Journalist Tarun J Tejpal tells Sunday MiD DAY, after the launch of his third book

Tarun Tejpal, looks like a formidable and serious man in photographs. But the Tehelka publisher and Editor-In-Chief, who has just come out with his third novel, The Valley of Masks, turns out to be a kind man. He picks up the phone before I can hear it ring, and seems more concerned about my deadline than I am. More importantlyu00a0-- and perhaps because he has still occupies the other sideu00a0-- he measures his words and ensures my questions aren't lost to an ongoing monologue.



The book has been called unputdownable, and a literary masterpiece. Set in an imaginary valley in the Himalayas, in a parallel world that lives on an idea and is driven by a messiah called Aum, the book explores the utopia created on notions of purity, equality, discipline and the collective. The residents of this world are named after one of the six brothers in the Mahabharata (including Karna). The first person narrator is named Karna. To reinforce the idea of the collective, each person is given a mask that will be their face for the rest of their lives.

There are no mothers or fathers, but a motherhood, and a seminary. Professions aren't varied: Wafadars guard the land, and its ideals, and if needed, violently reinforce them; pathfinders teach the ideals. There is no place for digression, love, music and doubt.

But the novel begins with the narrator who has escaped this mythical landu00a0-- a sign that all is not well in the imagined Utopia. Sunday MiD DAY caught up with the author in Bengaluru and asked him about his critique of the collective, and disillusionment with promises of utopia.u00a0

What was the process involved in the writing of this book? How did it all begin?
It begins with the book fermenting in your head. It is initially the process of arriving at an idea and a narrative. Then comes the day when the first sentence of the book comes to you and it follows from there on. In this case, the idea came to me somewhere towards the end of The Story of My Assassins. By the time I finished that book, I was already deeply drawn into the idea.

Your first book talked about the past, the second is set in the present and the third one is almost futuristic in nature. Was this planned?
It wasn't planned and come to think of it, I never thought of it that way. The process of arriving at a book is sublimal and not one that is conscious.