What is the ‘How I got my girl back... A nerd’s guide to dating’ about?

‘How I got my girl back’ is about Devdutt rastogi’s fight for his love, even when it seems unachievable.

Devdutt is a nerd and has no experience of dating. How Devdutt overcomes these hurdles to woo the girl of his dream is the base of the novel. It is a feel good story.

Is it a story about an underdog?

Yes... In a way it is... I like underdogs. In real life, most of us are underdogs.  But ‘How I got’ is so much more...

The story is about relationships and not just relationship between a boy and a girl or among friends.  The novel highlights the relationship between a father and son, and the understanding that men bound by relation share. It also talks about the secret rebellion of a dutiful daughter, when she finds herself making a choice between what is right and what her father wants...

Wow! That sounds heavy...

It’s not. It is definitely thought provoking. But the style of writing is relaxed and humourous. In the end, you tend to fall in love with the characters in the book.

Could you tell us something about the characters in the book?

There are 4 main characters in the book. Dev, Kunal, Umesh & Akshay. They are flatmates. They have different qualifications, work for different companies, and rank differently on the number of dates per week scale. Whom am I kidding? Only Akshay manages to date girls. The rest have managed a consistent score of zero dates per week for the last 24 years.

When Dev decides to woo Pritha, he has no clue. How Akshay assists him with some help from Kunal and Umesh, forms the story.

Please explain the tagline - ‘A nerd’s guide to dating’

Dev is a complete nerd. He loves Pritha, but can’t do anything about it... So, Dev’s roommate Akshay, devises a course called D.Tech, short for Dating Technology. The whole process which he follows in imparting this knowledge is called ‘A nerd’s guide to Dating’

The cover looks snazzy! Could you tell us more about it?

The old cover that was presented to me by the Publishers, though lovely, didn’t have the nerdy look to it. So I decided to change it. I wanted a look that was creative and nerdy at the same time. I approached my friend, Pushkar Sheth, one of the most nerdy and creative guys I know. We worked on the cover all night (on different continents) and out we came with this cover.

The cover highlights the way a nerd would look at the subject. Like for example, the heart is shown to have dimensioning, which in mechanical engineering terms, means that one is trying to measure one’s heart and hence the feelings that it embodies. Deep, aint it?

You have a blog where you write short stories. How different is writing a novel from writing short stories on a blog?

Very different. Short stories are like... Short! A novel can go on and on... You have to understand how every character thinks and acts and justify that.

But yes, it is more fulfilling.

You are known to finish with happy endings in your short stories. Can we expect a happy ending in this novel?

Well, answering that would be giving away too much. All I can say is, no one and I mean no one, not even my regular readers could have predicted the way this novel ends. And I can easily say that the people who read this novel will be mighty pleased at the end of it.

What do you do when you are not writing novels?

Currently I am getting a degree in European Management from Germany.

I have an MBA in International Management from MDI, Gurgaon. I have an Engineering degree with Mechanical Engineering as my majors from Sardar Patel College of Engineering, Mumbai. I have also worked with Siemens before. This is beginning to sound like a job application!

What is the age group you are targeting at?

I do enough of Segmenting, targeting and positioning in my marketing class to think about it right now. I would say this book is aimed at everyone who loves a good story.

When did you write the novel?

I don’t remember when I got the idea of writing ‘How I got’ but I remember that I started writing on 13^th April 2009. I finished around half of the book before getting into MDI. The rest, I completed in MDI.

What were the challenges you faced?

To justify Pritha’s character, I had to understand how girls think. And as you might know, that can be more difficult than understanding calculus.

Also, the course of International Management in MDI can be very taxing. Most days you just get to sleep for 5 hours. Writing a novel through MDI was extremely challenging. There was a time when I felt that I will never be able to complete the novel. I wrote around 50% of the novel in MDI during lectures, seminars, lunch hour, brushing my teeth etc .

Getting the book published was also difficult. But luckily for me, editors at Pustak Mahal read my manuscript somewhere and requested for me to send it over to them. Obviously, like in any creative endeavour, there have been fights between me and the publisher over creative differences, the look of the cover, the price etc. Sometimes we fight just for the sake of it, it feels like we are a middle aged married couple sometimes...

What is the price of ‘How I got my girl back...A nerd’s guide to dating’?

Traditionally, Pustak mahal charges slightly higher than its competitors. The higher pricing is justified by the Quality of their publishing. Still, I fought to bring the price within the affordable range. I would like to believe I have succeeded. The book is priced at Rs.125 for paperback.

Any messages for the readers...

Just one - Get Nerdy! J