http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/interview_i-could-write-only-after-mother-died_1414150
Kashmir Blues
When I received the pdfs from Westland/Tranquebar for Amazon uploads, the acknowledgements page was missing. This page is, of course, in the printed version of the book, but not in the digital format.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Without the dedicated reading of the first draft by my brother-in-law Paul Mitchell, and the detailed reading of the last by my editor Prita Maitra, and her (gentle) insistence on getting it right and not letting me get away with vagueness or laziness, this book would not be what it is. My heartfelt thanks and love to you both.
My sister Meithili Mitchell was part-time editor as well, not always voluntarily, and sometimes even under (vague and unspecified) threats. My love and thanks to you.
Nikhil Khosla, my friend who happens to be my brother-in-law, thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Thank you Lu Vickers, for all your help. Your comments and suggestions were invaluable, and I know the book is better because of them.
My friends who gave me valuable criticism and welcome praise. You make my writing better, yes, but also me: Urvashi Khosla, Richard Bush, Sheila Curran, Joseph Hellweg, Jane Macpherson, Julia and Philip Sura, Robert Draper (who also took out the garbage and changed lightbulbs), Tracy Sumner, Shashi Deshpande, Suhael Merchant.
Sukhi, Tissa, Ashish, and Saheli, your patience and tolerance sustains me, and your encouragement and expectations make me reach beyond my own perceived limits. In writing and in life.
Frank-Udo, I used your name without your permission. This Frank is named for you and not any other. But there the resemblance ends. I did not know you were in the world when I wrote it, just hoped that you were.
sunday blues
Kashmir Blues, my second book, is available in India. This one’s for you, all you guys who will read it. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope some of you will share your thoughts with me. Because though writing is a pleasure and delight all its own, the feeling I get when you tell me what you got from the book, and what you didn’t, and what you liked and what incensed you, and which people you hated, identified with, fell in love with – all this means you read it.
My house was robbed last night. We were all out, when my son got back home he found the back door kicked in, and found some laptops, a game system, and an acoustic guitar missing. It was worth a lot, for the people whose stuff was stolen, it was probably worth much more for those who took it. It was an obviously amateur job – they took cables but not speakers, dropped the controller of the game system in the back yard, and left lots of fingerprints and a shoe print on the door for the forensics guy. We can’t be sure they were the perpetrators, but a group of young men were reported loitering near the house some time before the robbery.
There were different responses from friends, acquaintances, and neighbors when they heard about it. Many were angry on my behalf, which I appreciated, but I didn’t feel particularly angry myself. I felt sad, that there are people who must overcome their better nature and do these things, who are in circumstances that make it necessary to take the risk that is surely involved in what they did. I got a lot of advice – about self-defense, alarm systems, someone even said “we are in a war”. It was unexpected. I was not delighted that my house was robbed, but I am glad that it was not the house of my ninety year old neighbor. I am glad that neither I, nor any of my children were home at the time of the break-in. I am glad that the cat was unharmed.
It’s normal to be angry, and feel threatened, and take unreasonable precautions after such a thing happens. But I feel I shouldn’t forget to ask why. Not why these particular people did this, but why anyone does. I just don’t think there are “evil” people out there who enjoy stealing and being criminals. There might be a few, of course – like those on Wall street. But for the most part, I have a feeling that people have to be desperate to do desperate things.
A couple of weeks ago, I turned on my porch lights at sundown as I usually do. I noticed that the light on one side didn’t come on. I assumed the bulb was fused, and went to take it out, when I saw that the light sconce was full of twigs and leaves. Over the next few days, a tiny brown bird was seen by everyone frantically flying back and forth with more twigs and leaves. I figured I could do without the porch light till she had moved out.
This week she is still frantically flying back and forth, now with insects as big and wide as herself – dragonflies, beetles, cockroaches – there is no dearth of these in Florida. She shoves these down the throats of her three little babies, who set up a great chirring and screeing every time she nears the nest. Earlier this week there was a tragedy in the family. Marley, one of the inmates of my house, also known as the land shark by the neighbors, caught and ate the daddy, so the poor female has to do double duty with the feeding. If Marley the cat is successful in making the mommy his post lunch snack, the baby birds will not live either.
It is a simple thing – the lives of birds. And cats.
And then there is the oil spill. Our lives are not simple. We need oil. A company that provides us with that oil is capable of decimating an ocean, laying our coastline to waste, and bringing to their knees thousands of people who want and need that oil. And also of ending those simple lives of all the pelicans and turtles and crawfish and oysters and millions of creatures and plants in the path of that awful red tide.
I drive an oil guzzler. If I am not personally responsible for this particular disaster, I am at least aware that I do not live a simple life. I take more than I can ever give to this planet. I don’t have answers, or solutions, only questions. And regrets.
I shoo the cat away from under the nest in my porch light.
Nearing the end of my five mile walk through the green humid woods of Tallahassee, I noticed something on my sunglasses slightly obscuring my vision. I took them off and wiped them on my sweat-soaked t-shirt. Joe and I kept walking, the gang of children including my son running ahead of us appeared and disappeared among the trees, like woodland creatures. I had swum an hour that morning with another friend, done a respectable amount of editing, had my four-month teeth cleaning, and couldn’t refuse a long walk with my friend in my barefoot shoes. My t-shirt must have left a streak of sweat on my sunglasses, I thought, and I took them off an wiped them again. We kept walking. Five miles is a long distance, and after a swim and a dental visit, it can seem endless. Just as I said despairingly to Joe, “is this ever going to end?” we saw the park entrance at the end of the final stretch. I wiped my glasses one more time, without success. The right side was a blur. We herded the kids into the car, and as I began to drive, I realized that I had not just a blur, but no sight at all in my right eye. All I could see was a spiky neon sign in purples and blues on the periphery of my vision, and when I turned to take a better look, I couldn’t catch it, like some memory you can’t quite grasp. It was bright and clear as long as I didn’t try to look at it directly. It was very beautiful. It always is. I always wish it would last longer. It is my own private, tiny, exquisite hallucination.
I have experienced too few migraines to recognize the early signs, but too many to not fear the pain. I drove carefully home with my one good eye (and my hands on the wheel and my foot on the gas), and took two Excedrin immediately. I was sweaty and tired and thought a long hot shower would help. There is a moment between the aura – the blindness and light displays – and the onset of the pain – that is one of the calmest feelings I have ever felt. It is a moment of hope, that the pain will not come, a moment of knowing the near future – that the pain will come, and the sense of inevitability, and the beauty and simplicity of that is almost overwhelming. I stood in the shower until it passed, and until the pain started. After that, all you can do, as all migraine havers know, is to lie in a cold dark place and wait for it to leave you.
It does.
Some people experience real euphoria after the pain. I, unfortunately, don’t. I just feel relieved to be back in control, and greatly relieved that the fire burning the left side of my brain has died out completely, leaving nothing but a cool sigh, a complete retreat from the bottom of the abyss.
Until next time.
Modesty Blaise
If I was to be honest about who influenced my writing and my fantasies about life and love, I would have to say Modesty Blaise. It is ironic that she is a pulp fiction character created by a man, that she could be mistaken for a male fantasy. But she was far from that. And if she was, it was a man very secure in his maleness to unleash a woman like her on the world. Modesty is stronger than most men, more resourceful, more wily, more – just about anything. And she is everything I am not – fabulous, an ex-criminal, a crack shot… and everything I have never actually wanted to be. I think. But she was an inspiration in a way that no one else, either real or imagined, ever was.
Her creator, Peter O’Donnell died this month. I never got the chance to say thank you to him, but if I had, I would say, thank you Mr.O’Donnell. For giving me such a role model. Not all role models are realistic, or even real. I need superheros. Modesty has always been with me, a woman with muscles and wit, principles and loyalty, honesty and wisdom, and spare change and Willie Garvin to boot!
Anytime anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never said it out loud, but in my head, every single time without fail I would say, “Modesty Blaise”.
As I work on editing and think about the shape and layout and progression of the IIT Hostel4 book, I am amazed at the audaciousness of these boys’ lives (they were all boys, H4 is a men’s hostel, and I say ‘boys’ and not ‘men’ because they were between 16 and 22, and my experience with a 19 year old son tell me ‘boys’ is appropriate). Some of those boys are now men, and some of them tell stories wonderfully, and a lot of them have stories to tell. This is, to me, a kind of collection of legends and folktales and myths and memories that together gives a picture of hostel life in the early eighties, of course, but also a glimpse into the psyche of that age group – a highly intelligent group of them. I have fathers (two) and a husband and many old and now many new friends who were IITians. I have always wondered – do they have to be a certain way to go into that institution, or did they come out that way after being there? I was hoping for answers while reading these stories, but there seem to be none so far.
While doing this book, I am painfully aware of another looming deadline – I made a commitment to my editor that I would write a collection of short stories by the end of August. Not just short stories, a collection of erotic short fiction. It started as a joke, and I took it as a challenge. But I was also curious about my writing. Could I write to spec and still be me as a writer? and could I break out and “go all the way” in my writing? I’m two stories down, about seven to go. To me these stories seem more bizarre than erotic… but, we’ll see. And I am certain that living day in and day out in a hostel full of seething teenage hormones (I’m sure no one will disagree with me here) – which is what I do when I read and edit the H4 stories – is hindering me badly in my quest for the perfect erotic story. There’s nothing erotic about engineering students… or is there?
