Cloud 9 Minus One

Lost Character

sangeeta — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:27:45 +0000

There are some words that simply mustn’t be allowed in English literature, or any other literature. Sex, whore, pimp, fuck and all its colourful variants, also anything to do with bodily effluents, and so on. These terms, and activities related to these terms, are a bad influence on one. I wonder if Shakespeare knew about this? Or Chaucer? Their plays and poems are rife with bawdiness and vulgarity of all kinds, and yet nothing is more exhilarating than reading Macbeth with a glass of red (of course) wine on a winter evening.

And yet, I’m strongly told that today’s books with their heavy dependence on reality, and the portrayal of the amazing range of depravity and degradation that the human race is capable of, are spoiling the youth and turning them into lascivious and sadistic freaks, who believe that it is acceptable to be depraved. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. It is my firm belief that a good piece of literature is one that transports you into an alternative reality, one that is far, far away from one’s own world, and gives flight to one’s imagination. Lolita, for instance, is not about paedophilia, but about the twisted beauty that can exist in the mind of a rapist. Lolita is poetic and wild and beautiful beyond belief. What a shame to interpret it as an ode to paedophilia!

In fact there are only two varieties of books – good and bad. The former uplift you upon reading them, and the latter make you want to sink in shame and despair. There can be no other interpretation of literature. Literature does not encourage depravity – it’s only role is to release mankind from it.

My New Kindle

sangeeta — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 13:22:10 +0000

The first time I heard about Kindle, I dismissed it out of hand as a non-reader’s fake toy. People who weren’t ‘into’ books bought the gadget, or people who were into gadgets, or show-offs, anyone but a true lover of books. I little realised that I was being the show-off here. Like a true snob, I had dismissed something without understanding it. And then my husband gave it to me as a gift. Then, too, I didn’t use it immediately. Gadgets scare me. Even the simplest instruction is a mindbending task for me. So I postponed activating the reader until my husband’s disappointed but eager look propelled me into doing what needed to be done to set the thing going. Since then there is, as someone once famously remarked, no looking back.
There are people who say that they can’t read a book unless they can feel its pages. To them I say ‘B—-s’! It is what lies inside the book that matters, not its glossy cover, or amazing paper quality. I’m ashamed to confess that I’ve read pirated books that feel like newsprint, because the original wasn’t immediately available, and I couldn’t wait. I’m not going to describe the features of the Kindle. Amazon.com does it much better than I can. Suffice it to say that there is no beating carrying an entire library with you on travel, not having to bother with physical bookmarks, and not having to lend one’s precious collection to potential book-stealing felons. And the fun of changing the font size to suit my failing eyesight is unbelievable. Sometimes I listen to the book. But most important of all, I’m a part of a digital revolution that’s happening almost as I breathe. And what could be more exciting than that!
A back of the envelope calculation tells me that my Kindle is going to be sufficient for my needs for the next twenty years. Perhaps a lot will change by then, including the fact that there won’t be too many novelists around, but till then, what a relief not to have to add another bookshelf in my already cramped apartment!

Storytelling – The Female Way

sangeeta — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 06:39:40 +0000

The other day I found myself including a long sambhar recipe in a story that had nothing to do with sambhar or indeed food of any other kind. The inclusion just happened. I stared at what I had written, wondering how it got there. It had got there, of course, because I had typed it out there myself. It wasn’t something I had cut and pasted off the Internet. I had written the recipe, inside my story. I didn’t remember doing it, since, till the previous day, I had been concentrating on writing a mother-daughter narrative replete with bathos and sarcasm. And suddenly, the recipe.
I don’t have a very healthy relationship with my sub-conscious. I don’t understand it, never talk to it, and most of the time don’t believe in it. So it could offer no help to me whatsoever on why I should be writing recipes instead of stories.
And then my logical self told me why. Like most female fictioners, I’m not a writer alone. I’m also wife, mother, daughter, daughter-in-law, and maid about the house. Irrespective of what I’m writing, of what my deadline is, of what my book promotion schedule is, or of what research I’m required to do for my next book, I have to ensure that everyone dependent on me, kids, husband, parents, are all looked after PROPERLY. After all, writing a novel is no excuse for slacking off!
And since I needed to make sambhar for dinner that night, it was the recipe that engaged me, and not the next plot twist in my potentially award-winning story.
Female writers are writers on-the-go. Their writing is fractured and inconsistent, and therefore more passionate. They write when they can, where they can, sometimes sitting at the kitchen counter where they write in between doing other chores, sometimes at the dining table, when it is not occupied by family dinners or children’s homework, sometimes at the crack of dawn, when nobody else in the whole world is awake, and there is no risk of inadvertently writing down a sambhar recipe, sometimes in the late hours of the night, when finally everyone is asleep. They write because they can’t help it. It is the only way they can regain their sanity and self-esteem.

Writing 101

sangeeta — Thu, 27 May 2010 04:52:07 +0000

Unlike what many writers will declare after the event, writing is a damn hard thing to do. And since it isn’t easy for me to write this, I shall put together the following bullet points for new writers, and I shall call it Six Tough Rules to Writing Well:

• Write everyday at a fixed time for a fixed number of hours/minutes
• Read everyday for a fixed number of hours/minutes
• Prepare to trash every single thing you have written in favour of writing better stuff
• Never omit to do a spelling/grammar check after each page
• Write down the plot first
• Revise, revise, revise and then when you’re done, revise again

The most important rule, and it is such an important rule that it cannot be included in the Six Rules, is NEVER GIVE UP. This, in fact, is the easiest rule to follow. All it means is that you start at the beginning and keep going on till you reach the end.

The above is the essence of any good writing. In any creative writing course, the first half of the schedule should be given over to reading. A book a week should be a good way to inculcate the reading habit amongst students. Without reading, how can one write? How does one even know where to begin?

And of course, writing cannot be taught. I didn’t learn writing at Pittsburgh. My faculty, all of them well-known writers, opened my eyes to the world of books, and writers, so that I could revise my own writing, and turn it into something that I could enjoy.

Therefore, the only teaching methodology for creative writing programs, if they are indeed required, is the workshop method, where students write, and write, and write, and read, and read, and read. There must be no teaching.

Eeny Meeny Miny Friend

sangeeta — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:13:52 +0000

‘I wish I had known,’ said Divya. ‘Just a hint.’ And she started crying, small sobs that were threatening to rise to large gulps any moment. After some time she settled down, and took a deep breath to drown out the sobbing. She wiped her tears with the back of her hand.
‘I knew nothing,’ she said with a dash of her normal composure. ‘None of us did. Three years ago, it was like we couldn’t get enough of each other. Akash and Ajay and Chitra and another couple of people. And me, of course. In college we did everything together. Studied, ate, chatted, talked about our parents and siblings and bitched about our former girlfriends/boyfriends. Everything.’ She looked at me, though I thought she was seeing something else. ‘Do you understand everything?’
I nodded but Divya wasn’t looking now. ‘And then poof! Gone. All gone. The day we left Nasik, it was as though none of us knew each other.’ The sobs threaten to overcome her again. ‘I can barely remember what Akash looked like. Can you imagine? He was my b..b..best friend! Just three years ago! And now he’s dead.’ The sobs threaten to overcome her again. ‘Cyanide! Where did he get cyanide from? And why, why did he do it? What could have gone wrong? How come none of knew anything? And I checked. None of the others knew either. I mean, what kind of friends were we? Tell me that. One of us was in trouble, and we didn’t have a clue.’
Divya dissolved into tears again. I had no answer to give her, no reassurance to offer. I couldn’t possibly speak my mind to her, that that’s what friendship is about, that you take from it what you choose and give to it what you choose. Being a friend means making choices. Akash made his, and Divya wasn’t it.

Times of Trouble

sangeeta — Tue, 25 May 2010 06:54:03 +0000

Rhonda is beautiful and blonde. She has short hair cropped close to her skull, and smiling lips. Her eyes radiate peace. She wears a skirt suit, with an olive green tank top underneath, and low-heeled black shoes. In her ears she wears tiny diamond studs, and around her neck a small diamond pendant on a thin chain. On her right wrist, there’s a medium sized watch with a narrow twin coloured strap. She is always calm, no matter what I say to her. And she listens to me as often and for as long as I like. Sometimes, she wears a starched handloom cotton sari with a comfortable blouse, but the rest of her jewellery remains the same.
Rhonda, of course, doesn’t exist except in my head. I picked out a name for her from a character in one of the CBS TV series, and made her my friend. An ideal friend. One who only listens, who doesn’t ask questions and who gives advice that one can follow. But most of all, one who listens. Listens to all my complaints, my dreams and desires. As Rhonda assumed an increasingly central role in my life, I thought I was becoming insane. After all, it isn’t normal to talk to an imaginary person all the time.
Then I spoke to a friend, a real friend, not an imaginary one. This real friend has a real name, Stuti. Stuti and I were talking one day about everything under the sun, and then she told me with a half-ashamed smile on her face, “You know, when things get too much for me, I talk to an imaginary friend. Isn’t that weird?”
In that exchange, Rhonda took a backseat as I hugged Stuti and told her it wasn’t weird at all. It was perfectly normal. We were perfectly normal. We need to rely on someone in times of trouble. Who better than our alter ego, in my case, Rhonda?

Forever Who

sangeeta — Mon, 24 May 2010 04:35:53 +0000

Akash was a 47 year old alcoholic. His first wife left him because he loved his second wife more than her, and his second wife left him because he loved whisky more than her. His parents abandoned him because divorce was a disgrace for their family, and a double divorce was inexcusable. His children couldn’t decide whether to leave him or not since they were too small. Then one day his daughter grew up and decided to be with her dad. He was her dad, though she had never seen him fully sober or fully a dad. Her father, to her, was a maudlin piece of wreckage floating in the ocean.
But all of us had seen Akash before his ship fell apart. We had seen him in his full glory, when he was a brilliant Indian citizen, a student at one of the best educational institutions of this country, a talented and only mildly eccentric young man whose brilliant wit just sparkled more when mixed with a dash of alcohol. And then alcohol got the better of him, and his life halted. And then one day it ended. Cirrhosis of liver.
His cremation was attended by four people, Akash, the priest, his daughter and Mohit, his former classmate and distant friend. It was Mohit who told us of Akash’s death, Mohit who found out that the daughter was now indigent, having been abandoned by her mother for being loyal to her father, and Mohit who started a fund to see the daughter through college. And all of us rallied to the daughter’s cause. Why? Because that’s what friends are for, for never asking why, for never abandoning one, for never passing judgment on our misdeeds, for always remembering the best in us and laughing away the worst. Cause unlike family, unlike wives and husbands and errant children, friends are indeed forever.
So, Akash, you were, even in your loneliest days, never alone. There was a whole bunch of people looking out for you. And they still are.

Hobby Horse

sangeeta — Thu, 20 May 2010 12:30:01 +0000

My mother never had a hobby. There was no time for one. She cooked and she cleaned the house and wiped our asses when we were babies, and stitched our clothes from scraps of fabric gifted to us by various relatives, and after doing all this, she went to work as a schoolteacher. And when she came home, she did everything all over again. On Saturday afternoon, after school, she persuaded my father to take her to a movie. Sometimes he refused, and then there was no movie. And she listened to Vividh Bharati on the radio instead. That, people pointed out snidely to her, was her besetting sin, listening to Vividh Bharati in her spare time.
My father was proud of his own creativity. He wrote letters to the Times of India regularly, almost everyday, sending them in an envelope with a twenty five paise stamp on it. And on Sunday morning he played cards – bridge. The session was every Sunday from ten to four at each player’s place by rotation. So one Sunday a month, my mother spent extra time in the kitchen, cooking for the other three players as well. Sometimes my father would invite my mother to play, but she was a bad player, and everyone became impatient with her, and then she got called by one of us to sort out some quarrel, and that was that.
My life, fortunately, is different from my mother’s. When I work, I have servants to handle all the household chores. I can afford to swim, and play golf, and an occasional game of bridge when the fancy takes me. My best friend devotes an hour every day to her garden, and soon she is planning to start a blog on gardening. My neighbour works in a bank, and on weekends goes hiking in the Sahyadris.
I wish my mother had played bridge on Sundays from ten to four. I think her smile would have been happier.

Family Life

sangeeta — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:49:57 +0000

Sushila Aunty was the talk of the family. She never married in the days when it was unfashionable to be single. Sushila Aunty is a doctor, and once I asked her, when she was in a mellow mood, why she remained unmarried. She looked at me strangely, as though I was being quaint, and said, “I didn’t have the time. There was too much else to do.”
I could appreciate that. A doctor’s life is a busy one. I know many male doctors who are single, particularly from the older generation, when doctors didn’t have secretaries and drivers and other menials to help them. They had to do their own dirty work, as well as look after patients, and there was never any time to devote to the family. Perfectly understandable. But not if one was a woman.
If one was a woman, one had a family, and one had a responsibility, not only to one’s own parents if there was no brother around, but also to one’s husband’s parents and grandparents, and nieces and nephews. And if one chose to have a career in spite of all that, well that was one’s own choice, perhaps a bad one, and nothing could be done about it. But one had to make sure that one didn’t let the family down by being absent from the dozens of ‘functions’ in a year that are part and parcel of married life.
Sushila Aunty chose to opt out of that situation in favour of pursuing her calling sincerely. She was free to find her own hobbies, one of which was trekking, something she did till she turned eighty. She also loved cooking, and maintained a well-appointed kitchen where she could conjure up exciting food from around the world. She entertained lavishly, and ensured that the conversation matched the excellent food. She was a great conversationalist, and had a delightful weakness for American pulp fiction. Judging by the procession of men in her life, she wasn’t wanting for male companionship of the romantic kind either.
And yet she was a curiosity. I envied her, but I know that other, more conservative women in the family pitied Sushila Aunty. She wasn’t married, you see.

Aliens

sangeeta — Thu, 13 May 2010 15:37:54 +0000

I have a recurring nightmare. I am in the Amazon jungle, and a rare Indian tribe is planning to do weird things to my body, including eating me up. I wake up just as the chief is starting to chop off my pinkie.
In real life, I’m always within my comfort zone. From my middle class neighbourhood in Bombay to my supermarket to the movie theatre to the airport, I’m always inside familiar territory. I like it this way. I hate to be placed in a position where I’m an alien. Yes, so I’m a coward.
As a writer, the opposite is true. I’m fascinated by what would happen if someone were to be ejected from their comfort zone and jetpacked into a completely strange place. I don’t mean another planet, or even another country. The neighbouring slum is good enough. What if my heroine were to be forced into a situation about which she knew nothing? How would she respond? What reservoirs of courage would she draw upon to deal with different people, different houses, different languages and even different ways of expressing oneself? How would she deal with a tax inspector, for instance? Or the slumlord? Or the bootlegging mamma? Or the resident whore? Would she run, or would she display her humanity by dealing with such people as she deals with all people, with empathy, compassion and a bit of true, old-fashioned grit?
This is one of the things that I’m dealing with in my new novel, and it’s proving to be one interesting journey!