Have you ever read a story within a story? A novel where the author repeatedly reminds readers that what they are reading exists only in their mind and completely nullifies the suspension of disbelief?
This kind of writing is what the meta-fiction genre is all about, and 20-year old Ayyappan Ram has dived right into it with his debut novel Shiva Purana and The Novel for Nobody .
Ayyappan, who has written the book under the pseudonym Arjun Shivaram, is more than happy to summarise his first tale, “It is a coming of age story about how a man develops his thoughts and ideas about life. In the course of his journey, he is immersed in a deep tragedy of notoriety, destruction and disgrace. Still, in the book that he writes, he creates a success story for himself. Finally, what happens in both his lives (his real life and the one in his book) makes up the climax.”
Even though his book belongs to the meta-fiction genre, Ayyappan, a student of Chemical Engineering at SSN College of Engineering in Chennai, says he had no idea that the word even existed prior to his book. “I was researching the Tamil movie Kathai Thiraikathai Vasanam Iyakkam which is about a director and his story within the story. That’s how I found out about the genre.”
He admits that there are some autobiographical elements in his book. “Shiva is a quiet solipsist like me. He believes that everything around him is an illusion.” He adds that there are some points where he found vicarious satisfaction through the course of the book. “The characters around Shiva are the characters that I want in my life. For instance, I have never had a close friend, so Shiva has a best friend called Deva.”
Having finished his final exams last week, he’s now going to work towards finding a publisher. “I just sent a draft of my book to a publishing house and they rejected it. So I'm waiting for other publishers. If I run out of options, I'll consider self publishing. But if I do that, the marketing would be difficult.”
Ask him his future plans and he says, “I actually got placed in a company during campus placements. So I will work and simultaneously realise my dream of becoming a filmmaker. After this book is published, I plan to write a screenplay. Later, I might write another book if I get a good idea or plot.”
