportive women reside. “When people feel they can trust you, they start to open up to you which helped me in my research”, added Roy.

“There is a sense of affirmation in her book which is not dewy eyed like – ‘Justice will be served’, but is something which comes across in an unforced way”, complimented Singh.

The Black River has a contradictory tone wherein it begins with gruesome and horrific scenes of a cold blooded murder but the book eventually finds its way of dealing with it.