Nitish Bhushan

Technology has pervaded into lives so much that it easily plays a non-linear role. A single social media post can reach millions within hours. It can go viral, influence public opinion, damage or enhance reputations, affect stock prices, and spark social movements. If you remove technology, the way we know it, from the equation, we would be like fish out of water.

I wanted to explore through my characters and plots and sub-plots the interplay of our desires and ambitions in the context of this ubiquitous presence of technology around us. It doesn’t matter if it is intimate like dating apps or institutional like cyber security, or pervasive like AI. Technology today impacts our relationships more than we know it.

The more we depend on technology, the more vulnerable we seem to become. Through my LSB Trilogy, I explore these vulnerabilities, the moral dilemmas they create, and the complex ways in which our relationships intersect with technology.

The inspiration came from the damage we can do to ourselves and the people we love, while being cavalier in our digital interactions on dating apps. The misuse of these platforms is so widespread that people with genuine intentions have emerged deeply scarred while using match-making apps.

Losing money to an online scam is one thing; it can be earned back. But when someone wins your trust and exploits it later along with your emotions and innocence, the scars run much deeper and often last far longer.

Through Love Swipe Blackmail, I wanted to explore how technology can amplify the insecurities, misunderstandings, and unresolved emotions that already exist in our relationships. In the novel, the danger does not come from a stranger on a dating app. Instead, a seemingly harmless action on the app sets off a chain of events when someone from the protagonist's past spots him there and exploits his presence. The story examines how, in a digitally connected world, our online actions can intersect with our personal histories in unexpected and often unsettling ways.

I usually begin with the plot, but at the heart of that plot is always a human conflict. I don't see technology itself as the source of the ethical dilemma. Technology is a tool. The real dilemma emerges from how people choose to use that tool. Do they allow it to amplify their desires, insecurities, and ambitions? Or do people consciously prevent technology from amplifying their desires, insecurities, and ambitions? What are the motivations, desires, fears, and vulnerabilities they bring to it?

I must add that AI is an exception. AI is a tool with a mind and agency of its own, even if it is limited compared to us. It is possible that AI can actually engineer, shape or distort the desires, insecurities, and ambitions of people themselves.

The antagonist challenges me the most. It is because they are not necessarily inhuman or bad. But their motivations make them arrive at decisions that oppose the protagonist and drive conflict.

Left to themselves, they are often intelligent, and capable and worthy of love. The real work is not in making them evil, but in making their choices understandable, even when those choices stand in direct opposition to the protagonist.

For the first part, Love Swipe Blackmail, I did not have to dive deep in understanding the tech (dating apps). The goal was not to describe the tech or its backend per se. It was more about the use of a dating app by the protagonist in pursuit of what felt was important to them; the dilemma it created, the challenge that followed and the fallout that engulfed all – a human story. But I had to run a few thought experiments on clearly defining the motivations of the antagonist.

As for its sequel, Shadow Play: Love and Blackmail, those who have read it, really liked how the complicated topic of cyberattacks and cyber-defence was broken down, to make even the most complex tech sound readable and simple. So, this is where I carried out a lot of research to understand technology. Of course, human emotions and motivations played an even deeper role here, but it was relatively easier to build on the motivations that were on display in the first part.