Category: Writing Advice

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Time to pitch is now!

 

Finally the day has come. And what can be better than the start of the new year to do something that you have cringed from all of last year? I am going to close Mystery of the Iyer Bungalow (yes, dear readers, it’s still not published. The reason is that it’s still being edited and has not been even shown to a publisher yet). I have begun the process of pitching its manuscript to publishers starting January. I was afraid all of end of last months of 2011. I cringed, stalled, questioned, panicked, and analysed. Basically did everything in the WHAT IFS category and didn’t pitch the book.

Now I am geared myself for rejections, criticisms, rotten tomatoes and jeers. Basically anything and everything that anyone who wants to throw can throw at me.

Maybe it’s the new year. But I am determined. I am determined that I will follow my dream and write and write some more.

 

MY NEW YEAR NO-RESOLUTIONS

Here are things I am NOT going to do this new year:

  • I will not be afraid of reactions to my writing.
  • I will not think on writing and not write.
  • I will not compare.
  • I will not worry about what my life would have been with different choices
  • I will not be afraid out trying new things.
  • I will not worry about how bad I write
  • I will not equate success with the money I could have been earning.
  • I will not feel lonely and boring.
  • I will not feel envious of books I enjoy reading.
  • I will not stick to my comfort zone.

With so many things I had been doing, it’s a wonder I still write. Stubborn I think 🙂

 

A sentimental note for Mystery of the Iyer bungalow: As I put in the finishing touches to the my first manuscript of the Mystery of the Iyer Bungalow, I feel a sense of anti-climax. While editing the book, I realised that it could have become so many other books with the same characters, with the same settings.  I would like to change it a bit, tweak it from here, add things to that side, but I cannot. Not anymore. I know it’s not perfect still, I don’t think it ever will become perfect. Like a mother, I feel I am over-fretting on my child rather than setting it free. So many emotions. When did I become so attached to just words? I hope someone else becomes attached to this imperfect book, reads it and enjoys it. That’s after all, the most important thing.

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Me and Fart: On IITians and making a movie

Fart, my imaginary dumb friend, and me were drinking beers and sitting at my home surfing on my telly when we saw a movie trailer of the film With Love, Delhi on one of the channels. A low-budget thriller with a rather dark Tom Alter in the role of a villain. The trailer ended with these bylines:

‘When the best brains of the country, meet the Bollywood veterans, you get Wild.’

‘An intelligent thriller by IITians’.

 

 

 

 

This film has been made by an IITian! In my excitement, I started to jump up and down on the couch. Fart, who is rather slow in catching up, looked at me confused. I told Fart that the IITians are really smart people. If they have made a thriller movie, it would be really, really smart! After all, they have written smart books, smart songs, say really smart things, get married with a huge dowry, get plush jobs reserved for smart people and do other rather very, very smart things.  So Fart, who you can guessed by now is not very smart since he comes from another country (or another planet, it’s not polite to ask) looked at me with his forehead puckered with fifteen wrinkle lines and asked:

FART (his forehead puckered): Who are these IITians?

ME (with a snicker, forgetting that it’s impolite to ask): You don’t know who IITians are? Which planet do you belong to?

FART (still puckered): Not this one.

ME (continuing my tirade): IIT stands for Indian Institute of Technology. It is one of the more premier institutes in India that teaches engineering courses. IITians are people who graduate from these premier institutes. They are like really, really, really smart, Fart!

FART (empty expression): Oh. So this institute teaches them how to become actors or movie directors?

ME (haughty expression): Of course not!

FART: So it has nothing to do with making movies or writing books whatsoever?

ME (angry at this dumb ass): You think an IITian would have time to learn how to make a movie or write a book? He (or she) is too busy studying for exams! Do you know how many people apply for IITs in India? A few lakh every year and only a few thousand get selected. That’s how smart IITians are. They are the most intelligent people in India. Hell, they are the smartest on the planet!

FART (confused): If they are so smart, why do they learn engineering instead of learning how to make a movie?

ME (haughty expression): You are so silly, Fart! That’s because if they learn how to make a movie, they won’t be respected for their intellectual prowess. But if they become an IITian, they automatically become really smart. Because you see as soon as one clears the entrance exam of IIT, one’s genes are rewired and one gets to know everything that is there to know in this universe. IITians are so smart that they don’t need to learn how to make a movie or write a book. From reading, mugging, working, getting married, having sex, writing a book, earning money, drinking the right wine, dancing, singing, they know everything. 

FART (realisation dawning, glugging a beer): Oh! So they are Indian sadhus right? Those enlightened beings who can fly in the sky or walk on water or stand on thorns or something.

ME (laughing out loud): Fart you are such a tart! They are better than sadhus! They are engineers! You see, in India we value engineers because we have such bad roads and bad internet connections and dicey buildings. These engineers are our saviors. You would understand their value if you know how much dowry an engineer can get in marriage. It’s in crores of rupees. That’s because they get really cool jobs in Amreeka and other countries and come back with oodles of dollars and then can buy plush houses in fancy gated communities with smooth roads. They are the dollar earners of this country.

FART (condescending): So it has nothing to do with making roads or making movies? They are smart because they earn lots of money?

ME (angry): You know, you foreigners are so condescending to us Indians. If we serve you, you are fine. When we become your equals, you think we are all after money. Forget it, you just won’t get it. We are who we are in this world because of IITians. They will save us from all your smirks! They are our superheroes! Every child of this country aims to become an IITian and earn in crores of rupees and marry a virgin with a huge dowry. Every parent wants their child to become an IITian. They are our new gods! You will understand when you meet some of them. They are intellectual and smart. Did I tell you how smart they are? They —

 

(The conversation fell through midway due to excessive intoxication.)

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Of writing, language and search for muses

I have just finished the fourth story of The Skull Rosary, a graphic novel which if all goes well, would be out in mid 2013 in the market. This particular story was about a blind demon , but ironically it was I who was blind to him. I couldn’t see what he wanted to tell me, what he wanted me to discover, who he really was. For days I wandered alone in deserts (that’s what I name my panicked mind). Nothing came out on the paper. This was a particularly difficult one to exorcise out of me. I hope I have done you some justice, my blind demon. I know I haven’t completely written down what you could have become and what you are, but this was all I could do. I am after all a mortal and have my limits.

Now I have moved on to the fifth and final story of the graphic novel. This is about a mad woman. I think I know her but I don’t know how to write of her. How does madness speak in a logical human language? So I search for answers in various muses I know will tell me which path to start. I read the lines that Neil Gaiman scribed in The Sandman series. I scrounge the delicate, heart wrenching poetry of Kahlil Gibran who wrote The Madman which I downloaded from Gutenberg. And I reread my two favourites which talk about this particular madness: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and The Eumenides by Aeschylus. Shakespeare was inspired by Aeschylus’s lines to create his crazy three weird witches. I hope I can recreate the mad witches in some form.

I knew I wanted to read these to remember what I would have liked to write for the final story. Did the muse in me speak or did she show the way? I don’t know.

Some days writing comes to me like my neighbour’s Labrador. It laps it’s salivating tongue and wags its furry tail, desperate to be touched and loved and hugged. That day I write straight for an hour or many hours, without a break. That day I continue to write in my head, even when I am walking, drinking a coffee with my husband or watching the sky. Those are the happy days. The days when the sun shines brightly on me and my smile is for all to see.

Most of the days though, writing is a demon I need to exorcise from my mind and heart. It haunts spaces in my head I didn’t know existed. But I cannot see it or touch it, at least through logic and human language. It shows itself to me in smoky silhouettes, in corners just out of my eye’s view. It plays hide and seek with me but not to make me smile. I don’t know why it plays and why I constantly search for it. I keep looking and looking and looking and never really see it. At the end what I write, is a part of the demon that in me resides.

Not the whole, never the whole.

For the whole is but a myth, much like a rainbow’s end. You can stare at the ocean for millions of years, but at the end, you will but see just the part your eyes can.

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Bye, Bye my 1st baby!

It’s a rather pretty day today, have you noticed? I did, after a long, long time!

If any of you avid readers of my blog wondered what I have been up for almost a month of my absence from the online world, it’s editing. Two of my biggest projects which I had set out to do in the last eight months, have finally come to an end. I suddenly feel kind of empty. Nice empty Smile

The first mammoth one was the Digital Natives project. I edited two books for the NGO Centre for Internet and Society which were a culmination of three years of research. The books are out now in the world and fending for themselves now. I send them hugs. You can view the research book for free online or order one for yourself. Hear more about them on the dedicated page.

My second project was much tougher. I had decided to write a complete book while editing the Digital Natives books. Madness, now that I look back at it, but somehow the decision helped me bring out my first book and overcome my lack of confidence. It worked! Yes dear readers and the online universe, the first draft of my book is over!

It’s tentatively called Mystery of the Iyer Bungalow and is a children detective fiction. I thought writing it would be the biggest challenge for me, it wasn’t. It was editing that proved to be the main hurdle. It took much longer in time and was an emotional, depressing experience. Questions I didn’t have answer to hit me. Does the book work? asked the Editor in me. The Writer cringed and said she didn’t know. I had to take decisions of chopping down characters I had created with a lot of love and enjoyment. They didn’t fit into the narrative Sad smile

Finally, the first level of editing is finished. I feel a strange calm sadness. I have sent the book out (it’s going for the first time!) to some of my industry friends to read and for feedback. My heart beats fast and wonders how it will feel about it. I still don’t know if anyone would like to read this book. I don’t know how she will be treated (yes my book has feelings!) and if she will ever be published. I have lost every sense of objectivity for her. I am her mother and she’s my baby. I can’t be objective about her. As an decently good Editor, it’s a scary experience! And since it’s just a first draft and I don’t even have a publisher, I bet this is just a start to a long, long journey of my book. I wish Mystery of the Iyer Bungalow best of luck and hope that someday, a kid would read you and it would make her smile, just as it did me.

And that is the challenge that creative writing poses for me. It makes me experience the best and the worse of my talent and creative self. The highest and the lowest, both come one and again, in cycles. I had always wondered why suddenly one day, I decided to quit my journalism career and walk the thorny and painful path of fiction and fantasy writing. Now I know.

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Rituals of death and dead cultures

Being pissed off at something makes me write. I am pissed off at many things right now. Mostly, I can direct all my anger, frustration and irritation at one word: RITUALS.

Rituals are like flies in India. They are everywhere, they survive, they hop around your food, your mouth, your eyes, sitting, peeing, pooping on your face. They are mostly irritating and sometimes make you feel like you might want to swat your own face to get rid of them. But you can’t really. You might swat, stand up, shrug, dance, frit, fly, run, walk all you want, the flies will come back and sit on you everywhere to poop and pee.

If you have lived in India long enough (and I have since I was born) chances are you have met Mr Ritual. Indians love him (and I am using gender-specific pronoun here). That is why, everytime there is a festival, someone is born (is it a boy! oh, no it’s a girl), someone reaches a certain age (puberty, let’s celebrate blood), someone gets married, someone gets kids, someone celebrates, someone conducts a pooja (5gm cloves, 3 pieces of beetle nuts and two tilaks please), on vrats, on days you eat, on days you fast, on special days, or on when you die. There’s a ritual for everything. There are rules you have to follow to appease gods, ancestors, deities, families, husband’s families, and innumerable other people (and some gods) who you don’t really want to even know.

Since these rituals have been made by prissy, patriarchally-oriented granddaddies of our culture (Manu, some of the rishis and oodles of other brahmins, dads and granddads after them) and are delicately conserved by the female part of the family, they are usually regressive in nature, especially for the women of the family. They want to keep women of the family in purdah, busy in either making food or cleaning, or making food, or bathing themselves, or did I mention making food? These rituals also demand that the daughters-in-law and wives in a household of traditional loving Indian family, demand money/gifts/stuff from their own families of before marriage. And these rituals demand from the men of the family to do vague things like mantra, poojas—actions which are robotic and laid down in the holy books – through which they can appease gods, ancestors and family members and make their stand in society.

In other words, all these little rituals keep everyone busy and safely away from questioning. Safely away to ask why is everyone so busy in rituals? Why are these fly-like rituals everywhere, surrounding us in a flurry of things-to-do lists? Why don’t people in India look behind these rituals and see what they are trying to tell their gods through them? Why does no one see the suffering, the stuffiness, the prissiness of it all?

So I reached a conclusion. And I learnt it from flies. Flies who are wiser than us, and everywhere. They don’t change their lifestyle. You can swat them all you want, hunt them down with spears, guns, bombs or even hatchets. There will be simply more in number than you can attack. India’s too hot (and too stuck up) a country to not have flies and rituals.

The question is, have flies become so much a part of you that you would not even notice their existence? Have you become immune to the fact that they are nothing but flies?

I always thought that emotions cannot be told in mere prose. Here’s a poem I wrote for the occasion.

 

 

Continue reading “Rituals of death and dead cultures”

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Will robots become the new slaves?

Last night, I started to re-read my fave guy, Isaac Asimov. This time, I am re-hooked to his short stories on robots. Then in the morning papers, I saw this. It’s a story about  Justin the robot, who serves you coffee. It’s a cute squiggly looking bright blue robot, made by the German air and space agency, a super-techno, super-expensive guy has four-finger hands and is a step towards a humanoid. And well, serves you coffee.

Which took me to a very important question. What is it with people wanting their coffee to be served? We humans went through a whole round of imperialism where the ones who had money and wanted more money, and more importantly, more hands to do things for free for them. Brown, black, evil, good, trashy white, blue, anything will do till someone is serving you a coffee for free.

Even our Heavens have the idea of slaves serving the people who didn’t kill, lie and hid their bodies in apt clothes. Have you heard of anyone working to wash their clothes in Heaven? That wouldn’t be so heavenly would it, now? We need our slaves. It’s the sign that we have made it in life.

108153-four-fingered-robot-justin-gets-coffee-for-alexander-dietrichNow the era of human slavery has somewhat ended with words like freedom and independence being taught to everyone around us. Slavery is not a politically and culturally correct idea to talk about . That doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

In the heart of hearts, all of us want our slaves. I want someone I can kick, turn, abuse, order without pay. So in the era of technology, we look at robots and machines – our new slaves. They don’t have souls, we say. We said the same thing about blacks in Africa and we said the same thing about shudras in India.

Mechanical slaves! Who would have not thought of it!

The intrinsic human need to be served has led the German scientists to work on a robot which will serve them a cup of coffee. Before it, it was the slaved coffee machine. This is the era when a new slave will come to life. So creating a good-boy slave is the next project for our civilisation. A slave that wont tire, wont crib, wont go to the human rights violation committee, wont have issues or emotions. An ideal slave. An ideal butler. Yes, robots are the future slaves. As Asimov had rightly predicted.

I will finish this with one more thought. If we depend on slaves, aren’t we becomes slaves of slaves? Slaves of technology, slaves of robots? Ah, that’s how it all started. Didn’t it?

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Tarantulas and all things not so tiny

 

Just read a report on how big, fat tarantulas manage to stick to things that they want to. Invisible spiderman-like silk threads keep them there. But this post is not really about the glues. Or about anything in particular actually. If I need a reason to post (this is my blog you know, and I can put whatever I want to, really) it would be that I loved the visual that’s put above. Spiders are such fascinating creatures for me and for a lot of many authors actually who keep creating superheroes, villains, monsters, horror stories and weird things with spiders in some form or another inserted. They inspire me in their creepy but slick style, almost make me poetic. Of all the creatures, spiders I would say, with their multiple hands and eyes which I cannot see, make me thing. What do you think this tarantula is thinking now?

 

I am about to jump

About to jump

On you.

 

One throw of thread

Silken and soft

Around your mouth

Silence abounds

 

As I weave around you

Thin, invisible bonds

Of horrifying fascination

That you may see, barely.

But that you may not still.

 

What do you think will happen

When you stop to see

To feel

To think

To be

 

And then you become

A strand of silk

Woven around

Misplaced

Misshapen

Crinkled

And lost.

 

See what I mean? Tarantulas make me attempt poetry. Which is a good thing, even if it’s sort of bad.

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Ancient copies in a copyright world

Touring the Vatican museum, the audio guide informed me that a beautiful Roman time statue I saw in front of me (that of a marble woman, her curves delicately hidden by a flowing gown) was in fact a copy of the same figurine of a Greek sculpture, now destroyed. Copycat! I shouted, gleaming at the fact that it wasn’t a new phenomenon.  I thought this was the only one. To my surprise though, the whole gallery (and the Vatican museum has huge galleries) all the statues there had the same inscription. See how the plaque explained it.

 

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Belvedere Apollo, by Leochares. Roman copy of 130–140 AD after a Greek bronze original of 330–320 BC. Vatican Museums (source: Wikipedia)

 

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Laocoön and his sons, also known as the Laocoön Group. Copy after an Hellenistic original from ca. 200 BC. Vatican Museums (source: Wikipedia)

 

Copying you see was an ancient form of appreciation in the Greeks and then the Romans. The helpful audio guide continued while I stood there astounded.  So you see the Greeks copied other cultures, the Romans copied the Greeks, the Renaissance artists copied both of them and then the neo-classical ones copied all of them. In the meanwhile the same period artists copied each other. Arch rivals copied with envy, while the students copied their master’s work to celebrate it. It was all in good faith. Woah! What was that again? For me, who belongs to an increasingly copyrighted world, this is downright blasphemy! ‘Copying is very, very bad! Almost evil! Don’t ever do it again!’ I remember by art teacher saying it as I peeked into a friend’s sketchbook on how she was making that tree. It’s the same with mythology btw. I just wrote a graphic novel on Krishna, a grand figure from the Mahabharata and am slightly ashamed by the guilt feeling that came in me which told me that it’s not an original (Gosh, did I just rewrite someone else’s story?).

I mean why didn’t the original Greek creator, the original one please, sue all these others? What did the law court do if not sue these copiers?  As if telepathically, the audio guide gave me the answer. Apparently copying a sculpture in the ancient European world (Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, Renaissance and then Neo-Classical periods) was not only considered good, the copy was considered an ORIGINAL!How can a copy ever be considered original? It reminded me of something an artist friend of mine told me. ‘Shweta, he said. Don’t ever think that you copied a mythology. If you have written the story, it’s an original, even if it’s a story that all grandmothers of India know by heart.’ If you create it, a part of it becomes yours. Did he by any chance knew how the Romans thought? Maybe, maybe not, but that is not the question. The question is, Is copying, gosh I can barely say it, the highest form of appreciation? After all, aren’t we all copiers of nature? We try to xerox it in words, visuals and sculptures.

In our copyrighted world, where branding is everything, copying is the eight sin. Forget celebration, the copiers are usually struck with a lawsuit and sued for millions (depending upon who is the artist) and paralleled to devils and evil people. It’s considered the worse kind of creativity, in fact, there’s no creativity in a copy. Oh, and btw, I was sure about this myself. As an author who’s writing my first book, I dream of a time when I wont be financially dependent and the only way to do that is to copyright and sell my creative work. if someone copies it, I will be completely heartbroken.

But then what about the new copy-paste generation that is coming up? Aren’t they, with information just a google search away and no qualms about copy-pasting articles, thoughts, ideas from the online world, going the same way as the Romans? There’s one difference though. The Romans were crediting the master they copied. So if someone copies you as a creator and credits you for the original, would you be all right? Or do you need a part of the royalties?

 

I just took a two week trip to Paris and Italy. Instead of a one-shot summary of the travel, I am breaking my experiences up in thoughts, ideas and learning I took away from the beautiful continent. Presented in a series of blogs called Notes from Europe, it will be written across a few days, weeks or months, I am not sure which. I aim to present things I remember to have thought when I was in the continent from where modern culture as we know it has stemmed from.

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What about people who don’t fit into your boxes?

In reply to my post on The Problem I have with Census 2011, a Swiss friend who has been married to an Indian friend and living in India for years with her husband and daughter, wrote a blog on her experiences with the census and dealing with daily prejudices. Being a Swiss, resident Indian with a PIO, she has faced it all. Do read it to understand why our government needs to wake up to the fact that people are mobile and not like furniture!

Then there’s a Facebook discussion it triggered. Sharing it here to understand the extent to which everyone is irritated by the Census. Is anyone listening?

  • G Yesss! and also so intrusive and leaves no space for anonymity. It’s like the big daddy watching and knowing everything about your life. HATE IT! Just got my friendly visit this morning!!!! In the name of census, this is how they accumulated data in Gujarat and massacred thousands of Muslims and changed the country forever! Left me feeling so exposed and vulnerable!
  • K They came to our place in Bangalore, and guess what? They didn’t even ask me about the other languages I know. Only the “head of the family”. I don’t think I have been asked my caste in ANY other official context. After a lifetime of answering curious foreigners, “hmm…yeah, I am not a practising anything”, it IS shocking to be asked these details by the government of my ‘own’ country.
  • A Wait till they ask you to enrol into UID .. give away your Picture, both you Iris scans and all ten Fingerprints
  • G Oh and you’ve got to check out the “PSA” for the census and the freakin justification! Please give govt all info so govt can plan and provide for every citizen! WTF! Do a little better than that if you must!
  • A And in case this missed the news .. The National Intelligence Grid – “According to informed sources, the data with 21 agencies and departments of government will now be forwarded to the NatGrid for integration. The data will include Pan car…d, voter ID card and ration card details, income tax returns, degrees obtained from schools and colleges, bank account numbers, financial transactions, travel documents, passport details, police stations and jails across the country among others.” DNA STORY
  • G Welcome to the gameshow! Big Brother’s watching your every move!
  • A Sometimes i wonder if its just a bunch of computer science / IT people od-ing on how cool will it be technically to integrate various data
  • G And marketing the idea to the govt babus to make money for their OD-ing trips! Totally!
  • K The thing that is really scary is that it would require just one inefficient, unscrupulous and/or corrupt babu for all the data to be used for all kinds of nefarious purposes
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The problem I have with Census 2011

The Census lady just visited my house in Delhi with her long list of questions. With every question, I felt more and more disconnected with our government’s thinking and also angry. In their need to compartmentalize our beautifully diverse population, the government is killing our multiplicity—or wants to. You will be forcefully put in one compartment or the other and sadly have no choice about the matter. Here’s what five minutes of interacting with the census lady told me. Be prepared for a mental onslaught when the Census probe comes knocking by your door!

  1. The census begins by asking you who is the HEAD of the family section—which of course is assumed to be a man. I wonder what happens in the household with only women? All the other people living in the house are made relatives of the said ‘Head’ of the family. How can a government which is talking about Women equality and creating bills and laws to protect its women be so patriarchal in its forms? I always had a problem with the forms which asked Father/Husband only – as if a woman cannot exist alone. Always made by a male babu of course.
  2. The next question is RELIGION with six choices – Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jain and Buddhist. If you don’t have a religion, I am sorry but you cannot exist for our dear government.

    Boxed in by your caste
  3. The major issue which a lot of us coffee-house argumentative so-called-intellectuals have been talking about since months is the fact that we don’t want to give out our CASTE. We always hoped (without any action of course) that the government will be sensible enough to give us a choice of NO CASTE. That’s the third question and no, before you ask me, you don’t have a choice of saying NO CASTE. If you say so, the census lady will simply have to put one you depending on your mother tongue. You have to belong to a CASTE else you simply don’t exist for the votes that the government in power needs.

After these three initial questions, I was too emotional (and too scared) to read more of the census questions. It’s unfortunate when you start to see our government deliberately chopping our diverse society into cubes of castes. Our freedom fighters and social reformers must be turning in their graves. This is their nightmare come true.