Krupa Ge's 'Burns Boy': A tale of love, survival, and competing truths in a burns ward

New Indian Express

16 hours ago

The burns ward in the novel is full of women who are survivors of domestic violence, acid attacks and other gender-based violence. Was placing a boy in that space always part of your plan?
Yes. It was a question of what it is like for a boy to be in such a space. These accidents do happen. What is a boy who has gone through something like this going to experience in that world? The book is set in the '90s, when that sort of reality was even more common — gas cylinders exploding randomly. I had attended a burns conference during my MA in sociology, sometime between 2006 and 2008. It focused on how society reacts to burns victims. Doctors spoke about what they see among the mostly female patients. That conference had a lasting impact on me, and while writing the book, it was always at the back of my mind (that responsibility).
Each family member in the novel carries their own version of guilt. Did you ever feel more drawn to one character's perspective?
For me, all of them are actually me. So, preferring one over the other wouldn't be possible.
I did enjoy writing the daughter's voice though, that's not how I usually talk. But I wanted to capture people who do speak like that. I wanted to evoke this playful, Indian, casual way of speaking English. It doesn't come naturally to me but that voice ended up being, at first, the most difficult and later, the most fun to write.
The book deals with themes of love and damage within families. Was this something you set out to explore?
Absolutely. I wanted to tell a story that was as close-up as possible. My previous novel ('What We Know About Her') was sweeping in that sense — larger, with more characters and themes. But here, I wanted to get inside someone's skin and ask: how much do we really need to know about a person to care about them? There aren't elaborate backstories in this novel. There are stories, yes, but not sweeping ones. You don't know much about the characters apart from their thoughts and what they tell you. That's what I wanted — to examine family dynamics from up close and see what emerges.