MUSCAT — The two are just out of college. Durjoy Datta is a design engineer with a firm in Delhi and Maanvi Ahuja works for a leading investment bank in Hyderabad.

The two friends may be living in two cities in India but are now celebrities in their own right. Why ... How?

Well ... their book — Of Course I Love You…! Till I Find Someone Better — which they wrote while in college, has gone on to become a bestseller in India.

The book, published by Shristi Publications in New Delhi, has struck a chord with “all age groups” and what’s more ... the fifth edition is on its way.

Now for the Muscat connection to the story: Maanvi Ahuja is the daughter of Rajiv Ahuja, who is the head of corporate communications at Khimji Ramdas.

For those of you planning a peep, the book is available at Family Bookshop and Turtles branches in Oman.



In an interview with Times of Oman, the two share their story.



How did the novel come about?



The novel came out from the numerous conversations we had about incidents around us which often made us ask ourselves whether a third person would believe that those incidents actually happened. That is when we decided to write a novel borrowing from those incidents and their characters.



What brought you to the story of the book? How would you describe the novel in one sentence?



“Truth is stranger than fiction.”

There were so many true stories around us, which would have made for great coffee table gossip. So we thought of stringing it in a story, adding, twisting, contorting them a lot and what came out was an entirely new story, which bore no resemblance to what we had heard as ‘gossip’, but it still had elements of reality strewn here and there. The book is a light read novel, which reveals more than a few untold facts of relationships of the present day.



How did both your expectations measure up to the real-life publishing process?



We had the going pretty easy for us. Of course we were wary about the long time the publishing houses took for evaluation and editing of manuscripts and also how authors are at the bottom of the food chain in the publishing industry. However, it turned out to be a rather pleasant experience. Our manuscript was accepted within days of us submitting it and it hit the stands within two months of acceptance. The publishing team at Shristi was extremely helpful and cooperative, not to mention unwaveringly patient.



What has been the reader and critical response to the book so far?



We had aimed this book at the 18-25 segment but it is doing phenomenally well across all age groups. The response has been great and we are looking at a fifth reprint right now, within four months of the book’s release. We are ecstatic seeing the book doing so well.



Who are your favourite novelists? Who do you like to read?



We are voracious readers and we gorge on anything from Salman Rushdie to Micheal Crichton to Roald Dahl. Ruskin Bond and Lauren Weiesenberger are two authors we simply adore.