Shweta Taneja | Shweta Taneja

July 21, 2015June 16, 2016

Dona Paula and her lovers

Seven kilometers from Panaji, Goa’s capital city, as the moonlight hits the crashing waves at the rocky Dona Paula beach, an apparition rises, floating to the shores, crying in its anguish. She’s a lady, stately and elegant, wandering and lost, gliding on the rocky shores of the hammer-shaped headland that divides the Zuari and Mandovi estuaries, the two major rivers of Goa. She’s naked and wears nothing but a shiny pearl necklace that glitters around her neck. Her long hair whip and gasp, constantly in motion, like the waves she glides on. She walks up the steps, reaching the viewpoint so popular with tourists during the day, and cries out in pain, a silent scream that dissolves in the crashing of the sea.

Two whitewashed statues, ravaged by the salty air, stand by the bay. Even through the corroded marble, the two lovers look away, one to the east, one to the west. I imagine Paula to be a soft spoken, polite and cultured Portuguese. The official story says she was part of an extremely affluent family, the daughter of the Portuguese Viceroy of Jaffnapatnam, in Sri Lanka. Her family arrived in Goa in 1644 which is when she married Dom Antonio Souto Maior and became Paula Amaral Antonio de Souto Maior. She was a kind woman, who helped the villagers and worked for the betterment of the local peole. So much so that when she died, the fishermen renamed their village after her. Her tombstone, says the same version, lies in what is now the official residence of the Governor of Goa, at the westernmost tip of Dona Paula. In the Chapel at the Governor’s Palace at Raj Bhawan, she lies. There on her tombstone, is an inscription in Portuguese by her inconsolable husband, who begs those who might read it to pray for the salvation of her soul. Which makes me question. What would such a kind hearted, generous lady would’ve done to need the blessing of salvation from strangers till eternity? What crime has she committed that she hasn’t been able to find peace in more than three hundred years?

(image source)

Continue reading “Dona Paula and her lovers”

July 17, 2015September 28, 2018

How creating Anantya helped me find my freedom

The plotlines of most action flicks, are all about the hero. The hero rocks the roads, chases goons, tots guns, fights for justice, sows wild oats with white girls, and then heads back to home, to his heroine. All this while, this heroine, the girl, pines away back at home or sits pretty in a café (usually alongside a swimming pool for some reason), waiting for her hero. The only time she’s outdoors, she’s either surrounded by other girls, or is with the hero, or is getting raped or attacked by the goons. The message is loud and clear: The streets are unsafe for an Indian woman: If you’re out there alone, you will be slaughtered, you little lamb.

As a girl who grew up in Delhi, I was fed this message by family, society, school, college and onwards. Every time I walked on the streets of the capital city, as a teenager, as a working woman in her 20s, I had to constantly fight butt slaps, boob pinches, stares and hoots and whistles from strangers. Every time a violent act happened, I was told to not walk alone on streets, to wear looser clothes, not stare back and scream, not confront, not act, but be passive. For that’s how a woman should behave. Wait for someone else, a hero, a guy, the government or the police to react to the aggression that happens to her, to save her. An Indian woman is supposed to be passive, silently take on violence if given by her husband or in-laws, or ask for help from the boyfriend or police or government when faced from an aggressive stranger. Most of all, a woman is supposed to protect herself from all of it, to keep indoors, to make friends carefully in case they turn out to be rapists.

With Anantya Tantrist, the tantrik detective of my latest novel, Cult of Chaos, I decided to take all of these years of imbibed and heard and oft-repeated Indian values of passivity, decorum, rules and ethics meant for women and flip them, turn them on their head. Just to see what happens to the society in the world if I do. For speculative fiction gives you that freedom, to extrapolate, to try and do things differently, make new rules and new societies, explore gender roles and beliefs about gender. And I took it.

Anantya as a result, became a complete opposite to the restrictive idea of an ideal Indian woman.

First of all, she is always in the middle of action, she speaks her mind, there’s no passivity when it comes to her, in fact passivity bores her. She is boisterous, angry, spews gaali, smokes beedi, drinks hard stuff like a fish, hangs out on the streets with all kinds of things and species, doesn’t come home till wee hours, has crud in her kitchen, can’t cook to save her life, but can wield a boneblade to save another’s. She has unapologetic one night stands with all kinds of supernatural species, wears chappals and goes to parties and doesn’t know what a ‘date’ is. Continue reading “How creating Anantya helped me find my freedom”

July 14, 2015September 28, 2018

Infographics of world’s spoken languages

I’ve been researching on infographics and though I’m not usually a let’s simplify the-message-kinds, that is how it seems the world is going.

So it was a pleasure when I found this beautiful infographic created for South China Morning Post, on my timeline the other day. I shared it immediately, but wanted to keep it here, on my blog, to see, ponder on and know how languages travel through the world and through our heads and kind of change us in little ways. And how powerful that is.

“There are at least 7,102 known languages alive in the world today. Twenty-three of these languages are a mother tongue for more than 50 million people. The 23 languages make up the native tongue of 4.1 billion people. We represent each language within black borders and then provide the numbers of native speakers (in millions) by country. The colour of these countries shows how languages have taken root in many different regions”

See in detail, on the SCMP website

July 11, 2015September 28, 2018

Donate a book to kids. Here’s how

For those who might know me, know that I love gifting books as well as getting books as gifts. I also carry a dream within me, to create libraries for kids, places they can just come and sit and browse and wonder in the world. In schools, orphanages, communities, apartment complexes, everywhere, free libraries. So with all my heart, I would like to tell you about Pratham Book‘s lovely new initiative Donate-a-Book. (As they so well put it, drum roll please). In a blog on Pratham Books, the lovely team writes:

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‘Donate-a-Book‘ is a unique crowdfunding platform that enables non profits, schools and storytellers to raise funds for books to help India’s children read.

The platform connects those who need books and those who want to help bridge the gap. From a school for children with special needs to a Reading Champion who wants to start a library in her hometown, Donate-a-Book will create awareness about these campaigns and help raise funds to supply books from Pratham Books in multiple Indian languages.

If you are an organization/individual who wants to get books to the children you work with, get started on the Donate-a-Book platform.

Join us, as we start a Donate-a-thon to get 50,000 books in the hands of thousands of children by 14th November 2015, Children’s Day. Currently, there are 30 campaigns that you can donate* to – from schools, non-profits, learning centres and champions. Find a campaign that resonates with you and help them build a book bank!

Hear their appeal, help them in the initiative! Donate to get a book in the hands of a child. Donate to make sure kids and adults continue to read books. Donate, now.

July 5, 2015June 16, 2016

Get termed geek and non-intellect in same blog. Check.

Aaand it’s done. Polka Cafe, who’ve made a mark with listicles around books (read here, here and here), have included this one in a listicle of interesting comic geeks that live in Bangalore. Not only that. This is what they say about Cult of Chaos: Her novel ‘Cult Of Chaos’ is about a female tantrist, that has some great tones of feminism and underlying political tones, masked well by humour and imagination.

(Hops up and down with sheer glee).

And they call me non-pseudo intellectual. Oh man! This also reminds me how I fought Thejesh, a dear friend and all round tech/geek-support and coolaid, who was the first one to call me a ‘geek’.

‘Of course I’m not! They’re supposed to be like techie or something,’ I had cried all those years ago. I bow down to your infinite wisdom, T 🙂 And here’s a photo of us in a Comic Con in Bangalore, on my first book launch ever: Krishna Defender of Dharma (he’s the one in black, extreme right).

Ahh, memories. Like scattered stars they are. And yes, I am a geek. (Eek).

July 1, 2015September 28, 2018

Yes, Androids dream of electric sheep

There are some books that haunt you as soon as you see them. That’s what happened to me with Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? The title itself, a question, started to haunt me, giving me psychedelic images of possibilities, before I even picked the book up.

It’s written by amazingly creative Philip K Dick, an Amreekan author. It’s a classic now (it was written in an era long, long ago: 1968) and has been reprinted and republished and torrented billions of times.The book leaves you with many other questions. Questions on what’s real, what’s a droid, and how do you live in a world where both these boundaries are increasingly getting blurred. It’s a rather short novel, a mere 200 pages but it leaves a mark on you. I hogged through the book, hungrily lapping it up, saddened when it ended. My life emptied as if I’d just had a breakup. Like someone addicted, I found the Hollywood version, then read about fan posts on Reddit, or where ever. In other words, it took me months to get out of the hauntedness of the book. It’s title however, still sends me in a freeze, wondering about creative possibilities.

I still think about the bots around me, about their feelings, and about their dreams. I wonder what kind of images flash in their head when I’m not around, or when I’m abusing them by clicking, ticking, swiping, wiping, throwing them. What do cellphones and laptops, televisions and fitness bracelets dream of? And all this just because of the title. So when I came across this art project by Google Research, I was astounded. They’d visualised what I’d been imagining all this while. Their image recognition software, which can detect, analyze and auto-caption images, simulates the human brain. In a process they’re calling “inceptionism,” Google engineers went on to see what this fake brain dreams of. It’s happening, screamed my brain. (Read what Google Researchers are doing).

And then I came across another art project, inspired by the Google one on Twitch.tv, a site I’m getting increasingly addicted to. Made by a couple of PhD students from Ghent University in Belgium, this project livestreams what a AI hallucinates. You can tell it what to dream about by messaging on the forum (pineapple, dragons, throne, spider web, anything) and it shows in the stream in a bit. I spent a whole day with a window of this awesomeness open on my screen, spellbound, in love, gasping for breath, for possibilities. So I had to share some craziness with you all. Go on, sink your time. Be goggled.

Watch live video from 317070 on www.twitch.tv

Someday, I will write a science fiction about these dreams. Someday.

June 26, 2015September 28, 2018

NDTV Gadgets on the tech stuff I need to write

As part of my work, I’ve been writing on consumer technology for four years now with Mint but didn’t really think on what kind of technology I used to write these articles, books and keep in touch with various things I do. Not until Gopal, the editor of NDTV Gadgets, wanted to feature me in NDTV Personally Tech. Here’s the interview.

In our weekly column Personally Tech we talk to people from all walks of life to learn about the apps and gadgets that they love and can’t live without. Technology has changed the way we all live and work, in myriad ways.

This week, we caught up with author and freelance journalist Shweta Taneja who talked to us about the gadgets and apps that she swears by. As an author, Taneja has a special interest in weaving myth and occult into the fiction she writes. She tells the stories of ghosts and monsters and demons through novels, stories and comic books. Her latest book Cult of Chaos is a urban fantasy story about a tantrik based in Delhi.

But at the same time, Taneja is a techie who loves experimenting with apps and gadgets to see how things can go wrong with them, and tells us that she can’t imagine her life without her smartphone. Read on to know more about her favourite apps and gadgets.

Describe your technology setup – what computer/ phone/ tablet/ camera/ gaming console/ other gadgets do you use and why

Shweta Taneja: Most of my day is spent on my MacBook Air on which I can be found hunched, furiously typing or fussing over. It is lightweight, portable and has a great keyboard, something that really helps considering I spend more time typing away than eating or even sleeping. I also have a Lenovo desktop with a 27-inch monitor, because when I’m editing, I need a bigger screen to work.

For reading, I have the first generation Kindle, and I sometimes read my own books on it while I’m working on them, to get a fresh perspective. Other than that, I have a Google Nexus 10, which I’m not too happy about in terms of performance but I like it because it’s handy to view comics in as well as see videos. My LG Google Nexus 5 is my life and is never too far away from my hand. It’s useful for work and for entertainment, or taking photos.

What are three apps (mobile/ tablet or PC/ Mac) you couldn’t live without and why?

Shweta Taneja: The most important app is an Internet browser. I use Chrome on my Nexus 5 but am not very happy with it, so I might switch to another one if I find a good alternative. When I’m writing, I am also reading online, either an out of print book from Archives.org, or an article or a folktale or myth on Wikipedia. So the browser is very important for me as a writer. I also love Instagram and PicsArt. PicsArt is the best way to create collages and for sharing, I find it easiest to post on Instagram.

The most used app is probably Gmail. I use my Gmail account for all my official communication, with editors, publishers, agents or for my freelance work, with startups or NGOs or doctors.

Which is the one gadget (other than your phone) you never travel without and why?

Shweta Taneja: I definitely can’t travel without my phone. I use it as a camera, for Google Maps, to share photos on the go through Instagram. I use its flashlight when camping, and I love Sky Map to look up at the stars at night.

On holidays, I am never without my Vortex Crossfire binoculars, which are essential to see details on architecture, birds or monkeys.

What is your dream gadget/ technology setup?

Shweta Taneja: I would like to pick up an SLR now since I’m getting a bit better at photography. I am also curious about the iPad and portable keypad combination since I’m a writer and like to write from anywhere really.

How has technology changed the way in which you work?

Shweta Taneja: It has changed everything for me. I grew up using a 286 computer and remember programs being perennially stuck. By college, our machines at NIFT used to run Windows Vista and hang regularly! Laptops today are faster and much more powerful, and this affects all your work.

When I’m writing, I research online, find people/ bloggers/ social media hogs talking about an issue and it’s become much easier to find people, the right people to talk to. As a folklore researcher, Internet has also made it possible for me to have access to books, scholarly articles and information across the world. I have thousands of libraries at my disposal.

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What are the gadgets and paraphernalia you use for writing? Post them in the comment section below!

June 24, 2015June 16, 2016

Why aren’t there more women in comics?

Before you tag this post as that fashionable F-word, hear me out. I’ve been working in comics since a few years now. Much more than their western counterparts, the Indian comic industry is welcoming to both genders, across board. They’re open to story ideas which go beyond fanboy or superhero fiction. I’ve worked on two graphic novels (Krishna, The Skull Rosary), pitched a lot of work and worked on smaller comics and am yet to encounter misogyny or bad behavior of any kind in publishers or artists or other writers. Yes, I do tend to meet a lot of guys who’re into comics than girls, but they’re not necessarily looking out for superhero fiction. They’re looking out for good stories. Still, the industry, the artists, publishers, editors, and writers are mostly men.

Then I’ve been part of the children book industry (my first novel Ghost Hunters of Kurseong is for tweens), which again is teeming with talented writers and artists. This industry, catering to kids of both genders, is mostly female. The editors, writers, artists, are all women.

There are very few overlapping creators (either writers or artists) who do both kinds of work – children books and comics. Now I’m the curious sort and frankly this just doesn’t make sense to me. I mean writers are writers and should be able to write for any medium, right? And illustrators and artists should be able to draw for any medium. So why don’t they? This question irritated me enough to push Comic Con to do a panel on it in Bangalore this year. With me there was Reena Puri, a well-respected editor with ACK Media and Devaki Neogi, who is one of those rare illustrators who draws for international comics. We took the idea apart, thought on it, brainstormed over email about the panel as well as on stage, but couldn’t find any concrete answers on why there is such a gender bias in comics.

The panel even made a journalist write an article on portrayal of women in comics in Deccan Herald:

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Except, it didn’t answer my question. Some of the sort-of answers that I’ve collated from various people (and not necessarily my opinions) are listed below. Poll on them and tell me what you think:

Why aren’t there more women in comics?

It’s easier for women to get into children’s books
Comics are misogynist, made for men by men and women don’t feel welcome.
Women aren’t comic readers so they don’t create comics
Superheroes and sexy women is just not a woman’s thing.
There’s tight deadlines and not enough money in making comics.
Why are you bothered about this question? Go write your books, will you?

Agree with one of them or have a different answer? Add to the comment section below. (Till I figure out how to put a poll here that is.)

June 17, 2015June 16, 2016

Anantya in Business Std, DNA, Telegraph….

Bits more of coverage for Cult of Chaos. Business Standard and DNA ran a preview of my book launch with an interview. DC Books Editors added it into their Editor’s Picks. While this is what Telegraph had to say.

While this was sinking in, She The People, a fabulous website on women achievers, approached me to do an interview.

Female authors in India mostly write about other women and their realistic struggles and you rarely find science fiction novels or murder-mysteries written by women. One woman to break the mould, follow her passion (and some of ours) and put some life into science fiction writing is Shweta Taneja, who recently wrote India’s first tantric-detective novel: ‘Cult of Chaos’ with a woman protagonist- Anantya Tantrist.

Read the complete interview here.

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The blog BooksAllAroundMe suggests a method to read Cult of Chaos and Anantya’s journey:

All in all if you have to read the book, the mind needs to be ready to accept the absolutely unexpected. It’ll throw a reader’s mind off gear with it’s charismatic story telling and an even effective story line. The book scores and relies heavily on ideas which might sound old and obsolete but that is where the boldness steps in and creates an aura of dominance and darkness. Everything is in equal measure and the scales of good v/s bad have been tipped to the hilt. It’s not everyday you come across stories out of the blue and this is one wonder which can leave you gasping for breath. It’s a deep dark temptation with it’s own set of secrets ready to pounce and devour the eager minds. A book with winner tagged in its own rights.If spice is what you were missing in your life get the book and traverse one of the most treacherous and over exciting path of tantrism and dark magic. Let chaos descend on earth and rule your hearts.

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Over at Goodreads, here’s what readers are saying:

“Its a part pot boiler, part feminist, part fantasy and just pure fun.” – Sonali at Goodreads

“Anantya is a revolution in Indian fiction. She’s a tantric, and is pretty unapologetic of everything she does. She has casual sex, smokes beedis, has a foul mouth and a dirty mind too. In which universe would you have imagined that someone like that would be the heroine in an Indian novel? But she’s indeed the prime attraction of this book, you really take this journey along with her (the first-person narrative helping tremendously) and you really root for her. Her fearlessness is something I think will inspire a lot of young girls.” – Uday at Goodreads

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Okay, off to jumping up and down with glee now. If you’d like to pick up the book, order from Amazon or Flipkart.

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Anantya as a result, became a complete opposite to the restrictive idea of an ideal Indian woman.

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Why aren’t there more women in comics?

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