Can
you tell us a little about yourself? Your profession and your hobbies!!
Once upon a time, long ago, I dreamed my way through a lovely childhood
in the remote districts of Rajasthan. Then I waded my way through school,
college and the two universities of Delhi and JNU. Among all the dreaming and
wading, I managed to get an M.Phil in History, which landed me a lecturer’s job
at Zakir Hussain College, Delhi.
After three years there, I shifted to NIIT, and became an Instructional
Designer (fancy word for the content writer).
Very quickly both the corporate world and I realised that we were not
cut out for each other. But old habits such as lingering and procrastination
die hard, and I hung around the precincts for a good seven to eight years. However, as all bad things too must come to an end, I did, at last quit
NIIT, and have been happily freelancing, navel-gazing, doodling and writing
for the past couple of decades.
Hobbies? I guess they are the three r’s - reading, writing and ranting
in writing (less and less of the last though), two m’s -music and meditation,
and at – travel (both external as well as within oneself).
Questionnaire
with Bharat Shekhar
1. How
did you first get involved in with writing, are you an imaginative person?
I grew up in
the remote districts of Rajasthan, when they were really remote. There were
vast sprawling vistas, lonely, lovely desert landscapes, and large chunks of time
spent in my own and in my siblings’ company. This combination really helped to develop
my imagination
Then, my
grandfather had a lovely habit. Most evenings, he would sit us siblings down
and tell us stories that of many things under the sun- Sindabad the sailor, Sarswati
the goddess of learning, Robin Hood, Ram, Mahabarat, Mohhammad, madness and
Mohabbat. As his gentle voice spoke
magic words, our heads would go spinning in a journey alongside.
As a result, as
a child, I never wanted to be what children usually hanker to grow up and be as
soon as they can – an adult. So I guess I have somewhere always remained a kid,
a kid with some imagination, which is both a blessing and a curse.
I didn’t want
to become a fireman, policeman, doctor, engineer, lawyer, astronaut, or any
other exotic profession, not even a belly dancer, or soothsayer. I always imagined that as a writer I could be
all of these and more. With my words, I could recreate them all according to my
designs. Of course, I did not see the downside of such idyllic imagination then.
Writing is not only imagination, but it’s also experienced, and the empathy to
be in someone else’s shoes. And it’s hard work, harder than many other
professions. That’s another story and I won’t get into it here.
Anyhow, the gist is that I always wanted to be a storyteller, but I got down to the real
grind much much later, a process that I began with a seriousness only when I
started to make up and tell stories to my children as I carried them on my
shoulders. And, thus, in a deep sense a loop was closed, the one which began
with my grandfather telling me stories when I was their age.
2. What
do you find most challenging about your writing?
The discipline,
the blood, sweat and tears, the daily grind, the routine, all of which belong
to the underbelly of writing, very real but little discussed. However, without
them, it is crystal clear that no writer can progress very far. Hence I do try
and follow a daily routine, but sometimes I have to take myself there dragging
my feet. The big idea,
the initial click, the ‘aha’ moment, the flow while it lasts, is relatively easy
to come by, at least for me. It is the slow, steady translation, the gradual
whittling and shaping into a comprehensible shape, which is the real challenge.
3. What
do you do when you are not writing?
I doodle a lot,
read navel-gaze, meditate, listen to music, and daydream a lot.
4. Where
do you see yourself in the next 6 months, and 5 years down the road?
There’s a very an interesting meme doing the round these days. Its text says, “I bet not a single
person in 2015 got the answer to this question right. ‘Where do you see yourself five years from
now?’ “. In other words, it’s difficult to predict the future under normal
circumstances, and these days circumstances are anything but normal. Of course, I
wish for better circumstances six months from now and even better ones five
years hence. That’s pretty much what humans do.
5. How
do you keep coming up with material/content for your story?
Travelling and
seeing things with an open mind is essential to the process. By travelling I
don’t mean travelling to any specific place, going on a lonely mountain trek, hiking
to exotic locales, or becoming a passenger on an ocean liner taking a world cruise
(though this type of travel is certainly important too). Travel could also
simply mean loitering around a park without intent, or going to the market to
buy groceries etc. Just be aware
of circumstances and open to possibilities. When you see someone do something
peculiar, try and be in their shoes, but also to be as outrageous in your
imagination as possible Initially, the
brief of the writer, the journalist and the detective are similar. Look around.
Observe anything out of the ordinary. Look for clues. However, as soon as the
clues are found, the three paths diverge. The journalist looks for the wider
story, the detective tries to solve the mystery, the writer, on the other hand,
does not seek the ‘truth’ in the sense of the mundane truth. No, she lets the
imagination run in the most bizarre ad amusing of directions that a story can
take.
Given below is
an excerpt for a note I prepared for schoolchildren about sources of
inspiration:
It(inspiration/idea)
begins with an observation of an action, image, number or word, which gets
caught in the mind and then processed. You can faithfully record, or
exaggerate, underplay, extend. For example, you see a person walking. You
notice how he scrapes his foot on the ground after every third step. You
wonder why and then a process begins in the mind. Is he scraping off something
that has got stuck to the shoe? Why after every third step? Why is he looking
around suspiciously every time he scrapes the shoe? You look at the ground
where he has just scraped his shoe and you can see something golden brown. Has
he done something wrong? Thus floats the idea for a mystery story that could
involve space ships and aliens, or a robbery, or if you are inclined towards
realism of crushing debt/poverty, which his forcing into to something
demeaning.
That is
the beauty of imagination and imaginative thought. It does not lead in any
logical manner from point A to point B, but to a whole load of tangents that
could lead anywhere. Your own imagination is the only limit. That having been
said, once the tangent is chosen and a story is woven, there must be an internal
logic with a plotline, well thought out characters, dialogue, which must all
be plausible.
For example, ‘The Eighth Dwarf’ (a story in my book ‘Talking Tales’ )
began by idly thinking about the number eight, about how it is tight and
closed, how it curls in on itself, how unlike the other numbers it has no
opening. Around that time, I had been watched ‘Snow White’ to my computer, and
suddenly something clicked. What if there was a mysterious eighth dwarf, who
nobody knew about, who did not know about herself, but was otherwise very wise.
How would this impact the original story? And thus began the Talking Tale of
the Eighth Dwarf. Another
example I can give comes from one of the earliest stories I wrote. I was on a
project in Hyderabad. It was a winter afternoon. The sun was out and it was
very warm. A mother was walking with her son (aged three or four), who had a
monkey cap on. The poor boy was feeling very hot and, at intervals kept trying
to take the cap off, but the mother kept putting it back on. That was all that
happened, but it put the germ of an idea in my head that ultimately became a
story about how a wildebeest mother fools a crocodile to save her daughter and
a zebra friend from his jaws. She tells the crocodile that she will make a cap
out of the wildebeest hide, and a cape, but in order to do so, she has to
measure the crocodile first. To give the measurements, the crocodile rolls over
on his back. Have you seen insects and reptiles that get rolled over on their
back? They find it very difficult to get back up. So once the crocodile is
stuck and struggling on his back, the wildebeest Yimuni, her daughter
Kimuni, and their friend Zuber the Zebra make good their escape.
So your
ideas for stories, novels, poems can come from everywhere- a friendship or a
fight in the classroom, a ride in a three-wheeler, talk with the person who
works in the house, an interesting game during recess, your mother or father
talking about their day in office, going shopping in the mall, or the
neighbourhood market... anything at all.
(NOTE:
While this is part of a note written for middle-grade school children, many of
these ideas can be applied to any level of fiction,
Till now I was
talking of external sources, which a writer finds in the world outside-by
travelling and observing. Equally though, there is another source, which is
less spoken about- the author’s interaction with him/herself, or his/her
journey within, not without. Travelling
within in a kind of dream state throws up all kinds of memories and melodies,
and the sheer magic of people, places and things, you barely dreamed existed
within. In the travel within, I don’t follow the route of looking for clues and
then imagining different possible routes from them. No. Here I have to trust
instead whatever is guiding me and to let go, letting it take me where it
will. Any pressure from my side, any attempt at verbalising, and it will be
gone without a trace. It is only later, much later that one can reflect on these
inner experiences and to garner their essence.
6. Any
specific tips you have for new writers who want to make it big in the world of
published books?
Not really,
except for them to follow their heart and instincts. Do Not have to make it big
in the publishing world as your primary, or even secondary goal. Instead, look
at it as a by-product of your passion. Unless of course making it big is your
only aim, rather than writing.
7. What’s
the best thing a writer can give to his readers?
The ability to feel
and, more rarely to think. However, I think the question itself could be framed
a little differently, “What is the best thing that a writer can give themselves?”
The tentative answer to that I would say is that while the writer is trying to
unravel and understand the world (in whatever limited manner), it is also a
slow unravelling and understanding of the self, in tandem. In the process,
hopefully, he can pass on a little of the mix to the readers, whatever rubs off.
.jpg "BOOK REVIEW - “IT HAPPENS FOR A REASON” BY PREETI SHENOY")
