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BOOKS
AUTHORSPEAK
G.B. PRABHAT
Unchained Engineer
When a writer invites
you to his "workplace", you don't quite envisage a meeting at
Tidel Park, Chennai, one of Asia's largest centres for information technology.
But once G.B. Prabhat, 35, starts speaking-about himself and his debut
novel Chains (East-West)-you forget that you're in the cabin of the director,
Enterprise Business Solutions, Satyam Computer Services. "I don't
want to reinforce the perception that a software guy can't be good at
fiction," says Prabhat, as if to explain why he doesn't want his
laptop in the frame while being photographed.
 Even
while pursuing a degree in mechanical engineering, and later, an MSc in
computer science at IIT Chennai, Prabhat found time to both write and
paint. In fact, Chains only materialised after he had written a series
of newspaper articles and a book titled The 3D Competitive Space. "With
Chains, I attained escape velocity," says Prabhat. "Now, I'm
in orbit."
Chains encapsulates the trauma of an Indian
family returning to its homeland from the US against the backdrop of the
changing global economy. "I've never been an NRI, but my frequent
visits acquainted me with the US, perhaps more than a resident,"
he says. The novel's theme: the man who worries about how his family will
acclimatise itself to the socio-cultural transition and forgets that it's
he who has to face the biggest challenge-of adapting to his new workplace.
"Janakiraman (the protagonist) faces good and bad choices. Life is
all about making the best of bad choices," says Prabhat. Autobiographical?
"No. None of the characters is real. But they are authentic."
Honestly, isn't there a bit of Ravi, the protagonist's mentor and a CEO
who prefers to stay put in India, in Prabhat? "Well, there's a bit
of the author in every character," he finally acknowledges.
But then, with two more novels and a collection
of short stories in the pipeline, Prabhat isn't quite like Janakiraman's
wife, Bharati, "who feels no existential compulsion to fill her nothingness
with a little something". Quite far from it actually.
-Arun Ram
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