'Age of Vice' author Deepti Kapoor: ‘I picked up on Delhi's aggression, corruption and decadence and dived right into all of it’

Author Deepti Kapoor.

Author Deepti Kapoor’s latest novel Age of Vice — the first book in a trilogy — seems to have caught the attention of everyone. While Zoya Akhtar posted a picture of it with the hashtag "unputdownable", filmmaker Anurag Kashyap believes the thriller is the "best book to start the year with". Kapoor, a former journalist who spent almost a decade in the capital and has written the novel A Bad Character (2014) prior to this, delves into the process of writing Age of Vice and how the setting of Delhi is integral to the narrative of moral and political corruption. Edited excerpts from an interview:

The Guardian review has termed your book as 'India's answer to The Godfather'. How correct do you find that in your assessment? 

Honestly, I think that's an easy but lazy thing that headline writers and publicists say and it can be utterly counterproductive because it creates certain expectations. If there are any similarities, it's that they deal with family and capitalism, but that's all. The book shouldn't be India's answer to anything. Indian lives don't need Western comparisons to exist and thrive. The book is itself.

The aggression, the moral corruption, the headiness of power and pleasure — Delhi seems to have influenced your work in a major way. You have lived in the capital for almost a decade. In what ways has the city and its culture penetrated your thought system?

My family is from Uttar Pradesh, so I grew up around Agra, Moradabad and Firozabad, before my father was transferred in his SBI job to Bombay. After many years, my parents finally settled in Delhi, at just the same time I went to college there, so my dreams of college freedom turned into being stuck at home with my parents. And we lived away from the heart of it, too, over the river in east Delhi, which made it even more challenging for a young woman who wanted to be carefree. Then, my father was bedridden with a long illness while I was in college, and died a year later, so my life was turned on its head. I had an existence marked by grief and I ameliorated this grief by driving. My brother got a job away, and he left his car behind, which was the best present he could give. So, I just spent several years driving around the city, consumed by this grief, which I translated into recklessness and anger, matched with a natural curiosity. That was my Delhi.

My own emotions turned me into a receiver, and I picked up on all the aggression and corruption of the city and also its decadence and I dived right into all of it. For a long time in the city, I simply didn't care what happened to me. I know other people's Delhi is genteel, mannered, refined, comfortable, cultured. I personally never felt that. I felt more comfortable sitting listening to my mother's driver talking about the Prozac he'd been prescribed and how his brother was in prison for murder. And it all came from the grief over the death of my father. So, the Delhi I know is an avatar of my own experience, pure and simple.

As a writer, how much does the personal get integrated or assimilated with what comes out on paper? 

Almost everything comes from experience. Writers are vampires. They have shards of ice in their hearts. But that doesn't mean you should be solipsistic and only focus on yourself. If that were the case, every novel would be a thinly veiled memoir, and that's boring. It means you live with curiosity, follow interesting stories, explore wherever things take you, and most importantly, don't hang out with other writers.

The debauchery and the moral and political corruption that is at the heart of the novel is at once scary and enticing. Is that how you see it? 

It should be enticing, yes, and then it should horrify you. That's how it happens. It's important to show its attraction. In a city like Delhi, which can be hard for a million reasons, if someone offers you the easy way out, or a bubble in which to live and escape difficulties, you'll likely take it, and not think too much of the consequences. So, it's important to acknowledge the allure, then show the consequences, especially to show how everything is connected.

This is the first book in a trilogy. In which direction do you see it heading? How dark is it going to get? Is there any hope or redemption in this fictional India? 

The next book, the second in the trilogy, is going to throw some light into the dark, at least for one character. And hope, too.

We hear that the book is being made into a digital series? Is that correct and if yes, can you give us the update on that? 

It's being developed in Los Angeles at the moment with the network FX. But when it comes to filming, the show will be shot in India with an Indian cast and crew alongside Hollywood people. Other than that, I can't really say much.