The first Book Talk for the academic year 2020-21 was hosted by the Department of English, Cultural Studies and History, CHRIST Bannerghatta Road Campus. on 31 Jan 2020. The Book Talk began at 5.30 P M with more than 117 participants. Dr. Santosh Kumar welcomed the guest, Neel Mullick, and invited him to talk about his debut book, Dark Blossom.
Neel Mullick started with the initial stages of the writing process. Reflecting on a period in his life that was not the greatest—between September and October of 2018—Mullick observed that he has felt like the universe was not reciprocating and that he was expecting a lot from life. It was during the time he started writing the book, Dark Blossom. It is written from a woman’s perspective. One of these protagonists is a psychologist.

Some readers have observed that the novel is a psychological thriller and some people consider it as a romantic novel. Apart of all these, empathy is what the book talks about. All the three characters in the novel are protagonists in their own ways and the author does not relate to any of the characters. He shared how he learnt a lot about psychology from all these characters. He said that he didn’t have the idea to write a book. But, gradually, as it happened and he started narrating the chapters to his family, and they liked it. Mullick also talked about the research he has done on certain things such as the importance of having an editor, how to publish a book, the psychology of the characters etc. As a business student, when the draft was ready, marketing wasn’t a big task for him. But since it was his product, he researched a lot about all the possible ways of marketing the book.
He has touched on all aspects of book writing from the early stages of writing to the publishing stage.  The second part of the session was interaction with the audience where the author answered to the questions posed by the audience.