“Once there was a romantic girl who had passional affair with love but she got married to life and they lived happily ever after.”
A Romantic Girl is a soul searching story of a small town girl ‘Alia’. Penned by Samrat Rahi, this terrific story of love, longing, and loneliness takes the reader to pleasant and unpleasant corners of the heart where deepest emotions survive a lifetime. As explained by Moon moon sen, who launched the book at prominent literary center ‘ Gyaan Adab ‘ in Pune, every woman can find a bit of herself in the story of Alia, the way she found herself in one of the chapters. Written with the narrative of a female voice, this is Samrat Rahi’s first novel, however, the complexity of human relation shown in the book depicts the emotional maturity of the author.
On the use of this catchy phrase ‘Romantic Girl,’ Samrat explains that his Alia is not a regular die-hard romantic girl who is obsessed with the singular emotion of love but she is romantic to live her life on her own way. She is an independent girl who believes in the plurality of happiness. The variety of human emotions complete a human being and sticking to a singular emotion hinders the organic growth of life. With a hint of liberal feminism, Alia is on the journey of self-discovery and she is not at all apologetic to decisions of her life.
Samrat Rahi who works for Government of India is an award winning author and has excellence in poetry. On being asked, the highlight of his book, he said- “It’s journey of most of the small town girls of India who were growing up in the early nineties. The story talks about the dilemma of a working woman, the boredom of a housewife and emotional vacuum of a single lady in Indian perspective. It has a rare phenomenon of explaining the psychology of mistress which can be rarely found in contemporary Indian literature. “
How was the journey of writing the first novel? Samrat answered its very difficult for new authors to enter the market and promote themselves. Established publishers are inaccessible, hard to find good editors and there is no institutional mechanism for marketing the book. However nowadays it’s easy to see your work in print. Hailing from a small town in Chhattisgarh called Ambikapur, Samrat informed that probably he is the first English writer from his town. This achievement motivates the youngster there to write and get published.
Samrat’s book is available on all the leading bookstores online and offline. We wish Samrat and his protagonist ‘Alia‘ more power to reach a wider audience with such a contemporary story.