Snehil Niharika’s debut novel is all in for Prince Charming and damsel-in-distress, yet crashing down the stereotype of the same

[Photo Courtesy: Ravi Ranjan]

1.Did you know the end of the book when you started writing it?

"I'm writing a multiple POV book from five years - Salad Bowl. I did outline it and wrote the synopsis for each chapter and every scene separately. But for That'll Be Our Song, I didn't outline anything in advance. Initially, this book was just some texts and diary entries. Then I started walking blindfolded throughout. I believe in this very firmly - it doesn't matter if you outline the book or not, a book writes itself. It decides its own ending and its own vibe, you just have to give it the chance and time."

2. Tell us about Salad Bowl.

"I wrote the first draft of Salad Bowl when I was in the fifth grade. Of course, it was terrible. But in 2017 I started rewriting it, and I wrote everything I was scared of misogyny, mental illness, bigotry, betrayal. I also wrote everything that made me powerful - human emotions and love. Can't share much, but that is the book why I write."

3. That'll Be Our Song has a beautiful hand-painted cover. What is the story behind that?

"My designer and I designed a wonderful cover one night, with a pretty girl's face in perfect posture and perfect font…everything was on point. It appeared to me as a perfect cover, but not the right cover for my book. I did not want perfect. My book isn't perfect or about perfection…it's exactly the opposite. It's about accepting flaws, about embracing vulnerabilities. If I had to write hundreds of books in the future, I might have gone for the perfect cover. But I have five books in total…five parts of my heart and I don't want to plaster perfection on any of them."

4. How did you decide to hand-paint your main characters?

"That week, I was learning acrylic painting, and I didn't know what to paint. So I started making Siddhartha's painting…I had pictures of all of my favorite actors, and I had an image in my head too, shaggy hair and crazy beard…it turned out nice and I was like, maybe I should paint Arya too. Arya was the weird one in the book, so all my art inspiration models failed there, they weren't that flawed and weird…so I took a little inspiration from my own picture and after a million strokes and retouches, I made something that…wasn't perfect, but more Arya than anybody else could have been."

5. What was the amount of risk involved?

"I never really care about risk, I suppose you're risk-free only when you're not doing anything."

6. That goes to the back cover too. Why didn't you put Siddhartha on the front cover?

"When I was doing votes, my weird cover vs the perfect one. A lot of the readers said I should put Siddhartha's painting on the cover too. This book was Arya's story, I didn't want the boy to be on the cover…but when everybody started saying the same thing, I placed him on the back cover and it turned out pretty meaningful."

7. Last question, I had the privilege to read your book beforehand, what was the weight of representing the cultural difference between big cities and small towns?

"India is a melting pot of diversity and it always fascinates me, but the black-and-white stereotyping, and a complete denial of that stereotyping, both those things are a little bit frustrating. In my book, I tried balancing the two. There's little prejudice to everything, no point fighting it. I tried to normalize it - accepting people around us as they are, with differences."

Snehil Niharika's Instagram has a very diverse vibe. She shares everything from her book cover to home photos and gives us a peek into her wardrobe and a hobo life. Recently she has been sharing a lot about her book journey.

Connect to this beautiful author here: https://instagram.com/snehilniharika?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=