Dancing with Demons: Author Nidhie Sharma on her love for boxing

My journey into writing began with reading. My mom is a poet and painter and started gifting me books at a very early age. Thanks to her, I had read all the literary classics before I gave my Standard 10 board exams. Soon I was reading Booker prize winners year after year and was hooked. I dreamt of having a massive library with book shelves extending to the ceiling and now have one. In the same period, I started writing.

My journey began with poetry that made its way into school magazines. I was made the editor of the school magazine in the final year of school. During my graduation years, I started writing book reviews for newspapers to earn some extra pocket money. It was a great phase in my life. Writing by then had become the greatest form of self expression for me and I still scribble in my diary. There are over two dozen of them lying in an old closet. I graduated in English literature with honors and enjoyed studying some of the greatest playwrights during that period. And then film school in New York beckoned. In hindsight, I realise that I had taken on not just my mother’s love for writing but also her love for the visual arts medium. My father too, always urged me to spread my wings and fly. 

As a filmmaker, I will add that while screenwriting and fiction are very different mediums, they demand similar things – a strong story, interesting characters, a relatable theme, a beginning, a middle and an end. The only difference being that the screenplay has to very precise and 'less is more' is ideal. Luckily, my early training set me up well for both mediums. Fiction gives you more room to build characters, to go where a screenplay can’t. It gives you more freedom to explore themes, to build plot, to create layers, to add nuances, among many other things. My personal experience is that a novel can enrich and deepen the screenplay in an unexpected way.  

I enjoy both filmmaking and prose writing equally and truly believe it’s possible to straddle both mediums.

In context to all the talk around me writing ‘India’s first Boxing drama’, I think the biggest boxing story out of India is actually about a woman -- MC Mary Kom. So what is the big deal about a girl writing a boxing drama? I believe there are no accidents. I was brought up in an army background that exposes you to adventure and the outdoors very early on. I trained in karate, horse-riding and went to adventure camps in Arunachal Pradesh near the Indo-China Border. We survived a full day in a jungle near Tawang despite the gushing waters that almost swept us away, our bodies covered with leeches, without food or help, till we were rescued. I grew up camping, trekking and hiking, and also learnt to play football with the boys my age. 

While growing up, I watched live boxing matches too. They fascinated me no end. Two men beating the crap out of each other and the spectators cheering as they bled. Human reaction to violence only shows how deep and primal that instinct is and that got me thinking. I started watching matches online and followed the sport keenly. I also went to boxing matches while studying filmmaking in New York. I met the boxers and coaches out of curiosity and wanted to know what makes them take to this sport. Given my exposure and interests, I think the stage to write Dancing with Demons was set long ago. It was only natural that I set my story in the world of combat sports. A couple of years back, I met Mary Kom at a boxing event at Mumbai. I also met American boxing coach and legend Joe Clough. My knowledge and understanding of the sport is something I have acquired over the years.

In Dancing with Demons, I use boxing as a metaphor for the protagonist’s resurrection. The early reviews for the book indicate that apart from the “difficult to put down” feedback and detailed boxing bouts in the book, readers and critics are equally loving the crackling love-hate chemistry between its tempestuous anti-hero Karan Pratap Singh and its equally volatile and mysterious anti-heroine Sonia Kapoor. The theme of hope and resurrection runs through the book and I think if I’ve managed to flesh out the nuances and thematic richness, it’s only because of my early and rigorous training in fiction writing. As a director, I'm eagerly looking to carry the layered richness and boxing action from the novel into the film. 

Nidhie Sharma is a filmmaker and the author of Dancing with Demons, India’s first boxing romance drama novel, soon to be made into a Bollywood film.