PROFILE OF THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR, SABARNA ROY
Sabarna Roy is a trained Civil Engineer and passed out with a First Class Honours Civil Engineering Degree from Jadavpur University in 1988. He is presently working as Senior Vice President and is in the 25th year of his employment with Electrosteel Group.
Sabarna Roy is engaged in giving leadership to Business Development, Applications Technology and certain key Strategies in the Electrosteel Group.
He has a technical book, titled: Articles on Ductile Iron Pipelines and Framework Agreement Contracting Methodology published by Scholars’ Press in European Union with two of his Co-authors, which have been translated into 8 major European languages.
He has been visiting national and international conferences to talk on various matters concerning ecology and environment. He is a firm believer in Paris Climate Accord and believes in lowering the Carbon Footprint in the industry to reverse the climate change effects on the planet.
He is an active participant in the multifarious activities of International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, Confederation of Indian Industries, Central Board of Irrigation and Power, Indian Geographical Committee of International Water Resources Association, Calcutta Business School, Engage India, and JIS Group of Institutions.
Sabarna Roy is an author of critically acclaimed bestselling literary fiction of six published books. They are: Pentacles; Frosted Glass; Abyss; Winter Poems; Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018, and Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020.
His 7th book: Fractured Mosaic will hit the markets in February 2021.
His literary works have been published by Leadstart Inkstate, Mumbai.
He is a Goodreads author with present rating of 4.05 with reviews and ratings in excess of 2,000 and on Amazon, he is rated between 4 and 5 with reviews and ratings in excess of 1,750.
He has been covered by all prestigious national and international media including The New York Guardian, Nigeria Tribune, Kathmandu Tribune, Financial Nigeria and The Guardian Post, and he is on Wikipedia
He was an invited speaker on the opening day at the Noida International Literary Festival 2019 and a panelist at the Tata Steel Literary Meet on the opening day at a session, which discussed the Dark Side of the Mind.
He has been awarded the Literoma Laureate Award in 2019, Literoma Star Achiever Award 2020, Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018 won the best book of the year 2019, the A List Award for excellence in fiction by the NewsX Media House, Certificate for The Real Super Heroes for spreading a spirit of positivity and hope during the COVID-19 Pandemic from Forever Star India Award 2020, and the Certificate for Participation in the Indo Russian Friendship Celebration 2020, the Literoma Golden Star Award 2020: Lifetime Achievement, and the Certificate of Appreciation for featuring in the Hall of Fame of Literoma International Symposium on Literature & Festival 2020.
Sabarna Roy will be awarded the Times Eminent Writer of the Year award by The Times of India Group in Kolkata in February 2020.
Sabarna Roy’s Publications
Literary Publication
1. Pentacles
Pentacles comprises one long story and four short poems by Sabarna Roy. The work delightfully bridges the gap between the mundane and arcane writings of today and provides an interesting, yet intellectually stimulating, treat for the discerning reader.
New Life is a long story written from the perspective of a successful adult whose mother had deserted the family for another man. The teenage angst and the scars it has left behind on the psyche of the protagonist are subtly reflected in the character. The different elements and characters of the story are beautifully interwoven to produce an intense and compelling story of an adult haunted by the trauma of being deserted by his mother. The work is interspersed with thought-provoking views on issues like love and socio-economic conditions in India.
The traditional rhyme and metre dominated poems are on love, loss and longing. Unshackled by the bonds of rhyme and metre, Sabarna’s free verses evoke the stark reality of urban life, hitting you straight in the guts. The use of everyday urban imagery adds to the appeal of the compositions. The concrete prison of urban life and the unfulfilled desire to escape to a simple life is aptly brought out in The Tower. The other poems of the collection are more biographical in nature with the protagonist being the member of the fairer sex. The free verses sketch out their life story with its attendant pathos, poignancy and logic. The best part of all the compositions is that the reader will definitely identify with the poet and will, in one form or other, have similar stories to narrate.
2. Frosted Glass
Frosted Glass comprises one story cycle consisting of 14 stories and one poem cycle consisting of 21 poems.
The stories, set in Calcutta, bring to the fore the darkness lurking in the human psyche and bare the baser instincts. The stories, compactly written and marked by insightful dialogues that raise contemporary issues like man-woman relationships and its strains, morals and ethics, environmental degradation, class inequality, rapid and mass-scale unmindful urbanization, are devoid of sentimentalisation. The result is they remain focused and move around the central character who is named Rahul in all the stories. We encounter the events that shape, mar, guide Rahul’s life and also the lives of those around him, making us question the very essence of existence. Rahul symbolizes modern man; he is not just one character, but all of us rolled into one. The story cycle stands out for two reasons – its brilliant narrative and the dispassionate style with which betrayal in personal relationships and resultant loneliness has been handled.
The poems weave a maze of dreams, images, reflections and stories. They are written in a reflective and many a time in a narrative tenor within a poetic idiom. The poems are inseparable in a hidden way and are magically sequenced like various kinds of flowers in a garland or chapters of differing shades in a novel. Calcutta features in some of the poems like the looming backdrop of Gotham City in a Batman movie.
3. ABYSS
Abyss is a full length play in two acts with an interval in between. It is essentially a racy crime thriller full of gritty suspense. Act one builds up slowly to result in a crescendo of conflicts between personalities and ideas finally to end with an unnatural death before the interval. Is it a suicide or a murder? Act two evolves through a series of incisive interrogations to unravel the truth, which is deeply disturbing and affecting. As the play unfolds into a very well-crafted situational thriller, underneath is the debate about using land for agriculture or for industry, the ethics of a working author and the nexus of a modern state all wonderfully enmeshed into its storyline and the personal lives of its subtly etched out characters. The highpoints of the play are its central conflict between a mother and her daughter and its female sleuth – Renuka.
4. Winter Poems
The poems contained in this collection, Winter Poems, by Sabarna Roy were inspired by the relatively mild season that prevails in Kolkata following the season of festivities, the Durga and Kali Puja, and portray myriad shades of human life. Some of them deal with the imaginations of death and home while still others the idea of loss and coming to terms with gradual wasting of life. Many aspects of human life and commonplace human impulses are examined and brought to life through a range of imaginations and varied metaphorical associations. The poems are sure to delight the readers and generate a whole range of emotions among them.
5. Random Subterranean Mosaic 2012 – 2018
Roy’s Frosted Glass did very well in the market. His Pentacles and Winter Poems, did so well that Amazon Audible converted them into Audio books by the Australian young jazz singer, Colin Newcomer. Abyss was on the bestseller list at the Oxford Bookstore at the Kolkata Book Fair in 2014.
Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012–2018 is a kaleidoscope of random, yet mysteriously structured to a pattern, fiction, semi-autobiographical, and autobiographical pieces, covering poems, short-shorts, opinions, observations, and conversations.
Roy says: “All my life I have struggled to achieve an optimal lucidity in language and expression that is required to demystify the hidden self and selves and agendas. I hope I have achieved this in a large measure in this fifth book of mine!”
6. Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020
Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020 comprises a novella and a poem cycle.
The novella, in the background is a sweetly evolving dialogue between a step-father and a step-daughter, and in the foreground it is a dissection of ideas pivoted around dualism of human life by discussing literary characters like, Lolita, Humbert Humbert, Anna Karenina, and Nikhilesh; thought-leaders like Hegel, Marx, and Heisenberg; political phenomena like, the Bolshevik Revolution; schizophrenia, love as an idea, and the secret love story of T S Eliot; and ecological phenomena like, marine conservation, and all of this is done in a unique way, almost as if we are engaged in a conversation with the author, to make us realize the plurality of life and accepting it to find peace and harmony in life.
The poem cycle is an anthology of 20 sharp edged poems that excite and thrill you as you are encapsulated in the whirlwind of the confrontations between the poet and his alter-ego.
7. Fractured Mosaic
Fractured Mosaic is in essence a sequel to his fifth literary work, titled: Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018. It is yet another kaleidoscope from his arsenal that will take the readers to a mesmerizing whirlpool. Most of the works published in this book have been earlier published in reputed media houses as musings of an author; in this book they have been brought together for the benefit of all the readers. After the smashing hit of his earlier six master pieces since 2010, he has been constantly writing in the format of a journal to imitate how the mind works in real life.
Technical Publication
Articles on Ductile Iron Pipelines and Framework Agreement Methodology (ISBN: 978-613-8-91928-5) authored by Sabarna Roy, Rajat Chowdhury and Basanta Bera and published by Scholars’ Press, Stabu Street 15-141, Riga, LV-1010 Latvia, European Union.
The books attempts to elaborate the use of Ductile Iron Pipelines in Irrigation application, Gravity Sewer application, Wet Ash Slurry application, Restrained Joint application and use in Steep incline and Hilly terrain, Life Cycle Cost Analysis between various kinds of pipe materials, Feasibility of Recycled Waste Water for Irrigation, a deliberation on Framework Agreement Procurement Methodology and Emerging Challenges in Pipe Distribution Network based Irrigation Projects.
Source: Literary Insider