It’s hard to write about private thing: Hindol Sengupta

There are two ways of looking at history — modern line writing, mostly written from an economic or political point of view. And then there’s the Anne Frank style, which gives the reader a sense of the world at that time. Author Hindol Sengupta took the second approach when he wrote his latest, The Liberals. “This book talks about the last 20 years and how life has changed since then. What was lacking was a human story,” he says.

His book is an autobiography telling one story in millions of the children of liberalisation, he says. “It’s presumptuous to tell the human story through someone else’s eyes. Writing about your own life is the hardest, because you have to write about private things, if it has to be a true account.” The entire point is that there is a new set of Indians — who are the children of liberalisation, he says. “By virtue of being the by-product of liberalisation, I have less in common with my parents, than they had with their parents. As the last generation before mobile phones, where not everyone had a landline at home, and cars were owned by a rare few,” he says further.

Hindol says, “There are a prism of ways to look at contemporary history, and writing about the history of fashion in India is another way of understanding liberalisation. If you observe clothes through the years in movies, you see the liberalisaton in consumerism — with each passing film you can see how India has changed,” he explains. The latest offering is about those who did not leave India for foreign shores, the story of the resident Indian. Of what happened before your job was Bangalored and of the people who Bangalored it, he says.

Next on his cards is a new book, tentatively titled Gandhi Local – Ideas from India. “It has to do with the story of India as a place to invest and grow,” he concludes.