'Me Mia Multiple' - an uncanny love story

Seeking to redefine the word 'normal,' Debashish Irengbam's debut novel "Me, Mia, Multiple," is an uncanny love story of two people, who are likely to be perceived as misfits by the society.
Published by Harper Collins, the book revolves around the lives of a suicidal man who falls in love with a schizophrenic girl, and how their romance unfolds to facilitate their survival amidst the quintessentially judgemental environment.
"I wanted to write a story about two individuals who are considered to be dysfunctional and misfits by the society and what happens when they end up forming a perfect relationship in their own way," says Irengbam.

Having already made six failed attempts to kill himself, Jeevan, who is manic depressive suicidal, fails yet again when a seemingly jolly Mia, ruins his seventh attempt to die.
However, Mia, who is determined to make him live at any cost, is "actually three girls in one."
A patient of dissociative personality disorder, her personality oscillates between three characters: Mia, who is bubbly and eccentric; Tanya, a tomboy, who hates him and wants to pluck him out of Mia's life in any way possible and a slightly nymphomanic Alisha who wants to get into his pants before Mia does.

"The story unfurls when an already depressed guy gets into a convoluted relationship with three girls who are actually a single person and how at the end of it all, they end up filling the gaps in each other's lives in a way that hasn't been imagined before," the author says.

An alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Irengbam is a Mumbai-based scriptwriter who has written for shows like "Adalat" and "Gumraah."
He is currently working on a crime fiction television series called "Agent Raghav- Crime Branch."
Through the medium of this "love story with a twist," the author challenges the conventional definition of what is popularly termed as "normal."
"There's no such thing as normal. Normal is a very relative term. I have struggled to show that two individuals who might be considered to be abnormal by others, are in fact the most normal characters in my story."

"My book shows that is just a term that is used to define sterotypes and that everybody is normal in their own way," he says.
Irengbam's book, which reads nothing less than a blockbuster script, is already up for grabs for movie adaptations.
"We have already started working on the adaptation of the book and are in the process of pitching it to different people in the film industry right now," he says.