Author Parekhit Bhattacharjee is a writer and storyteller dedicated to capturing the emotional landscapes that people often struggle to articulate. His work delves into the nuances of longing, memory, and the quiet dignity of survival, finding profound meaning in the silence of ordinary lives. Drawing from a multidisciplinary background in communication, music, and photography, Parekhit brings a unique sensitivity to rhythm and atmosphere in his prose.

In this exclusive interview, we dive into his distilled micro-stories, his fascination with the unsaid, and the creative journey behind his book, Things We Never Said.

Dr. Neel: Your book, Things We Never Said, is built around silence and the emotions that people often struggle to express. What drew you to explore the power of the ‘Unsaid’ in your writing?

Parekhit Bhattacharjee: I have always been interested in the distance between what people feel and what they can say. Some of the deepest emotions do not appear in conversations at all. They live in pauses, in hesitation, in the way someone looks away, or in the sentence they almost speak but hold back. Over time, I began noticing that these moments stayed with me longer than dramatic declarations. An apology that never came, love that was never confessed, grief that was carried quietly, or a truth that arrived too late. As I wrote more stories, I realized they were all connected by this emotional silence. The people and settings were different, but each character carried something unspoken. And that became the heart of the book.

Dr. Neel: Your multidisciplinary background in communication, music, and photography gives your prose a unique rhythm and atmosphere. How do these art forms influence the way you construct a story?

Parekhit Bhattacharjee: Communication taught me clarity. It taught me that if something matters, it must reach the audience without unnecessary noise. Music taught me rhythm, silence, repetition, and emotional pacing. A story also has a tempo. It needs moments where it builds, holds back, and finally releases. Photography taught me framing. It made me pay attention to light, distance, stillness, and the emotional power of one visual detail. Sometimes a character’s hand on a table, an empty chair, or a fading name on a desk can say more than a full page of explanation. All three disciplines influence the way I write. I often think of a story as a photograph with movement inside it, shaped by rhythm and held together by clarity.

Dr. Neel: This book is described as a collection of micro-stories and lyrical short prose rather than a conventional short-story anthology. What inspired you to choose this distilled and intentional form of storytelling?

Parekhit Bhattacharjee: A large part of my writing journey began with micro-poetry on Twitter, when the platform allowed only 140 characters. That limitation became an unexpected teacher. It forced me to say more with less and to trust suggestions rather than explanation. Over time, brevity became part of my natural style. I became interested in how a short piece could still carry a complete emotional world. The challenge is that every line has to matter, and every word must earn its place. At the same time, the form allows the reader to participate. What is left unsaid becomes part of their own interpretation. I did not want these stories to feel incomplete. I wanted them to feel distilled, as though everything unnecessary had been removed and only the emotional core remained.

Dr. Neel: The collection spans themes such as love, grief, queerness, war, labour, memory and survival. How did you decide which emotional landscapes to include in the book?

Parekhit Bhattacharjee: The themes came naturally at first. I was not working from a fixed plan or deciding that one story must be about grief and another about identity. I was writing towards people, emotions, and moments that stayed with me. As more stories came together, I noticed patterns. Many of them were about people being overlooked, misunderstood, or forced to carry something quietly. Love, labour, grief, memory, queerness, war, and survival may seem very different, but they are all connected by the way people try to live with what has happened to them. Once I saw those connections, I became more intentional about shaping the collection. I wanted the emotional range to be wide, while still making the book feel like one continuous conversation about dignity, silence, and being seen.

Dr. Neel: Many of your stories are set in everyday places like classrooms, train stations, hospital rooms, cafes, and village roads. What is it about ordinary settings that allows extraordinary emotions to emerge?

Parekhit Bhattacharjee: I think ordinary places allow emotions to appear without announcing themselves. A railway platform can hold reunion, abandonment, hope, and regret at the same time. A café can witness love, loneliness, cruelty, and violence while continuing to serve coffee. A classroom desk can carry a memory for decades after the people who carved their names into it have moved on. I have always been drawn to places people pass through without looking closely. They may seem ordinary, but once you stay with them, they begin to reveal their lives inside them. Extraordinary emotions do not always need extraordinary settings. Most of our deepest experiences happen in familiar places, during routines we barely notice. That contrast interests me. The world may look unchanged, while someone inside it has been completely transformed.

Dr. Neel: The book suggests that these stories are meant to ‘accumulate’ emotional weight when read together. Could you explain how you approached structuring the five thematic sections to create this cumulative effect?

Parekhit Bhattacharjee: The stories were not meant to sit beside one another randomly. I wanted the book to feel like an emotional journey, even though each piece stands on its own. The five sections move through beginnings, becoming, love and misunderstanding, the realities of the world, and finally what remains. The early sections hold discovery, identity, and possibility. The middle sections move into relationships, misreading, social pressure, labour, and survival. The final section carries memory, aftermath, and emotional residue. The aim was for the stories to deepen one another. A small silence in an early piece may feel different after the reader encounters grief, violence, or loss later in the book. By the end, the collection has hopefully built a larger emotional landscape from many brief lives. The accumulation matters more than any single explanation.

Dr. Neel: Your writing pays close attention to people who are often misread or overlooked by the world around them. Why is it important for you to give literary space to these quiet, ordinary lives?

Parekhit Bhattacharjee: I have always believed ordinary lives become extraordinary when we look closely enough. A watchman, a labourer, a goldsmith, or someone waiting at a tea stall may appear unremarkable from a distance, but each person carries memory, sacrifice, humour, fear, and hope. Growing up, I moved cities often because of my father’s work. Every new neighbourhood meant learning people again. I think that made me more observant and more curious about lives beyond my own. Writing allows me to pause beside people the world often moves past too quickly. It is not about turning them into symbols. It is about giving their inner lives the same attention literature has traditionally given to more visible people. Their emotions are not smaller simply because their lives do not make headlines.

Dr. Neel: Readers often seek plot-driven narratives, but Things We Never Said invites them into a slower, more reflective reading experience. What kind of reader journey did you hope to create with this book?

Parekhit Bhattacharjee: I wanted the book to ask readers to pause. These stories are brief, but they are not necessarily meant to be rushed through. I hoped each one would create a moment of stillness before the reader moved to the next. The journey is less about following one continuous plot and more about entering different emotional lives. Some stories may offer tenderness, others discomfort, grief, surprise, or quiet recognition. Together, they invite the reader to look more carefully at people and at the silences within their own relationships. I hope the book feels intimate rather than demanding. It does not try to provide easy answers or complete closure. Instead, it leaves room for the reader’s memories and experiences to enter the stories. The journey continues partly within them.

Dr. Neel: If readers finish Things We Never Said carrying one lingering feeling or realisation, what would you hope that emotional echo to be?

Parekhit Bhattacharjee: I hope they carry a little more tenderness towards other people. What we see on the surface is rarely the whole story. A person who appears distant may be grieving. One who seems ordinary may be carrying an extraordinary history. Silence itself may contain love, fear, dignity, or pain that they have never found the words to express. I would also hope readers become more attentive to the things left unsaid in their own lives. Perhaps there is an apology, a confession, a thank you, or an expression of love that should not be postponed forever. If the book makes someone pause before judging, notice a person they might otherwise overlook, or say something they have been carrying quietly, then I feel it has done what I hoped it would.