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Nowadays I try and skip reading the newspaper, or even catching the news on TV. Somehow, I always stumble across the most depraved faces of humanity on the news.

The latest was a four-year old girl who went to a big hospital in India because of a gall-bladder problem. After the operation she developed other problems, so her parents got her scanned. Result: Post-op, one of the kidneys of that tiny child is missing: stolen by the monsters in white coats that prowl about some of the hospital corridors in India.

When writing, I am fascinated by this side of human nature, one that thinks nothing of robbing a child of an organ. I try and explain what makes a perfectly normal man a monster, or whether some monsters are born that way?

Some of my friends tell me that my writing tends towards the morbid, but for me it is a search for light amid the darkness. It is a deep-seated desire to figure out the nature of evil, and to really, really decide whether the existence of evil, of suffering is actually necessary, so that good can exist.

Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

I appreciate comments, and I always visit back. If you're having trouble commenting, let me know via the contact form, or tweet me up @damyantig !

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4 Comments

  • damyantig says:

    Cothebadger, while my heart goes out to those affected, I find in the case of these shootings there is also a case of systems failure: the boy was disturbed, just like other such shooters were, and still managed to get access to a gun. I can think of some places where this would have not been possible.

    But the why of incidents like Illinois would never cease to haunt me.

    May god grant strength to the friends, relatives and parents of the people who were taken away in this horrific tragedy.

  • damyantig says:

    Katie, yes, I sometimes feel like I really, really need to figure it out.
    And then I see someone doing something out of a plain goodness of heart, totally unselfish, and I feel, I don’t know, somehow vindicated.

    Being a human being sometimes puts me to shame, and at other times leaves me elated!

  • cothebadger says:

    I could say the same thing about the murder at Northern Illinois University here in the US. Five left dead with the killer’s suicide on top of that. What drives people to do such things?

    A fraternity brother was among those killed. I didn’t know him personally, but we are still connected by the bonds of our fraternity. It’s awful.

  • katiesmith says:

    I can appreciate your need to figure out the nature of evil. It’s an ‘itch’ of mine too. I think a part of me thinks that if I can learn to identify it, to unmask it before it has a chance to harm an innocent, then we can stop it…impossible I know…but that itch begs to be scratched;)