Year end and so much to be thankful for

Time is a thing of beauty. There are moments it trickles, slows down enough that you can hear your heart beat, beat by beat. There are flashes when time zooms, taking you on a journey full of laughter and glee. That’s how my 2016 went. Flew by, waited tiresomely and pondered. So I just want to list down the things I was thankful for.

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Made new friends

Beginning of the year, I shivered and learnt from Booker Prize winners at Chichester as a Charles Wallace fellow. Gave a talk in London. Worked on three books simultaneously, editing two and writing a new one. Learnt how empty it feels when you finish a project you’ve been with for years. Wandered in loneliness and heard myself. In the process, hung out with new people and made new friends.

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Learnt about failure

The book I started, refused to come to me. I lacked the skills for it and had to park it. I learnt to breathe and learnt about patience. I learnt to let things go. Attended a wedding in the middle of July in Delhi. Roamed on the streets. Found bugs with nephew and saw them through a lens so we could appreciate the beauty in their wings.

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Did things new to me

Saw a zebra running wild and a lioness being licked by her cubs. Found how hard it was to plant a tree. Launched a book and became a hybrid author. Started a new book, which I’m halfway through as I write this and am hoping to finish. Joined an ATM line, two days after demonetisation was announced and read a book on my Kindle. Joined two startups as their communication advisor.

All through this, I made many new friends and spent time with my old ones. Wandered the streets, chattered over filter coffee and green tea. Heard stories, nodded in empathy and danced away the nights. I’m so thankful my year went so beautifully.

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As you read this, I’m off somewhere in Madhya Pradesh, with my closest buddies, doing what I do to recharge my creative batteries: Walking, hiking and listen to collective wisdom on the road. I’ll come back with new stories, probably of ghosts, woes to share, ideas to write down and more things to be thankful for.

Have a wonderful year end, peeps.

Read, learn, make new friends, be merry, share laughter with strangers, fall in love, learn a new skill, slow down, get fit, plant a tree and listen to what it says to you. Take your life away from gadgets and make time for the people you love. For we won’t be here forever. And remember to be thankful for everything the universe has given you. Oh, and keep having that tea with Mad Hatter.

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Crowdsourced maps of real places in your favourite books

I’m a literature geek who loves to visit places that I’ve read about in fiction, especially detective fiction.  While in Switzerland, me and my husband (who’s equally crazy about this stuff) made a special excursion up a hill to see the Reichenbach Falls where Sherlock Holmes tussled with Moriarty and fell off the falls. While posing against the  Sherlock dummy placed there for tourists, we thought it should have been Dudhsagar falls if Doyle never wanted his detective hero to come back (for Reichenbach are just not tall enough).

Which is why when I came across Placing Literature where you can map the real places your favourite author writes about, it made me go glee. The website creates maps of literary scenes that take place in real locations. If you’re in a city, you can check on the website and see which all spots were written about in which all books. Each spot also comes with the description of the scene and what happened in the plot there. Since it’s a crowdsourced map, you can make a map on their site by logging in with your Google account. Isn’t it fantastic?
Explore yourselves while I plan out my travel around spots talked about in Shakespeare, Sherlock Holmes or places to visit in New York City.
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5 life hacks for aspiring writers

Want to start on that first book? Aspire to get published? Here are a few tips for aspiring writers that I shared with Writersmelon.

Why do you want to write?

If you want to be a writer, the first thing that you need, which is I think a very individualistic thing, is the desire to write, the passion to create something new, to express a story, a character in a new way. I write because  characters crop up in my head and bang inside, demanding to be let out. I write because it’s addictive and I have no other choice. It’s the highest I’ve ever felt, and also the lowest. It’s hard, but I’m not going to leave it anytime soon.

Once you’ve keyed on this desire, it will drive you through the long, long process of gathering the skills and actually writing the whole thing. Ideas are easy to come by, getting the skill of writing is also not too difficult, but it’s this desire that makes all the difference. This motivation that comes from inside you, will discipline you, make sure you don’t give up halfway and will not let you rest till you complete the creative work. In that sense, it’s an intrinsic value.

A stranger browsing the book. Isn't that nice!
A stranger browsing the book. Isn’t that nice!

Finish that first draft

Don’t let your rational mind take over till you complete the first draft. Write with your instinct, write whatever you see the characters doing, just write without thinking too much. The only thing you can do is be true to your characters. Don’t let your opinion on life and your language leak through into the story, for the readers will know and they’ll not like it. After you have completed the first draft, edit, polish and edit again. Once you think it’s ready to be sent to a publisher, wait for a week. Edit again and send to the publisher. Don’t think of it as a hobby. Think of writing as your work. You have to do it everyday, even if you don’t feel like getting up from the bed. Write everyday, even if you are sad or not in the mood or don’t have time for it or can’t think of a single line to write. Write a portion everyday.

Continue reading “5 life hacks for aspiring writers”

Deal with post Diwali blues by donating

Hope you had a fantastic Diwali. Now add more lights to it by donating. The best way to feel good about yourself is to bring in light into someone else’s. It lifts your spirits up and makes you feel thankful for what you already have.

With this Diwali’s wishes, I wanted to share a few of my favourite places to donate to. Donate to one of these causes, write back to me and I’ll send you a signed-copy of any of my books. In case of How to Steal a Ghost @Manipal, it would have to be an ecopy with a personal email 🙂

Donate. Now. Believe me, you’ll feel great.

Independent Media

Citizenmatters: They are a team of passionate journalists and a long list of voluntary bloggers who want to do good, reveal inefficiencies in the system and make their city beautiful, warm and welcome. I would recommend this one if you’re based in Bangalore. Donate here.

The Wire: A team of fantastic journalists who are coming up with in-depth insight into current politics, culture and our society. Right now, they’re better than any mainstream media. Find here how they’re funded and donate.

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Donate A Book: This is a library crowdsourcing platform through which you can help build a library in a school. The initiative is run by Pratham Books, one of the more innovative children books publishing house and is fabulous. For a book in a child’s hand opens a new world. It allows the child to dream, to think of new possibilities, to know that a different future is possible for her. Give some kids stars, by donating here.

Kalap Trust: Kids of a remote village in Utharakhand are looking for people to sponsor their additional education. This genuine work is done by a friend of mine.  Sponsor a child here.

(images courtesy Kalap)


Know other NGOs doing great work? Comment below and I’ll add them on in a future blog. Till then, keep donating!

 

A million ways to read

Share your book, read an unlimited number of them or just pay for one chapter. E-book publishing is becoming flexible in a bid to suit individual needs

Continue reading “A million ways to read”

Talking about Indian comics in London

I’ll be giving a talk on Indian comics at the Cartoon Museum in London later this week. This post is about how it happened. It’s a good story, do read it!

Early in May I attended a workshop on British comics, full of comic scholars in London, led by the marvellous Paul Williams from Exeter University. There I was, in bustling, sunshine-y London, closed off in a small room with twenty scholars, who had brought along old comics from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 80s – all decades really. We discussed on visual imagery in war comics, what British identity means, and many other important things. And I didn’t miss the outdoors, which says something about the comics, the activity and knowledge that these fabulous scholars presented there. But I digress. What happened in lunchtime is what led to the talk.

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We munched on fried fish, aalo pakoras (you read it right), spring rolls and quinua salad in the pub while talking comics and then headed back to the Cartoon Museum, which is where this workshop was happening. It was a 10 minute walk. While walking back, I happened to accompany Anita O’Brien, the curator at Cartoon Museum and then of course it being comics, I started yapping about my love of comics and how there are so many talented artists doing fantastic things in India and how she should do something about it here in London. She told me she’d commissioned the World War I graphic novel with Campfire. I told her the artist, Lalit Sharma, was a good friend. We found out we knew more than a couple of other artists from the industry.

‘You should do something more on Indian comics here!’ I cried, my head buzzing with ideas.

‘Why don’t you do it?’ she asked, calmly.

‘Me? Do what?’

‘Talk about Indian comics,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ I said, rather eloquently.

And that’s how it happened. Before I knew it, I’d asked Jason Quinn to ask me the right questions in this talk, who was sweet enough to agree. We will talk about comics coming out from India, some of which we love, some which we don’t, swap tales, talk about my work and his and anything else we feel like really. We have the stage after all.

If you happen to be in London and would like to join in the joy ride, come over. It’s a free event and you’ll get to hear stories about comics. What can go wrong with that? All you need to do is register yourself by sending a tiny email to the Cartoon Museum at shop@cartoonmuseum.org to reserve a seat. It can be a sentence long, really. I don’t think they have a word limit to it.

Finally, the moral of the tale (for there’s always a moral): Always walk back from the pub and always yap about the things you love. 🙂

Hope to see you there!

 

 

 

Guest post: Is Vanity Publishing Author Exploitation?

Rasana Atreya is the author of Tell A Thousand Lies (shortlisted for the 2012 Tibor Jones South Asia prize), The Temple Is Not My Father and 28 Years a Bachelor.  UK’s Glam magazine calls Tell A Thousand Lies one of their ‘five favourite tales from India.’ Valley Isle Secrets is her first foray into fan fiction set in the USA. Website.


Vanity publishing has arrived at publishing conferences and literary festivals, and this should be of great concern because vanity publishing is less about emulating trade (also called traditional) publishers, and more about convincing gullible authors to pay for services they do not need. Aspiring authors attend these conferences and festivals. The more they hear about these publishers, the more it gets legitimized in their minds.

You, as an author, owe it to yourself to be well informed. There is plenty of good information available on the Internet. Plenty of bad information, too. Learn to tell the difference. If you want to be a published author and have your book available for sale – either submit to trade publishers, or self-publish. If all you want is print copies of your book, go to your local printer. It works out much cheaper, and you also retain rights to your books. Stay away from anyone who wants money to publish you.

I cringe when vanity publishers call themselves ‘self-publishing’ companies. When you take the ‘self’ out of self-publishing, i.e. you – the author – do not upload the book yourself, it is no longer self-publishing. All that remains is vanity publishing.
I was a panelist on the nuts and bolts of self-publishing on Sept 12, 2015 in PublishingNext, Goa. This post is a combination of my take-away from there (a fabulous conference, btw), my comments as a panelist, and also my own impressions.

It getting harder for UK- and US-based vanity publishers to get naïve authors to fall for their ‘publishing packages’ – which can run into tens of thousands of dollars. This is thanks to activism on behalf of authors by platforms like Writers Beware and Preditors & Editors. As a result, vanity publishers have moved operations to Asia and Africa. That includes India, of course.

Continue reading “Guest post: Is Vanity Publishing Author Exploitation?”

Guest fiction: The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov

Thought should start the new year with something smashing. Here’s a short story by my ever favourite author Isaac Asimov to inspire you (and me) to write some good science fiction this year.

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The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov — © 1980

Murray Templeton was forty-five years old, in the prime of life, and with all parts of his body in perfect working order except for certain key portions of his coronary arteries, but that was enough.

The pain had come suddenly, had mounted to an unbearable peak, and had then ebbed steadily.  He could feel his breath slowing and a kind of gathering peace washing over him.

There is no pleasure like the absence of pain – immediately after pain.  Murray felt an almost giddy lightness as though he were lifting in the air and hovering.

He opened his eyes and noted with distant amusement that the others in the room were still agitated.  He had been in the laboratory when the pain had struck, quite without warning, and when he had staggered, he had heard surprised outcries from the others before everything vanished into overwhelming agony.

Now, with the pain gone, the others were still hovering, still anxious, still gathered about his fallen body –– Which, he suddenly realised, he was looking down on.

He was down there, sprawled, face contorted.  He was up here, at peace and watching.

He thought: Miracle of miracles!  The life-after-life nuts were right.

And although that was a humiliating way for an atheistic physicist to die, he felt only the mildest surprise, and no alteration of the peace in which he was immersed.

He thought: There should be some angel – or something – coming for me.

The Earthly scene was fading.  Darkness was invading his consciousness and off in a distance, as a last glimmer of sight, there was a figure of light, vaguely human in form, and radiating warmth.

Murray thought: What a joke on me.  I’m going to Heaven.

Even as he thought that, the light faded, but the warmth remained.  There was no lessening of the peace even though in all the Universe only he remained – and the Voice.

The Voice said, “I have done this so often and yet I still have the capacity to be pleased at success.”

It was in Murray’s mind to say something, but he was not conscious of possessing a mouth, tongue, or vocal chords.  Nevertheless, tried to make a sound.  He tried, mouthlessly, to hum words or breathe them or just push them out by a contraction of – something.

And they came out.  He heard his own voice, quite recognisable, and his own words, infinitely clear.

Murray said, “Is this Heaven?”

The Voice said, “This is no place as you understand place.”

Murray was embarrassed, but the next question had to be asked.  “Pardon me if I sound like a jackass.  Are you God?”

Without changing intonation or in any way marring the perfection of the sound, the Voice managed to sound amused.  “It is strange that I am always asked that in, of course, an infinite number of ways.  There is no answer I can give that you would comprehend.  I am – which is all that I can say significantly and you may cover that with any word or concept you please.”

Murray said, “And what am I?  A soul?  Or am I only personified existence too?”  He tried not to sound sarcastic, but it seemed to him that he had failed.  He thought then, fleetingly, of adding a ‘Your Grace’ or ‘Holy One’ or something to counteract the sarcasm, and could not bring himself to do so even though for the first time in his existence he speculated on the possibility of being punished for his insolence – or sin? – with Hell, and what that might be like. Continue reading “Guest fiction: The Last Answer by Isaac Asimov”

Horrible plots to avoid in science fiction

Strange Horizons is a fabulous online speculative fiction magazine. I’ve been going there for ages, hogging on the freebies, including fiction, poetry, reviews of new books and articles on fantasy, horror, science fiction and its various sub-genres. While exploring the site, I found this useful list of things that the folks at Strange Horizons have seen too many times in their submissions. Typical plots, story tropes, characters, storylines that they DON’T want to see. I read the whole list and was surprised to find how close I’d come to a few of these typical, boring, done-to-death things, myself. (Red below are my comments.) Listing down a few here which I found particularly hilarious. For more, please head to this page, where they keep adding more tropes.


The following list is an attempt at classifying the kinds of non-horror plots and themes that we’ve received too frequently. Here’s the list:

  1. Creative person is having trouble creating.
    1. Writer has writer’s block.
    2. Painter can’t seem to paint anything good.
    3. Sculptor can’t seem to sculpt anything good.
    4. Creative person’s work is reviled by critics who don’t understand how brilliant it is.
    5. Creative person meets a muse (either one of the nine classical Muses or a more individual muse) and interacts with them, usually by keeping them captive.
  2. Visitor to alien planet ignores information about local rules, inadvertantly violates them, is punished.
    1. New diplomat arrives on alien planet, ignores anthropologist’s attempts to explain local rules, is punished.
  3. Weird things happen, but it turns out they’re not real.
    1. In the end, it turns out it was all a dream.
    2. In the end, it turns out it was all in virtual reality.
    3. In the end, it turns out the protagonist is insane.
    4. In the end, it turns out the protagonist is writing a novel and the events we’ve seen are part of the novel.
  4. Technology and/or modern life turn out to be soulless. (Haven’t we all done this one?)
    1. Office life turns out to be soul-deadening, literally or metaphorically.
    2. All technology is shown to be soulless; in contrast, anything “natural” is by definition good. For example, living in a weather-controlled environment is bad, because it’s artificial, while dying of pneumonia is good, because it’s natural.
    3. The future is utopian and is considered by some or many to be perfect, but perfection turns out to be boring and stagnant and soul-deadening; it turns out that only through imperfection, pain, misery, and nature can life actually be good.
    4. In the future, all learning is soulless and electronic, until kid is exposed to ancient wisdom in the form of a book.
    5. In the future, everything is soulless and electronic, until protagonist (usually a kid) is exposed to ancient wisdom in the form of a wise old person who’s lived a non-electronic life.
  5. Protagonist is a bad person. [We don’t object to this in a story; we merely object to it being the main point of the plot.]
    1. Bad person is told they’ll get the reward that they “deserve,” which ends up being something bad.
    2. Terrorists (especially Osama bin Laden) discover that horrible things happen to them in the afterlife (or otherwise get their comeuppance).
    3. Protagonist is portrayed as really awful, but that portrayal is merely a setup for the ending, in which they see the error of their ways and are redeemed. (But reading about the awfulness is so awful that we never get to the end to see the redemption.)
  6. A “surprise” twist ending occurs. [Note that we do like endings that we didn’t expect, as long as they derive naturally from character action. But note, too, that we’ve seen a lot of twist endings, and we find most of them to be pretty predictable, even the ones not on this list.]
    1. The characters’ actions are described in a way meant to fool the reader into thinking they’re humans, but in the end it turns out they’re not humans, as would have been obvious to anyone looking at them.
    2. Creatures are described as “vermin” or “pests” or “monsters,” but in the end it turns out they’re humans.
    3. The author conceals some essential piece of information from the reader that would be obvious if the reader were present at the scene, and then suddenly reveals that information at the end of the story. [This can be done well, but rarely is.]
    4. Person is floating in a formless void; in the end, they’re born.
    5. Person uses time travel to achieve some particular result, but in the end something unexpected happens that thwarts their plan.
    6. The main point of the story is for the author to metaphorically tell the reader, “Ha, ha, I tricked you! You thought one thing was going on, but it was really something else! You sure are dumb!”
    7. A mysteriously-named Event is about to happen (“Today was the day Jimmy would have to report for The Procedure”), but the nature of the Event isn’t revealed until the end of the story, when it turns out to involve death or other unpleasantness. [Several classic sf stories use this approach, which is one reason we’re tired of seeing it. Another reason is that we can usually guess the twist well ahead of time, which makes the mysteriousness annoying.]
    8. In the future, an official government permit is required in order to do some particular ordinary thing, but the specific thing a permit is required for isn’t (usually) revealed until the end of the story.
    9. Characters speculate (usually jokingly): “What if X were true of the universe?” (For example: “What if the universe is a simulation?”) At the end, something happens that implies that X is true.
    10. Characters in the story (usually in the far future and/or on an alien planet) use phrases that are phonetic respellings or variations of modern English words or phrases, such as “Hyoo Manz” or “Pleja Legions,” which the reader isn’t intended to notice; in the end, a surprise twist reveals that there’s a connection to 20th/21st-century English speakers.
  7. Scientist uses himself or herself as test subject.
  8. White protagonist is given wise and mystical advice by Holy Simple Native Folk. (This one made me laugh my head off. Avatar anyone?)
  9. An alien or an AI/robot/android observes and comments on the peculiar habits of humans, for allegedly comic effect. (Hitchhikers did have a few of these, to wonderful entertainment.)
    1. The alien or AI is fluent in English and completely familiar with various English idioms, but is completely unfamiliar with human biology and/or with such concepts as sex or violence and/or with certain specific extremely common English words (such as “cat”).
    2. The alien or AI takes everything literally.
    3. Instead of an alien or AI, it’s people in the future commenting on the ridiculous things (usually including internal combustion engines) that people used to use in the unenlightened past.
  10. Person A tells a story to person B (or to a room full of people) about person C. (This is so Hercule Poirot in SF!)
    1. In the end, it turns out that person B is really person C (or from the same organization).
    2. In the end, it turns out that person A is really person C (or has the same goals).
    3. In the end, there’s some other ironic but predictable twist that would cast the whole story in a different light if the reader hadn’t guessed the ending early on.
  11. It’s immediately obvious to the reader that a mysterious character is from the future, but the other characters (usually including the protagonist) can’t figure it out.
  12. Someone takes revenge for the wrongs done to them. (Ahem. This was the original Anantya plot, before it became Cult of Chaos. Glad I got rid of it.)
    1. Protagonist is put through heavy-handed humiliation after humiliation, and takes it meekly, until the end when he or she murders someone.
  13. Author showcases their premise of what the afterlife is like; there’s little or no story, other than demonstrating that premise. (This actually is an interesting trope for me. I would love to see Yamraj running it as a business. But again, done quite a lot of times.)
    1. Hell and Heaven are run like businesses.
    2. The afterlife is really monotonous and dull.
    3. The afterlife is a bureaucracy.
    4. The afterlife is nothingness.
    5. The afterlife reunites you with your loved ones.
  14. Protagonist agrees to go along with a plan or action despite not having enough information about it, and despite their worries that the thing will be bad. Then the thing turns out to be bad after all. (Most movies/books of single, white, urban hero. Always wondered why doesn’t he ask the questions?)
  15. In a comedic/satirical story, vampires and/or other supernatural creatures come out publicly and demand (and/or get) the vote and other rights, but people are prejudiced against them. (Sigh. Vampires, in the whole lot, should be banned for a few decades.)
  16. There’s a machine that cryptically predicts the manner of a person’s death by printing it on a slip of paper; the machine is never wrong, but often it’s right in surprising or ironic ways. [There’s nothing wrong with theMachine of Death anthologies, but we’ve seen a large number of MoD rejects, and we’re extremely unlikely to buy one.] hahahaha!
  17. Story is set in a world in which some common modern Western power structure is inverted, and we’re meant to sympathize with the people who are oppressed in the world of the story. [Such stories usually end up reinforcing the real-world dominant paradigm; and regardless, they rarely do anything we haven’t seen many times before.] This one is an interesting tool, and I wouldn’t say not to use it. Especially 1. I want to try it in a story someday.
    1. Women have more power than men, and it’s very sad how oppressed the men are.
    2. Everyone in the society is gay or lesbian, and straight people are considered perverts.
    3. White people are oppressed by oppressive people with other skin colors.
  18. Kids with special abilities are kidnapped by the government and imprisoned and tested in a lab.
  19. The author attempts to lead the reader to think a character is going to die, but instead the character is uploaded into VR or undergoes some other transformative but non-dying process. (Learn from GRR Martin people!)
  20. Someone dies and then wanders around as a ghost.
    1. They meet other ghosts who’ve been around longer and who show them the ropes, and/or help them come to terms with being dead, and/or explain that nobody knows what happens after ghosts move on to the next stage of the afterlife.
    2. They’re initially stuck in the place where they died or the place where their body is. In some cases, they eventually figure out how to roam the world.

Continue reading “Horrible plots to avoid in science fiction”

How do you escape a box created by bots?

When I was little, I used to visit a bookstore in my neighbourhood, stand facing a daunting line up of books in a random alley, close my eyes and just like that, pick up a book, at random, open it on a random page and read the first line that caught my eye. It was the answer to whatever problem or question ailed me at that point of time. I trusted two things in that book. The randomness of life and the collective wisdom that is inside most books, lovingly curated by a bookstore owner. 

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Fact and Fiction, a small bookstore in the corner of the Vasant Vihar in Delhi, opposite Priya cinemas was one such store. Being a wallflower at the time and good at being invisible (I still have that power), I would sneak in, get into the back alleys, pretending the door didn’t exist and pick up a book at random, hungrily flapping its pages for yet another wise answer. These books, picked at random, read without an aim in mind, became advisors and consultants and shaped who I became. Strangers who would just come in my life for one moment and their deed done, vanish back into the folds of mysteries of dark pages. Quiet, understanding strangers, who would suggest without judging, without even knowing all facts, and a split second later, forget they had given such advices. It was how I decided in which direction I wanted my first relationship to go. It was how I learnt that I should do my Bachelors in English. 

Unknowingly to me, these books started to become friends, advisors, consultants and guides–all rolled in one. And instead of just picking up a random page, I started to buy them, read them, page by random page, book by random book. This probably was how the idea of writing books myself planted itself inside me. Randomly, quietly, with a stubborn determination. 

I hoped (or rather imagined) these books had a symbiotic relationship with me. That maybe they too, created with words strung together by an author, and given a mysterious life, wanted to be opened, to be hungrily devoured by another, by me, page by page, to be guides, to create words, to question meanings. 

Growing up, this feeling of magic, of entering a womb or a temple or a dark hole, full of secrets, of unknown possibilities stayed with me. Whenever I enter a bookstore, an ancient one, one that’s a bit scattered, a bit messy, a bit quaint, like an old woman who has forgotten to tame her web-white hair, I enter a magical world of sorts where I know I will find a new friend, a new guide, a new path to walk on. And the wild woods has so many of them. Some of the best authors who shaped me and my voice, have been ones that came to me at random, found in the jungle that is an old bookstore. 

Which is why, a sadness grips me when I hear of yet another bookstore closing down. It’s not that I don’t logically understand, I do. Shopping online is so much more cheaper and efficient and convenient and logical and suited to the notification-hungry, constantly-connected, fast-living, multi-tasking, mutated beings that we’re all becoming. But I just wonder if somewhere in this online world, full of recommendations by friends, personalisations and bestseller lists and hyper-marketing, will I lose Ms Random?

In online bookstores, nothing is left for hubris, nothing to chance or randomness. Instead the bots avoid the accidents, the random chances. Algorithms analyse what you might like, put it in a box, and instantly serve you, like your favourite noodles, satisfying your craving. It’s based on your individual tastes and browsing habits. 

But what if you don’t want to be you anymore? Or you haven’t had a chance to really become one person? Or if you want to be many people together? Change personalities, like a chameleon or your opinions, live in the grey areas where you can’t express what you feel? 

What if you want to head into a new direction, randomly, not look out for things to change you but passively wait, wait for something delightful to fall in your lap? How do you do that online with no spaces for accidents, where everything is codified and left to algorithms which analyse what you might like? Which constantly suggest, constantly try to keep you in the box that they’ve defined for you? How do you escape this box created by bots?

I hope the online world’s future holds some of these answers. Maybe one of the e-commerce giants will give us a brick-and-mortar bookshop to find a random book which we can order online from there. Or can this space, this random storehouse, this blackhole of the unknown, be created on our screens somehow? Can I read a page at random in one of these ebooks?  

Or maybe all of this is wishful thinking. In a world that’s increasingly becoming black-and-white, where no one has patience for nuances or for questioning faith, or for changing minds, or listening to more than a tweet. Where you’re either going right or left on a set path. In this clean cut world, maybe I am only one, a foolish old lady, without a comb, dancing on the streets.