The double life of an academic and murder mystery writer

Hindustan Times

17-05-2025

I'm writing about what used to be a well-kept secret. Today, it's my intention to blow it to smithereens. It's all about someone who's not what he at first seems. In fact, he's been leading a double life in broad daylight. He's even gone so far as to create another name for himself. And it follows he also has a second career.
Now you know of him as one of our finest sociologists. In this capacity he's authored 21 reputable books with titles such has Nativism in a Metropolis on the Shiv Sena, The Context of Ethnicity on Sikh identity, Rivalry and Brotherhood on the life of farmers, Mistaken Modernity on India caught between two worlds, and From People to Citizens on India's changing profile. In Jawaharlal Nehru University, they're praised and admired.
More recently, he's established a keen reputation as a thought-provoking columnist in one of our popular dailies. Though they are profound and occasionally disturbing, his columns are particularly liked for his teasing use of the English language. He plays with words as if he's a second Henry Higgins. He also writes about aspects of topical developments that otherwise you would not have noticed or remarked upon.
This is, of course, the recognised, public and well-known side of him. It's the foundation on which his richly deserved academic reputation has been built. It's been his established persona as an adult for most of the 75 years of his life. And by now I'm pretty sure some of you have begun to guess who he is. Am I right?
However, there's another side to him that he's kept firmly under wraps. For a decade or longer, he's also been writing murder mysteries and crime fiction. His three books are called Lead Tin Yellow, Let's Pray for Timmy, and What the Witness Did Not See. Set in America or peopled with Americans, they bear no possible or, even, remote connection to sociology, Sikh identity, the Shiv Sena or the many crises that afflict India. Instead, they're about people, their whims and ambitions, their foibles and lapses and, of course, a compelling predicament that confronts their lives.
I won't go into the stories — that will spoil your fun if you decide to read the books — but I'll reveal that he has a knack for capturing the way people speak. Not just the words they use but their accent and intonation. As a result, their voices stand out and linger in your mind as you furiously turn the pages of his books, anxious to get to the narrative's denouement.
His other great skill lies in descriptions. He's not florid. Certainly not verbose. In fact, he's precise, pointed and very particular in the way he paints a scene. And he seems to have a flair for landscape settings. I found myself quite entranced by his descriptive ability to bring the view from an ordinary window vibrantly to life.
Actually, there's a hint of who I'm writing about in the nom de plume he's adopted. It's DG Rae. On the face of it, you might assume this is like PD James. In fact, it is and it isn't. Like James, he's refused to reveal the rest of his name. But that's because the initials actually stand for his real names, the ones he was born with. However, unlike James, the initials do not hide the author's gender. He's not pretending to be a woman!
The other part of his nom de plume is the surname. Rae sounds foreign, perhaps American. But it's deliberately designed to mislead. In fact, it's nothing but a different phonetic spelling of his mother's maiden name, the very Bengali surname Ray.
And so, to reveal who you've been reading about. It's Dipankar Gupta or, as he now prefers to be known, DG Rae. I recommend his thrillers. They'll be delightful company on hot summer afternoons when it's impossible to do anything other than relax and read. I'm anxiously waiting for his fourth book.