Traipsing through parallel universes
Ever been plagued by doubt that the road not taken might have had better scenery or more interesting strangers or a pot of gold at its end?
In her book If-Then-Else (Vishwakarma Publishing), Sandhya Ranganathan explores the many choices one can take and the avenues that open up as a result, through the life of her protagonist, a recently-retrenched IT employee.
“I have wanted to be a writer ever since I was 10years-old; I would write poems and stories even though at that age you do not really know how to complete a story. And I have always wanted to write a book,” says the Bengaluru-based author.
Now as a grown-up with a job in technical communications, Sandhya is still writing and If-Then-Else is not her rst book, though it is her rst work of ction. “In 2016, I put together a little bedtime story for my daughter, titled Mia Finds a Home. There was a graphics designer in my team and we collaborated on this fun project. My second book, Burma to Bangalore is my father’s autobiography which I co-authored.”
She adds, ”My grandfather was in the British Army and my father was born in Burma, but then they had to ¦ee and eventually found their way to Bangalore. It is his story, but my father being an Army man too, wrote it like a military account. I worked on it so everybody could enjoy reading about those times in his life.”
If-Then-Else, Sandhya says, “is a work of contemporary ction. When Karthik, a software engineer based in Bangalore gets laid o£, there are several choices in front of him. In this book, I use the concept of parallel universes and we see his journey in three di£erent versions of himself. ”
When she started writing the novel, Sandhya said she was actually laid o£. “However, I did get back to work and it was during the lock-down that I was able to complete it.” Since IfThen-Else is about a Bengaluru-based IT guy, real-life residents of the city will be pleased to nd references to popular landmarks, watering holes and the like.
Can If-Then-Else be pegged as science ction? Not really, says Sandhya. “I am interested in reading about quantum mechanics and quantum physics. When I read about Schrodinger’s Cat, I was taken up with the idea that you can exist in parallel planes at the same time and the scientic thought process behind it.”
Sandhya says, “I have used the concept more as a literary device — what are the choices we make and what are their consequences? We are constantly making choice.. We don’t and can’t think them all the way through.”