Because They Got High

Rajagopal, 28, knows Rish’s world well, having watched it from the wings, waited next in line but never really got there. “My father had a transferable job, and the first time I had a stable school year was when we moved to Mumbai when I was 12. It was a “Bollywood school”, children of A-last actors and producers attended. I made friends there and watching them through the years affected me a lot,” says Rajagopal, “I was fascinated and repulsed by that lifestyle, in equal measure.”

Coming from a comparatively conservative home, Rajagopal chose books over blunts and after graduating from Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College, earned a seat at IIM-Calcutta. “I wanted to be a banker more than anything else. But after working at a private equity firm, I realised that I wanted more. I began writing Salt Water at the right time, I had enough distance and perspective to draw out the world I’d seen so closely,” he says.

It’s also a hedonistic world, easily stereotyped from the outside, with a pervading sense of ennui. “For the ‘golden youth’ who are born rich, who have everything, the ideal of romantic love doesn’t exist. They’ve been through so much and so many people by the time they’re 20, they’ve burnt out, there is no sense of wonder,” says Rajagopal.

Released in India last week, Salt Water caught the eye of literary agent Marc Parent and a deal with Ullstein Verlag in Germany sees the book poised to cross over to Europe this year. Early buzz has compared it to Jeet Thayil’s Narcopolis. “It is similar in the sense that the city we talk about is very different from what international readers expect. But Narcopolis deals with heroin, a downer, my characters are doing uppers,” says Rajagopal. Say what you will, a high’s a high.