Writing Advice | Shweta Taneja

January 17, 2013June 16, 2016

What’s your Facebook face?

Mine is a cheerful character who travels a lot, is a net activist, discovers and does new things in the city she lives in and makes happy, smiley faces for the camera. Oh and is also a newbie writer fast crawling up the ladders of success.

On Facebook as in public, most of the people who meet me don’t see any other side. This is my social side. This is the side I will show to a stranger, to a colleague, and even increasingly to most of my ‘friends’.

The Facebook face (let’s call it the FF now) is the side other people see when they view my online and offline life. This is the face they judge me by, measure my success, compare themselves to me, get jealous, get gleeful, compare again and wish they had a different life.

I know for sure not because I am a megalomaniac, but rather because I do this when I see other people’s Facebook faces. I see their cushy jobs, the hobbies they love doing, the fun they have in the exotic destination they are at, their fat paychecks and beautiful living spaces. I see books from authors who seem to write even while they sleep or have a full time job (and do such a great job of it). I see authors who have become a success story without any efforts (seemingly to me) and everytime, my heart sinks. A notch and then a few more notches. I feel I am leading the worse life ever, my luck is down and everybody else but me gets the best pieces of the chocolate cake (I seem to get the baddest one as well as the pimples!).

And then I stop. I take a deep breath. Then I smile. At myself and my petty little insecurities. I know Facebook faces are just faces. Like happiness is just a phase. Everyone gets down, everyone’s life is hard and full of all kinds of smelly bullshit. Everyone treads through it, aimless and desperate. And then everyone comes up, victorious with spurts of success and happiness in between.

If only my Facebook Face could become my real one. Wouldn’t life be just a breeze then?

This blog is not just a whim. There are studies being done on how people behave on Facebook. If you are interested in these studies, check out the links below:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/17/facebook-dark-side-study-aggressive-narcissism

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/facebook-psychology-7-reasons_n_1951856.html

I just feel that the Facebook face is nothing new. Humans have a tendency to show their best side when in public. Period. What do you feel? What’s your Facebook face? How different is it from you, deep inside or even the superficial you?

This post started after conversations with different friends. One told me how people never put the wrong things, the tragic things that happen to them on Facebook—like deaths of loved ones, or disability or accidents. Another girlfriend I was travelling with, wanted me to take a stunning photograph of hers which she could put online to make her social circles jealous. Oh well, deep down we are all the same I think.

Awesome Image credit

December 11, 2012June 16, 2016

Fall of the great Indian editor

I gifted a recently launched book to my husband who loves to read breezy novels. This one was published by a top publishers in India and written by an established author who happens to be a famous Mumbai socialite. After reading, my husband pointed out how a character in the book who was supposed to stand on the dais in a scene magically enters the event a few paragraphs later. (No, it wasn’t a fantasy novel).

Another newly launched book which I am reading currently (based on a famous mythological character) is completely riddled with typos, repeat sentences and just lazy line editing. I apologetically wrote to its debut author on how my reading experience was being destroyed by the typos, spelling mistakes and loose paragraphs. He was kind enough to respond to me almost immediately expressing that the typos had cost him not only bad criticism but also a prestigious award. The publisher had outsourced the copy editing job and the freelancer made a complete mess of it. Now the publisher is re-publishing the book after editing it again.

There’s a lot written and spoken about bad writing and falling standards of writing in Indian English. Every time I go meet a publisher or an editor, invariably the discussion includes the kind of manuscripts that they get in their inbox every day or about the falling standards of writing in Indian English (cheap books, cheap bad writing). However, none of them seem to mention a need for a good editor.

Editing is a hard, frustrating, badly paid and anonymous job and I really bow down to those in the line. You are not recognised by anyone in media or publishing (you haven’t written the thing, so what’s your job again). And the everyday stress of typos is bad for your skin and back. But that doesn’t excuse the publishers from putting badly edited books on the shelves, less the top publishers of the country. What could be the reason that editing standards are falling down in spite of electronic editors, Microsoft Word’s automated correction and other technological help (or handicap as some editors I know might call them).

I can think of two . One, that most publishers get away with paying woefully low salaries (half of editors in the Media industry) to their editorial teams. Some of the small publishers outsource line editing and copy editing to a low-paid, newly out MA (English) graduate to save money. The result is a badly constructed book which is then blamed on authors (since editors are seldom named except in Acknowledgements from the author and who reads that anyway?)

Second, even in big publishing houses where the editorial team is a good 5-15 size, the weeding job is usually done by the lowest and the newest. Copy editing is given to the most inexperienced of the editors when you need a lot of experience to weed out a page. That’s because weeding is considered a low-level job by experienced editors, who would rather move up the ladder to plot editing and managing of a team of editors.

Or could it be that there’s just too many books and the editorial team is too small and the number of books to take out each year, just too high? Editing is hard and has to be done in layers – multiple readings of the same paragraph till words start to swim in front of your eyes. If there are a lot of titles in a week, the editor will get exhausted.

I cannot think of any other reason for the falling standard in Indian books in English. Can you? Do email me if you know of something. I would love to include it. Till then, here’s a celebration of typos (all copyrights are included in the cartoons). Enjoy madi!

November 7, 2012June 16, 2016

Gaiman’s 8 rules of writing

Without any godmother/father or anyone to guide, writing a book has been a process of running, walking, crawling and creeping through a huge black room without any walls and a floor which is potholed. It just wouldn’t have been possible if I hadnt had the wonderful world of Internet by my side, and endless gyan from my godparents and guides—authors I love, their writings, blogs, interviews and how to write action sequences (which I am superbly bad at). If it hadn’t been for occasional flashes of their torches, my writing would have continued to fumble in a black hole.

At moments I am down, one of my fave newsletters is the Brain Pickings which gives you inspirational two-bytes to keep you writing and doing stuff. Today I share with you one of my favourite writer’s thoughts on how to write taken from the website. I do not religiously follow Neil Gaiman’s blog, one of the most popular and successful writers in Fantasy today, but I did nod at EVERYTHING he suggested down here.

1. Write

2. Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.

3. Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.

4. Put it aside. Read it pretending you’ve never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is.

5. Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.

6. Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving.

7. Laugh at your own jokes.

8. The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.

I nod at everything in enthusiastic agreement. Believe me, this is how I finished my second book two months before I had thought I will finish it. I just kept on writing. I am at number 4 in the sequence and taking a break. After that, I will start with the editing and fixing of the book. Thanks Gaiman, for saying exactly the thing needed to me to keep going!

October 31, 2012September 28, 2018

Working for giants

Advertisements have always fascinated me. They reflect desires, cravings and thoughts of the people that they are aiming at. Ads, all be it print, or television or online, show who we want to become, what we aspire towards. I was browsing in the morning through the Thursday edition of my loo-paper, Bangalore Mirror, when I came across these two advertisements in their recruitment section:

Now, let me add in a disclaimer before I continue – this blog post is NOT about the companies to whom these adverts belong to. It is just about what I thought about when I saw these ads.

Both these recruitment ads target middle class professionals (in Bangalore) with something that they would want: Work with a Giant or a Global Organisation or an MNC. It’s something that Indian professionals aspire towards—a big, fat, well-known giant of a company. To work for a big organisation which has gazillions of employees. And maybe big, fat, giant cheques too. Bigger, the better. Big is good, giant is simply spectacular. It’s about feeling good that your name comes before a well-recognised brand, an MNC/foreign brand. Working for a Giant is about aspiration. Like in the second ad which shows a young woman and says: My parents are proud of me (because I work in an MNC. Rhymes, too!). Indians want to work in big places. Bigger the company, better it is for one’s ego. Bankers prefer to give loan to people who work in these giant organisations, thinking it might be safer to. If you tell a banker that you work on your own, the assumption is, I don’t know how much you earn, so I won’t give you a credit card.

In the pubs, over a drink, you hear proud, arrogant conversations like: I have just joined (add big brand MNC name) company. If the person sitting opposite doesn’t work for a giant, she answers apologetically, that she’s on her own, or works for some relatively unknown mid-size company. Come to think of it, the person might be saying that one is a VP or CEO of an organisation (big giant ego-tags instead of big giant company tags).

Ironically, I have never heard these conversations veer towards what these two people might actually be doing in the big or small company. For what kind of work you do, is not that important, not for parents or friends or relatives. There are two things that everyone wants to know, actually three: your giant position, your giant company’s name, your giant paycheck.

An NRI lady, who has returned from the USA to open an NGO in Bangalore, noted the question that people ask her in this city: Where do you work? (as opposed to What do you do?) Since then, I (who work on my own and I am NO giant) have noticed what people ask me as conversation starters: Where do you work? AND Who do you work for? When I tell them, they lose interest. It’s as if the servile mentality which started with the 200 years of British rule still continues in this city (I work for the British government as a clerk, said proudly). But, what about the kind of work you do in it? Are you a clerk in a big org?

I just remembered an incident which happened to me at the passport office in Bangalore last year. The IAS officer (the final one who took the passport for renew) asked me where I worked. When I replied, on my own, a conversation of assumptions developed. His assumption was: Oh, so you are a writer, eh? That’s not a career/profession. He was sure about it. When I asked why, his answer was, it doesn’t pay much, does it? Then it’s just a hobby and not a career. With that he dismissed me. As if, I, as an un-earning member of the society, who does uneconomic things like writes blogs all day for free view and stories for pittance, is not doing something worthwhile, for a simple reason that I don’t contribute to the economics of the society. That’s the aspiring middle class of India today. That’s most of the people you meet in Bangalore. They want giant jobs, giant salaries, giant cars, giant houses to appease giant egos.

And I am a little ant in a world of giants. I like it that way.

October 29, 2012September 28, 2018

Sachin tattooed on my skin

Real life story of a ten-rupee note…

The note, recovering from the washing machine fiasco

Recently, a ten rupee note was discovered, dried, wrinkled, faded and folded in a washed jeans pocket by this writer. In exchange for the security of a dirty, almost-empty, much-travelled wallet, the ten rupee note revealed its yet untold story:

‘Atleast I would not die in a pocket, forgotten, slowly decaying into mulch,’ it says, thankful. For that is what it thought would be its end when it had been travelled from a sabzi-seller to a forgetful human hand who placed it in a rough, but a pocket of a pair of jeans.

‘That’s always a little dangerous, a pair of jeans. For you can be easily forgotten and then before you know, you are in the washing machine, screaming to be let out. But who will listen to you? The credit card receipt, the coins and the scribbled on notes, all are drowning too and too busy trying not to be shrunk and converted to mulch,’ it told this journalist.

Now lying in the comfort of a wallet, it hopes its next destination is someplace exotic.

‘You never know where you will land up,’ it says, ‘it’s not like I can control my exchange from one hand to another or in any way control my destiny. Humans use us, millions of us, everyday, callously passing us on from one to another for things they don’t need. We don’t have a say in where we want to go. Did a note ever refuse to go into a rickshaw puller’s rough hands? Or a filthy hand of a garbage collector, his hand squeezing me so tight that I thought I would disintegrate? Or even a greedy, soft hand which keeps me under a mattress for years, without air or light? Sometimes we are even buried alive and forgotten until someone changes upon a treasure. No, we are nothing but things for humans.’

This tenner was created some five years ago (it doesn’t remember its exact birthdate) and thrown into the overflowing (with its type) economy of India . It already looks like it had been through some rather rough times (other than the washing machine).

‘I am not a big number. There are millions of tenners like me out there. I am exchanged fast, without any hesitation. But it still hurts if someone abuses me and calls me chillard. I….’ the note stops, overwhelmed with feeling, ‘All the tenners want is some respect from humans. There was a time when my ancestors were put in iron safes by clean hands with a photo of goddess Lakshmi next to it. We were celebrated, we were worshipped. We had a festival to our name.’

But these are just stories that the ten-rupee note has heard from its elders, who have heard it from theirs. Now, times are quite different. Now, these stories have become myths, told to each other to provide comfort for one’s purpose-less, disrespected life. Tenners are nothing but short change now and that’s the dark reality that each of them face every day in their lives.

‘Not even the hundreds, no mam! It’s only the five-hundreds or the thousands who are coveted now and get the privilege of a pooja. Though I hear,’ he whispers, carefully looking around the wallet, in case there’s a big note lying around (There’s not. I am a writer, my wallet is always empty), ‘that the thousands might all be recalled you know.’ Recalling is the worse nightmare of any note, of any denomination and age. Something worse than death.

‘To be torn, burnt and destructed. To simply cease to exist,’ it shudders. Every year, thousands of notes of all denomination are recalled by the RBI, after they have been abused, become torn, unreadable and broken by rough, hungry exchanges between humans. Then they are burnt without any ceremony or prayer for peace for their services to humankind.

‘That’s the least your race can do! Respect us for our service,’ it shouts, angry, ‘Humans have a saying that money makes the world run around. Show me where I was ever running things around me?’

When I ask it about the scribble on its side, with faded ink, it smiles again. ‘It was in Kerala, it says, proud that it has travelled so far. (If you can’t read it in the photo, the writing says: ‘Sachin Tendulkar Fans Association, Kerala’) I was donated by a fan of Mr Sachin Tendulkar himself, to a diligent volunteer of the STFA who then tattooed this on me. It was my proudest moment. Tell me how many tenners you have seen, who can boast of a name of a celebrity on their skin?’

When I tell it no one, except for it, it says, its eyes glazed with memory, ‘Those were the days, madam. Those were the days.’ It entered the emptied wallet, glad for space for a while and waited, for a new adventure. In some ways, thankful that atleast travelling won’t stop, even when the economy tanks. It’s only a tenner after all.

Writer’s note: I have tried to quote the tenner as closely as possible. As promised to it, the ten-rupee note has been carefully ironed, as new, and sent off to a new travel. May it never be recalled.

PS: This post is dedicated to my brother, along with whom I have counted innumerable number of money for the temple that my grandfather was a treasurer for. And this post is dedicated to my darling grandfather. The note brought a smile, a tear and lots of memories. Over the years, I have seen many interesting scribbles on notes, from association markers, to life quotes, to love proposals, to messages to each other. I have always loved reading them and imagined their stories. This time around though, the story that came to me was this note’s. Fascinating!

October 26, 2012June 16, 2016

The end is here!

120 days of daily of writing

One year of planning

1,17,835 words

132 pages of words

472 kb size of a word document

Like I always believed. Numbers don’t tell you anything about the story. It is a beautiful story, btw, this one, of magical pubs and other places, creatures, people, humans and blood and violence and humour and lots of other things. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s Bollywood masala and sweat, all mixed up.

It’s my second novel. It’s a fantasy book, the one I always wanted to write. The one I wasn’t sure I could. When I wrote the words ‘The End’ many emotions rolled inside of me. Elation! Ten years ago, I thought I couldn’t even write an article. Two years ago, I was convinced that I couldn’t write a novel, but wanted to try anyway. Tears of having to say bye to characters I have cared for since the last whole year. What happens to them after I write ‘The End’? Their stories are not complete, not by far. They are still in my heart, thinking up of new adventures. I don’t know if my body will have the strength to write more stories about them. Or if I will move on to others.

This novel is double the size of my last—not only in words, but also scope and imagination. It has made me bleed with sweat, frustration, tears, emotion, crazy depression and even hallucination. I have loved it and hated it. I was never bored in its vast middle, always living in a weird rollercoaster while writing every word of it (as my family and friends will tell you) . As I say good-bye to the characters I have created (did i?), nurtured, become friends me, I feel tears in my eyes. I am so proud of all of them. I find them funny, frustrating and fun. They are my gang, my friends. And the adventures they have, are mind-bogglingly crazy! Unlike my relatively boring life.

This is not the end really. It’s just one-third of the work, as I experienced in my debut novel. This would have to be send through the vast drums of editing, rewriting, editing and some more rewriting. Novel writing is for madwomen. Finally, I know a profession, a career, a passion which suits my particular type of madness!

For now though, I am ready to party! And then move on…for a while atleast to the next fun thing.

–THE END–

October 23, 2012September 28, 2018

Kali and the patriarchal fears

She’s naked, covered with ashes, her hair matted with snakes in them, a garland of skulls and freshly cut heads around her neck. She laughs like madness herself, dancing to the chaotic rhythm of death, dragging a corpse behind her which she licks with her blood-red tongue from time to time.

Now imagine meeting her in the middle of the night on a dark lonely path. Here’s an old description – a dhyana mantra of Guhya Kali, one of the forms of Kali. The tantric text is called Tantrasaara and is written by Krishnananda Aagamavgisa.

“She is dark as a great cloud, clad in dark clothes. Her tongue is poised as if to lick. She has fearful teeth, sunken eyes and is smiling. She wears a necklace of snakes, the half-moon rests on her forehead, she has matted hair, and is engaged in licking a corpse. her sacred thread is a snake, and she lies on a bed of snakes. She holds a garland of fifty heads. She has a large belly, and on her head is Ananta with a thousand heads. On all sides she is surrounded by snakes….She has a snake-girdle and an anklet of jewels. On her left is to be imagined Shiva in the form of a boy. She has two hands and has corpses for ear ornaments. Her face, decked with bright new jewels, shows she is pleased and calm.”

She’s not likeable. Hell, she’s scary. In Hindu mythology, she’s nature— something that causes death and destruction, something that’s wild and raging, something that’s unpredictable and uncontrollable. Her hair are wild and open (mark of undomesticated woman or someone who doesn’t belong to a husband-ry), she dances naked outside. Both being naked and being outside is something that is forbidden to the female gender in our society.

You wouldn’t invite her into your homes (unlike the more demure Lakshmi, goddess of wealth or Saraswati, goddess of knowledge). She’s wild, frantic, out of control. She’s nature in its more fearful, horrific form, an earthquake, a hurricane, a tsunami. Her world is the one where a dog butchers another and all of them perish.

No wonder the patriarchal society, the cultured society, the rule based, control-based society, you and me, tremble at the very thought of her. You see, the patriarchal society is all about control – through rules, rituals, and routines. Do this, and you will get this. Do this and this and you can prevent death and disease from happening to you. If there’s a death in a neighbour’s house, don’t go there, for you might catch that disease.

If there’s a garbage-collector coming near you, step away, even though he takes your own garbage. Don’t touch him as he touches something filthy and you will become filthy too. Oh, your left hand is by default filthy. It wipes your bum after all!

Both genders are mired in rules, rituals and routines in this society – all in an effort to control life, prosper and save oneself from death. A man should control his estate and his woman, a woman should control her body and keep herself inside the house, under her husband. Both should stick to the codified laws of dharma created by some rishis a few thousand years ago. People most probably too stuck up to let their hair down.

Since she’s uncontrollable and fearful, like everything else, she’s associated with tantrics, who all mainstream Hindus see as charlatans, black magicians or simply people who are evil or threaten the codes of the patriarchal society. Like Bhairava (Both Kali and Bhairava feature in one of the most beautiful stories I have written in my upcoming graphic novel The Skull Rosary) she’s a goddess who belongs to the fringes of the society. She and her worshippers are associated with blood sacrifice, sometimes even human sacrifice. S

he’s the patron of thugs and witches—both of whom threaten the society’s status quo. Patriarchal society intellectuals have alternatively looked at her ugly form (by societal standards) as filthy, fearful or downright disgusting. That’s the reason you would not see rich merchants in Calcutta or Gujarat worshipping her. She’s of the night, meant for those who roam about the shamshaan in the night. She’s death itself.

If you worship her, you are either crazy or inconceivably evil. You are definitely not a well-wisher of the society. You are an outsider. Her image is the opposite to the mainstream, civilized society. She distrupts society. Personally, she inspires me and pushes me to write. She is the destruction and inspiration of creative energies itself and my heart beats in tandava with every step she takes.

I wrote this blog long time ago, but am sharing it here to celebrate the upcoming Kali puja. May you be as understanding of the darkness as you are of light.

Enjoy some of the visuals I have collected of her—most of them are drawn by painters, created by sculptures in the last 1000 years.

Goddess Kali in arts

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I will do another blog post on the Bengal traditions of her as soon as I find time to study that! Did you like this blog?

October 10, 2012June 16, 2016

Villains are not evil, just different

Don’t you think so? I have always enjoyed figuring out my villains and why they do things that they do. Are they inherently evil or are they just misled? What is it they are fighting? Because fight they do, constantly, against social norms and status quos.

During writing Krishna, I met many villains, each with a different point of view, with a twisted (not necessarily a bad twist) philosophy and something ‘bad’ that they would have done. Krishna would punish them, decisively, unquestionably, with righteousness. He had to, since he was restoring dharma, a philosophy to prosper civilization, bring justice and equality. Personally, I am not sure how much I would agree to his ideology but I know there are millions in India who would still consider his path the status quo.

For me, each of these so called villains were point of views – different from Krishna’s ideology—which come in the mythology. They are punished, sometimes undeservingly, but their philosophies are never explored more in the story.

Take Kansa for example. Is he really the evil uncle? Or is there more to him? By not respecting Indra, is he actually fighting a war against the hierarchy and unfairness of gods who have labelled him and the demon clan inherently evil? Are these not his gods, but of others who are alien to him? We never find out his point of view, just broken parts of it, as the mythology is not about him but Krishna.

Then there’s Jarasandha. He’s a good king, his kingdom is prosperous. His rule is just. He’s powerful and has a mighty army, so refuses to bow down. Why does Krishna want him dead? The given reason is that he has captured princes of other kingdoms after defeating them, but frankly even in the Purana, it doesn’t feel like a good enough reason. Krishna devises a convoluted, sneaky way of killing off the mighty king. I wanted to find out more about Jarasandha, but unfortunately, yet again, our mythology is more focused on Vishnu’s avatar.

In both these cases, are villains just the other point of view, a view which might be an alien culture, a different way of civilization or simply the unknown? While writing this book, it was difficult for me not to ask these questions. I hope these cracks show through in the book as well. Have you read the book? Did you see these cracks?

All sketches are drawn by Rajesh N and are copyrights of Campfire

October 9, 2012September 28, 2018

The Kejriwal character

Since the name Kejriwal might get this blog banned without reason, let me start by saying this post is not about politics. It is about imagination.

As an exercise to improve the characters I write about, I have been looking at various people when walking on the road, or in news and creating their stories. See that old woman, in khaki? She just condoled someone who heard about a death in her family. See that little boy with her granny? He hates how the granny calls him by his nickname and he doesn’t like his granny’s spidery, wrinkled hands when she feeds him. In my stories, these people flower (or wither) so to say, becoming something more dramatic, sometimes sinister, sometimes vulnerable. it’s like a flash of an idea, a storyline attached to a face and I encourage it.

I got a flash of a character when I saw Arvind Kejriwal’s interview in one of the media channels (weren’t all of them interviewing him?). It’s not the real him of course, just a figment of my imagination. So hear it out.

Kejriwal is a puppeteer of people. He gets hold of strings which can suffocate those who are corrupt, and then uses those strings to make them jump to his calls or crash down. He enjoys it, just like a cat enjoys playing with mice. Hit with one claw, wait and smile. His smile is not open, but a simple stretch of lips, as if he’s amused by a hen ruffling her feathers (in this case, Karan Thapar was the hen who was interviewing him). The opposite doesn’t matter, it has to crumble in front of the power that the character exudes. Some call him an anarchist. Maybe he’s one. The character certainly looks like he wants feathers and skin ruffled.

As he cuts a wire in a middle class household, Kejriwal’s eyes shine with a strange kind of light – you might think it’s the light of righteousness, of conviction that he’s leading the society to a better place. There’s a Pied Piper in him, who will happily play a tune, hypnotise the masses and lead them, well anywhere. And every sheep will follow.

He has the charisma of a leader and he has the self-righteousness. Most of the parties are peeing in their pants looking at him right now and shivering as they wonder what will pop out next from his kittybag—will it be their corrupt name or their son-in-law’s? His power is unexpected and he knows it. His power is not of honesty, it is a power over people who feel dishonest. He’s the one-eyed king in a nation of blind men. He knows it. He will keep his feet on the table and tell you that he knows it and will see you sweat. All the while smiling that closed-lip smile. Can you trust him? I don’t know that yet.

That’s Kejriwal the character who will figure in one of my stories some day. I wonder how similar it is to Arvind Kejriwal the man. What do you think?

September 10, 2012June 16, 2016

At ComicCon with Krishna

I had been living with oodles of butterflies this past few days because of the impending launch of my graphic novel Krishna, Defender of Dharma. For anyone who has written or made anything for public consumption, the living fact of putting something you worked on, which has bits of your flesh and blood clinging to it, to be judged, slashed and made a two second opinion of, is a daunting task. Hence the butterflies.

Andrew Dodd who calls himself the Marketing Wala of the publisher Campfire was a soothing balm on my nerves. He’s fun, relaxed and such good company! The artist, Rajesh Nagulakonda, who frankly should be given way more credit than me for the blue-tinged beautiful visual and poetic journey that Krishna has become. He wasn’t there but we did see a video grab of him looking uncomfortable in front of the camera. He’s completely opposite when faced with a blank paper and pencil. Just like me!

I did something I had never done before except while dreaming in class. I signed my name on copies of Krishna. The oldest buyer I met was in his 40s and the youngest was 5 years old. For the little girl I wrote: Question everything you read in here. Hope it was good advice.

My first launch has made me learn one very important thing. At the end of it, if your friends are not there with you, you sit alone in the car and drive back home instead of heading off to celebrate and laugh. A special thanks to all my friends who were there to make it a memorable buzzy evening for me: Thej, Dilip, Prasad, Kanch, Giraffe, Kanishka, Arundhuti and others—thanks for the wishes, encouragement and time and effort it took you to reach the venue! I don’t know what I would have done without you all! Hope it was worth it for you all as well 🙂

Now time for some pictures and video grabs.

Comical night

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The video is a bit shaky. I will try to get a better version.

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