Amrish Kumar, the son of fashion maverick Ritu Kumar, has released his debut fiction novel Gods of Willow; a coming-of-age story of a young boy from Hyderabad deeply entwined with his love for cricket.
In the words of the writer, the book is fast-paced, light, and full of heart and the protagonist is the twenty-one-year-old Kabir Menon whose fate is inexorably linked to the fortunes of the Indian cricket team. In the land of multi-limbed, superpowered deities, the only ones that matter to him are the gods made on the cricket field. Set in a transformative time when Bharat was shifting gears to become India, Amrish Kumar’s first novel is a fresh exploration of the universal experience of growing up.
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Talking about when he realized of coming up with this book, Amrish tells Outlook, " Gods of Willow was a story I had conceived of as a film. It had been sitting in notations in a scrapbook for some years. During the lockdown, for some reason, I thought I should try and write it in prose, and steadily the manuscript took form into a book.”
Amrish, who is the Managing Director of the eponymous fashion label Reliance Ritu Kumar, says that the book is a coming-of-age story of a boy in the 90s. “In its essence, it's a story about growing up but it is set in India in the 90s. It was a time of profound change and much of what we see in our world today was birthed at the time. We moved from a socialist country with a conservative mindset to something much more hungry and global.
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“But at its core, it's a character-driven story, something which ought to be familiar to us all,” he says.
Amrish says that he did take the suggestion of his mother while writing this book. “She read some of the early drafts and was very encouraging.”
Talking about his admiration for cricket, the writer says that it’s a game that he grew up with.
“I idolized players and the traditions of the sport like many kids in India do. I was quite obsessive about it and would read a lot about it when I was younger. I think it's a unique sport because of its history and the fact that it remains one of the only field sports where conditions change markedly. It has an old-world charm which lends itself very well to writing about it,” he says.
Finally, Amrish says that he is glad to choose his own path and be associated with the work that he always wanted to do.
“I think I had an opportunity to build the Ritu Kumar business and I jumped at the chance to do that. I kept my fingers in the entertainment business however, I launched a record label and also had an internet video start-up on the side,” he sums up.
