Kamalika Bhattacharya is a poet, author, and storyteller whose work beautifully captures the depth of human emotions, relationships, and the lingering echoes of love. Having written poems, short stories, and editorials for various publications, she is known for blending passion, drama, and heartfelt storytelling. Her books, including Smitten by Love, Sacred, and Residue, invite readers to reflect on love, loss, healing, and the emotions that continue to shape our lives long after moments have passed.
The Literature Times: What inspired you to write Residue, and how did the idea for this collection first take shape?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: Not the fireworks, not the big declarations. The stuff that stays behind after the moment passes. The coffee mug they always used in your cupboard. The song you can’t skip. The way you still check the weather because you used to text them about rain.
Love is what the emotion etched into your habits, your language, your body. Even when the heat cools, the residue lingers. Sometimes it’s comforting. Sometimes it’s heavy. Sometimes you only notice it when you try to wash it away. This itself says a lot. I just unfolded a fewer incidents that narrates this emotion.
The Literature Times: The book explores the “seven stages of love.” How did you define these stages, and what do they represent?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: Love doesn’t arrive suddenly, it unfolds each stage , strips something from youand leaves something behind. You just learn to survive them. Hence, each narrative is different here. They are stories of different people experiencing the seven stages of love.The truth of seven stages is that you don’t necessarily move in order. The seven stages begins with attraction, attachment, love- the trust, friendship, worship , obsession and may conclude with separation.
The Literature Times: The line, “We don’t move on from love. We move with what it leaves in us,” is deeply moving. What does it mean to you personally?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: Seven stages of love is a story about the conversations you don’t finish, the apologies you give years too late, and the quiet evenings when the past sits across from you and refuses to leave.The ache hidden in each story will tell you that it’s about what stays and what we learn to carry. This may be true for many, as all love stories are not fairytales.To understand the seven stages is to understand why abandoned love cuts so deep. Because when someone leaves, they don’t just exit a relationship. They interrupt a becoming. And the stage at which they walk away determines what part of you they take with them.
The Literature Times: Many of your stories revolve around unspoken emotions and unfinished conversations. Why do these themes resonate so strongly with you?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: Unspoken emotions sit in your chest like dust you can’t see but always feel. And unfinished conversations are worse because your brain keeps trying to close the loop. It replays the last sentence, writes the reply you never sent, imagines how it could have ended. Love leaves that behind a lot. The “I should’ve said…” and the “we never got to talk about…”. Neither of you ever got the ending, so the story just pauses mid-air.Those bits don’t fade fast because there was no release. No yes, no, no goodbye. Just a door left ajar. That’s itself gives a reason to capture such state of mind into words.
The Literature Times: How do your experiences as a poet influence your style of storytelling in prose?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: Poems get to say the things we fumble in regular sentences. A fewer sentences, rhythm and we could land. Poems strip everything down to image and rhythm so that the feeling hits before the logic starts.
The Literature Times: Your writing often blends passion, vulnerability, and introspection. How do you balance emotion without overwhelming the reader?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: Balancing emotions is basically learning how to feel fully without letting one feeling drive the whole car. It’s not about shutting emotions down. It’s about not letting passion burn everything, or vulnerability drown everything, or introspection freeze everything. When you can put words to it, the emotion stops running you. Passion gives you the loud line.Vulnerability gives you the soft line. Introspection gives you the line that makes sense of both.
The Literature Times: Which story or chapter in Residue was the most emotionally challenging for you to write, and why?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: Trust. Because every close bond gave me a lesson. The emotional challenge I feel is we all broke our rules for someone and in turn they broke us. That probably remained the biggest challenge.
The Literature Times: What do you hope readers will discover about themselves after reading Residue?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: Residue in love is that sticks around even after the big moments are gone. Sometimes residue is soft. Like warmth from a fire that’s out. Other times it’s sticky. Like questions you never got answers to, or things left unsaid. Residue can look like love, but it’s really the echo. Love moves forward. Residue just… lingers.
The Literature Times: Looking back at your previous works, Smitten by Love, Secret Sernade and Sacred scoop , how do you feel your writing has evolved with Residue?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: Residue is a collection of short stories of different people experiencing the seven stages. Every story encompasses different emotions and plots allows them to erupt volumes of thoughts that characters go through. Exploring human relationships is truly intriguing. With each book the power to look into the depth of each layer has certainly surfaced stronger.
The Literature Times: What can readers expect from you next, and are there any new themes or genres you’re excited to explore?
Kamalika Bhattacharya: —————
