Where Books Go: Crowdsourcing the Travels of Hotel Arcadia (and Other Books)

So I had a crazy idea this morning and am reaching out to see if you can help. It hasn't been terribly well thought through but it just feels great to launch right into it. It's a crowdsourcing plan to figure out where books go and who reads them. It isn't about reviews or reactions, but a simpler - and for me - a little fantasy I have clung to since childhood. 

You can probably guess that I was a rather bookish child - or a kitabi-keeda (bookworm), as was the term in my family. I also had a hyperactive imagination which meant I got into constant trouble for daydreaming (letting the milk boil over while I was 'watching' it was a particularly regular crime), had regular and terrifying nightmares (though I blame my father's military exploits for that one), and came up with way too many odd, whimsical ideas.

Early on I realised that the books I read - or at least the stories in them - came from far off places in the world - Mumbai, Delhi, London, Paris, New York, Moscow.  I wondered constantly if the writer knew I had their work, if they knew I held a piece of them. And yes, I was pretty clear quite early on that a book was a piece of the writer, perhaps even a little shiny bit of their heart, a visual reference I probably picked up from Mera Naam Joker. 

In those pre-internet days, and growing up in a small tiny town in India, it was pretty impossible to find out much about authors, or to get in touch with them. And even if I had tracked down an address, my pocket money wouldn't have gotten far enough for the postage to America or Soviet Union or Britain. Especially not with trying to buy more books at the same time. 

Regardless, I wrote many letters to my favourite authors, in the back of my school notebooks, or in the many diaries I started and never filled, and in my head. In some precocious cases, I offered them advice - mostly about not having sappy women/girls, or expanding parts for the characters I loved, or writing me into the narrative (an early recognition of the lack of nonwhite characters and stories, I guess).  In those letters, I explained how I hid under the bed to read because my grandmother worried I didn't play enough, that I covered them in brown paper to resemble text books so I could sneakily lose myself in the pages during a boring school lesson, and how much I loved the weight of them in tucked into the sash of my dress. But for most part, I wrote the letters just to tell the writers how much I loved the stories, and in doing so, let them know that at least one little piece of their heart was safe - and cherished. With me. 

This is why I always wondered about the people who pick up and read my books. Not only for feedback and reviews, but those little glimpses into their lives and homes. To wonder if they read the books in the park, or by seaside, or tucked into a favourite chairs. In my mind, each reader is a story, and stories are always magic. So I am constantly wondering how to share in a little bit of that magic.

Fortunately, internet - and social media - have made that magic a little more possible. I realised earlier in the week, when I received the first copies of Hotel Arcadia, that I may be able to figure out where some of the copies would go. I posted a snap I took at my publisher's office, and later from home as we toasted a copy with bubbly.  And this morning, I logged on to twitter to be informed that one of the first - if not the very first - review copies had arrived. Dave Hardy had kindly posted a photograph on twitter for me:

Suddenly, someone I don't know in real life, and have only recently met on twitter, had given me a little glimse into their life. The edgy, night city-scape backdrop to their twitter account, the monochrome bed-linen in the photograph, and the careful, thoughtful framing of the correspondence - the addresses of all concealed, but the compliments slip just peeking out - evoked an entire life and character in my mind. And to me, that's magic! 

And from that comes this rather whimsical idea. I am starting a hashtag for twitter and instagram: #wherebooksgo. I will also use it for my FB page posts to upload, RT and share photographs that readers send me, and hopefully at the end of it, there will be a big shiny, magical, red heart that all of us share - one that holds the magic of reading, and writing, stories. 

So may I please request anyone reading Hotel Arcadia to please send in a pic with the #wherebooksgo hashtag? Tag me or the book and I'll find it. If you want to share another book, by another author, simply tag them instead (makes it easier to find).

If you are author, please feel free to use the hashtag for your own books and readers. It would be so wonderful to create a big celebratory magic that comes from sharing stories and our love for them.

A Writer's Toolkit: Thoughts on Writing

Finishing a novel and starting research on a new non-fiction book within the past six months has made me acutely conscious of my own writing process and how it has evolved over the past years of publishing. Much of it has been a case of trial and error, and often just serendipity. Like many who accidentally stumble upon a winning (or at least working) formula, I have learned my process mostly on the fly but repeated and refined whatever seems to work. Many of these lessons now make up my writer's toolkit, and are essential to both my process and product.

Over the years, I have figured out my writing process and honed my craft. When I was writing my first novel, I was convinced that I needed the 'bohemian' life that went with - at least in my mind - with the art of fiction. So I cloistered myself, wrote through the night, sleeping only after the sun had risen high into the sky, and drank a lot of whisky. In my own mind, I was following in the footsteps of the greats, although mostly just punishing my liver with suitable determination. 

Once the manuscript was done, I had to gingerly return to the real world and mundane things like making a living. I remember the strangeness of those first few months of re-entering the world: I had lost the ability to have normal social conversations and needed to remember basic social skills. I could either not speak at all or would chatter incessantly, with words spilling out in generally an incoherent jumble. Although I did not recognise this at the time, I was also recovering myself as an individual from all those people who had long lived in my brain (but more on this later). 

Worse though was the depression that followed, which I initially blamed on the rejections from publishers I was rapidly accumulating.  It wasn't until nearly a year later that I realised that the depression had a more basic reason:  for the first time in my life, words had deserted me.  At the first sight of a blank sheet of paper, my mind wiped out into nothingness. I could not even write a basic message on a birthday card! As someone who has always relied on words as if it were oxygen, those were terrifying times, especially as I wondered if I had run out of words, whether I had only ever had one book in me and could and would never write another.

At the end, despite looking for professional help, it was words that saved me. An editor friend insisted that I produce something, anything, for her magazine, publishing even writing exercises that often took me days to shape and form. Her insistence that I meet deadlines forced me to write, pushed me to use the exhausted word-producing muscles that I had given up on. Then just as the novel found a publisher, I was asked to write a book on single women in India. 

Suddenly, just as I was recovering my facility with words, I had a big project. But there was no space to write it, living as I was with family, siblings, and a very large dog in a small Delhi flat. That fantasy writer's 'bohemian' life was going to be impossible if I were to deliver the book. But as my dad reminded me, "न नौ मन गेंहू होवे  न मीरा उठके नाचिहे " (As there will never be nine maund (Indian measure of weight) of grain, so Meera shall never rise to dance), a Hindi proverb emphasising that there are never ideal conditions for any action.  So I wrote my second book, still mostly at night, with a fifty kilo Rottweiler snoring at my feet and aided by copious cups of hot tea. Slowly but surely, I was learning the most important lesson of all: that writing was a discipline and a demanding one, not a lifestyle choice.

It was also the first time I noticed the cleansing powers of non-fiction. As I finalised the book, the idea for my next novel had already taken hold. I began the initial writing even as I was promoting the book on single women, writing in my parents' house in the hills, in my cramped Delhi flat, even on noisy train journeys to-and-fro as we prepared to move out of India. In my parents' house, my father and I spent hours weeding the lawns, working in companionable silence, while my mind filled itself again of characters and plots and vast colourful universes.  And then came the strange switch: even as I worked on the early stages of the novel, I moved to Barcelona. 

There I was! Finally! I was living my dream of truly being the 'writer', living in Europe, drinking loads of wine, talking about art and literature and philosophy on the beach and in little cafes, fully living the 'bohemian' life that I was sure all great writing needed as nourishment.  Strangely, my second novel is more truly 'Indian,' set for most part in a village that is much like the ones that my ancestors built generations ago. It seemed as if I could summon up India better once I was removed from its quotidian pressures and realities.  And yet something had changed: I no longer wrote at night, or at least, not late at night. Instead, I worked in the afternoons, took a break for socialising over tapas and wine, then returned before midnight to write till about three in the morning.

This time when I finished the novel, I was prepared for the familiar depression. Or rather I recognised the inevitable moment of complete devastation for what it was: overwhelming grief for the end of a project that had occupied my mind for years. A friend explains that the process of finishing a book is much like getting a divorce, or ending a relationship, with the same complexity of emotions. After all, a writer lives with a book more completely while it is in progress than most humans do with each other. Sometimes, I think that perhaps the sadness many writers feel at birthing a novel is not dissimilar from post-partum depression: one is expected to celebrate and rejoice but the exhaustion, loss of control, and fear are often more overwhelming. 

I had also been careful to not isolate myself from people during my second novel so the return to society was not nearly as disorienting as before. However, it did made me realise that my judgement about people is completely shot while I am writing: my own decisions about likes and dislikes are so over-ridden by characters in my head that I found myself wondering how I had ended up befriending people with whom I had little in common. "You just test out your characters on people" my siblings insisted, rather unfeelingly and despite my protests. Sadly I have grown to realise that they are right. It doesn't just stop there: my tastes in music and reading, hobbies, even the style of dressing changes with my characters, making me appear either fragmented or just attention deficit. And this is before I begin to have entire conversations about my characters who are - in the moment of writing - more real to me than people I know and see. Sentimental, nostalgic pronouncements on the lines "X would so love this wine/dessert/exhibition," where X is completely fictional are something my closest friends have grown inured to. 

At least, I have learned that I either have great survival skills or am madly lucky as I also acquire a lot of friends during the writing process who can cope with my dysfunctional behaviour. Indeed, some of my best friends have been made while I was deep in throes of the creative process, a testimony perhaps to their generosity or foolhardiness (or more likely, both).

Fortunately, experience had taught me skills needed to face the post-novel depression. Within months of finishing of my second novel, I moved countries (again) and began a PhD, throwing myself into research about things I knew nothing about.  Once again, the nonfiction worked to clear my head, this time more consciously. But more importantly, juggling a full time job and PhD ensured that my writing discipline got more focussed, perhaps even ascetic.  Writing late into the night was no longer possible. Neither were erratic hours and other bits of bohemia.  So instead I began writing when I could: holidays, days off, weekends, even on the tube as I commuted back and forth from work.  The thesis took up so much time that I could not think of novel-universes, so instead small miniature worlds were born in my mind, taking shape as short stories, forcing me hone my craft. From the large canvases and Pollock-like frenzy, I was forced to take up a the tiny frame and single hair brush of Indian miniatures.  I struggled, splashing like an over-sized fish caught in a tiny bathtub, but slowly I adapted, began to control my abilities, learning new skills, polishing my fiction with the obsessive precision only miniatures can provide. 

And once again, even as I finished my phd, the idea for a new novel had taken hold, germinating, growing silently as I referenced, cross-referenced, and indexed. As I defended my thesis, my mind was already full of a new world, of characters drawn as finely as in a miniature but inhabiting a world as complex and full as a large canvas. Writing short stories has made my writing sparser, more restrained, and that changed my novel, making it equally restrained. For the first time in all my years of writing, I felt that I had some control over my craft.  Moreover, for the first time I wrote as a professional, with a clear knowledge of the end result and full awareness of the discipline.  My writing time now begins early in the morning, followed by a swim, and then work. For the duration of the writing the novel, I felt more like a marathon runner than the bohemian, pushing myself to draw on all my experience, skill, stamina, and strength. 

I was ready for the downer that finishing my novel would inevitably bring although I had prepared for it mentally. But this time it didn't happen! Don't get me wrong, I am still struggling with words - this blog post is intended to force myself to write something, anything. I have again realised that I have been living in a creative haze - albeit far more controlled - and many new acquaintances are baffled by the changed persona.  It is invigorating to see art, read books, hear music for myself and not from within the skin of my characters. And once again, I have another project - a non-fiction book that will require vast amounts of research, and shall cleanse my mind for more fiction. More importantly, I don't feel the need to move countries just to find excitement to help overcome my post-writing depression.

It has been a long journey to this space, to where I feel like I have some (although not nearly enough) control of my craft and much awareness of my creative process. I no longer have to fear that I will run out of words or ideas, just because I have finished a major project. I have an endurance athlete's discipline in terms of writing and have increasingly realised that I need to be physically as healthy as my mind if I am to ensure that I keep writing for many years to come. This has sadly meant the demise of my 'bohemian' fantasies but perhaps that is not necessarily bad.  Finally, I am grateful that I have enough people in my life who not only acknowledge but support my forays into the creative universe even when they don't quite understand them.  All of these are, I have only now learned, essential for the writer's toolkit. 

I won't back down! Consequences of Supporting Rushdie's Knighthood

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog-post supporting the knighthood awarded to one of my favourite novelists, Salman Rushdie. Then Spain’s El Pais carried a version of the same article on its op-ed pages.

As far as I was concerned, the article was a personal response to an honour bestowed on a writer who has provided me with many hours of reading pleasure, whose writing has taught me some of the skills I use in my own fiction, and whose early work shall always remain inspirational for me. What I did not begin to imagine was the kinds of reaction that innocuous article would evoke.

Some people wrote in to tell me of their own initial discovery of Rushdie’s fiction. Others took the opportunity to comment on the geo-politics of terror, often in ways that showed their own intolerance and prejudices. Yet others emailed me to tell me that my article was “brave” (when did personal ruminations on literature become brave? How did things come to such a pass?) And a final lot decided to email me and post blog comments that were generally incoherent and illogical but full of righteous anger, venom and threats. In fact, if only for that final category of responses, I am very glad that my blog’s comment section was set up to be moderated (thank you, o great webmaster and sibling!).

More importantly, the article evoked some specific reactions that I believe need to be addressed:

Upon reading my article, some writers and journalist friends informed me that few people from the industry have spoken up in Rushdie’s support because he can be rude, arrogant and unpleasant. Yet what has that to do with his writing? Hemingway was apparently a drunken boor! Henry Miller was crass and foul-mouthed. Do we consider their writing diminished because of their personal behaviour? Shouldn’t a writer be judged for his/her writing instead of their ability to politely discuss the weather? Are we still debating that Midnight's Children is a work of genius, that Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a literary tour d'force, that Imaginary Homelands did not impact and inspire an entire generation of thinkers?

Second is a far more insidiously vicious response that claims that Rushdie should have known better than to have incited the fundamentalists. This one comes primarily from self-styled intellectuals and other “liberals.” It achieves in one fell swoop a whole host of results. First of all, it blames the writer for crossing some imaginary line that offends an imaginary public, a convenient if spectacularly hypocritical form of thought-control. Second, it holds the writer responsible for any harm that may come to him from members of that offended public (Naguib Mahfouz, anyone!); intellectually this is the same sort of logic that would hold women in short skirts responsible for rapes and assaults and yet another example of how frighteningly similar logic is applied by idiots of all ilks.

Third, it posits a particular religious tradition as exempt from basic principles of questioning and rationality as well as liberty of thought and expression. That ensures that this response is simultaneously condescending (“we can question our religion without trouble – a sign of “civilization” - but you should have known better to do the same to yours”) and cowardly (“we know the Muslims are violent so can you not incite them”). Curiously this is the same lot who insist that “moderate” Muslims speak up against the fundamentalists and work to “reform” the religion. Yet there is a curious distance, if not outright disdain, for those who attempt to fulfil that brief including Rushdie, Mahfouz, or Manji.

Finally, a more problematic response came from the apparently illiterate users of the internet who posted inchoate, hate-filled rants about Rushdie. I posted a couple – most coherent of the lot – of these on my blog in the interest of freedom of expression. Unfortunately most of the others were nothing more than invective and pathetic threats. More than one of these expressed a desire to stone various parties involved in the issue starting with the Queen of England to Rushdie as well as his readers!

Of the various threats of violence, I think the stoning ones are the most pitiable. These reveal not only an intense insecurity but also a need for anonymity that a violent mob can provide. For me, these have provided a narrow view into the mob violence that erupts in various Islamic countries at such regular intervals. While I thought Rushdie’s contention that masculine impotence and insecurity as the roots of “terrorism” (in Shalimar the Clown) was a bit simplistic, I have always conceded that this mass emasculation – for historic, social, political or cultural reasons – definitely plays a part in forming those who carry out asymmetrical violence. However, stoning is a particularly cowardly act as it cloaks an act of violence in false social sanction in the guise of a baying mob. It allows those who lack the will to take violent action on an individual basis to create and maintain fantasies of masculine potency by acting collectively. More importantly it allows the cowardly perpetrator to claim anonymity.

I realise that the above explanation may be a little complex for those who are incapable of thinking or expressing themselves coherently or logically.

So here goes a little anecdote for those who have taken the trouble to post on my blog or email me with threats of stoning or other violence: Like Rushdie, I grew up in a household where books were kissed. But more importantly, I also grew up in a home where pens, notebooks, and more recently - with typically Hindu logic – laptops are worshipped.

Every year on Diwali, you see, we are required to offer prayers to Durga – the goddess of war – and to our weapons that she is believed to embody and inhabit. Every Diwali, my family would clean and polish old swords, spears, revolvers and rifles. And at midnight, these would be placed on the altar and anointed with kumkum, turmeric, ghee. We would conduct an aarti, the polished metal of the weapons gleaming through the fragrant smoke of diyas and agarbattis.

While I was still a child, my grandmother began the tradition of placing our schoolbooks and pens on the altar instead of weapons. She said that in the coming world, these would be our weapons. That tradition endures and to this day, I place my laptop, even draft manuscripts, on the altar on Diwali. It is a tradition I plan to uphold and live for the rest of my life.

The point I am making is simple: keep those threats coming!

I am not about to back down from saying what I believe. And I am not about to back down from fighting for what I believe. And I am not – like some writers – about to “self-censor” my writing because some pathetic creature out there may be offended.

This is not about Rushdie! This is about my right to words, stories, opinions. And I will be damned if I let go of those without a fight!