Dear Readers of The Nidhi Kapoor Story,

In my opinion, a book is like any other product. Or a service. You pay a certain amount of money to buy / avail it and you put in a certain amount of time using / consuming it. And in return, you expect a certain amount of satisfaction. Money and time are tangible, I can measure them. Satisfaction is not. I can’t measure it.

So before you commit either of the two, I thought I would make you aware of a few things about The Nidhi Kapoor Story (#tnks). This could also act as a sort of a disclaimer. Disclaimer in terms of what to expect from the story.

The story is very important to me
#tnks is one of the most important projects of my life. For a lot of reasons. For starters, this is the first time when I’ve taken a sabbatical. And I know what I want to do with it. This is the first time I am trying to write a full-length fictional book. This is the first time I am going all-in with a project. This is the first time when I am actually trying to work towards a long held dream.

The promise
I made the promise that it would be worth your time to read the story. And I would do everything to fulfill the promise. I hope you’d like what you read. If you do, please let me know. Nothing works better than feedback from people who’ve liked what you’ve written.

However if you do not like #tnks, its even more important that you write to me and let me know that you did not like it. Each input helps me improve. The best way to reach me is on email. For a faster response, please ping me on twitter.

As good as I am 
#tnks is going to be as good as I am. Not more. Not less. I am putting my best foot forward with it. I am putting have put in 6 18 very important months of my life on this project. And this is a very visible project. I do no want to fail at it. Someone once said, “I am scared of failure.” So am I. I will do whatever it takes to not fail. I even wrote this on a tiny post-it note and stuck on the wall in my room.

But all said and done, the story would be as good as I am. It will be bound by my imagination.

English as a language
I am not a native English speaker and I am not good with complex constructs of the language. Please expect a lot of mistakes in grammar, sentence formation, tenses, verbs etc. I am trying hard to improve but I think I have hit my limit. I may not be able to come upto the standards of literary geniuses and The Grammar Nazis.

So, while reading it, if you find that I have massacred the language, please excuse me.

Original Story
The Nidhi Kapoor Story is an original piece of work. I hate the very concept of plagiarism.

Years back I maintained a fan-site for Lucky Ali. One fine morning I saw pieces from the text I wrote on that website appear on front page of Delhi Times, verbatim. Without any attribution or credit. I couldn’t take on the might of TOI and I couldn’t do anything about it. For them, it was one of the million pieces of texts that they print on their paper. For me, the website was my life. I had put in everything I had into that website. And I felt cheated. I felt dejected. I felt as if I was robbed of everything I had. It’s an extreme reaction and the blog meant that much to me.

Of course, its all in the past now. But it taught me a very important lesson. It taught me how it felt to be on the receiving end.

Thanks to that incident, I have never even thought of copying from someone else. And I am proud to say that the Nidhi Kapoor Story is my original work. The story, characters, plots, locations, everything else is obviously inspired from real-life people, real-life incidents and media that I have consumed over the years. If #tnks looks similar to something else, I assure you that it is purely coincidental. And in any case, please do let me know if you find similarities.

I guess that’s about it for the time being. Hope this post helps you make an informed decision about #tnks. If you choose to read it, I would love to know what you thought of it. And if you dont, I would love to know why you didn’t. Please do write in.

And, like always, thank you for reading this.

Regards,
Saurabh Garg
06 Oct 2013, Mumbai
27 Sep 2014, Mumbai

P.S.: This may not be important for anyone else, but for me, its very very important. Because I would be custodian for your investment. Its my moral responsibility to ensure that your time and money is spent well.