Just published – Monsoons and Mayflowers

Take a look at my latest book, Monsoons and Mayflowers, an unusual look at life, nature and the seasons in Mumbai city.

Available as an ebook –

Amazon.in

Amazon.com

Amazon.uk

These endearing and delightful sketches will give you a most unusual look at the life of a big city.

Have you always wanted to know how not to talk crow, or how to think like a dog or walk into a wall of grass? Have you secretly desired to experience Mumbai’s most beautiful visitors or hide under a table with your whole family? If you pit a squirrel against the education system who will win? Don’t worry, it has a happy ending.

Here is a whole world of lonely Black Kites, dissatisfied visitors, telepathic dogs, giggling Peepals, lucky black cats, gaudy birds, a soundwave of sparrows, independent minded trees and cats who hate the rain. And much more.

Enter at your own risk. Take this journey into a world you did not dream existed.

The Writing Life

I have been writing all my life but last year I became a full time writer. I wound up my 15 years of teaching workshops. My last workshop was early 2010. This year I awaken each morning with only the daily writing in mind and it is bliss.

No longer the endless ringing of the phone, no longer having to break up the climactic scene in the middle so I am on time for my workshop. Now there are whole, long, welcoming days to fill with writing.

A lot of people told me that I would never give up teaching because I enjoy it so much. I do enjoy it and so it was touch and go for a while, but it was either that or books and the books won. I have at least ten books in mind and now I have the time to write them. One published, another complete and many more to go.

I am no longer hunting for a cab on a rainy Sunday morning hoping they have not forgotten to open the room for my workshop. Or answering the phone. Calls always peak on the day before a workshop and the phone rings almost non stop. Now it hardly rings and I can write in peace.

I think that is the one thing which writers need. Time to write, think, re-write, edit, polish finish. It’s a long process. Writing a book is even longer. It takes dedication. I know that I will not feel like writing half the time but I will write anyway. The daily portion must be done. Sometimes it flows and sometimes it takes all day. The only way to finish a book is to keep at it, day after day, never taking a long break.

It’s a different life, this one. A quiet life, just you and the laptop. Perhaps that is the problem. A lot of writers get distracted because there is no one to urge you on. You have to be your own taskmaster, setting your portion and making sure you complete it.

This year I’m writing fiction and its hard to explain how delightful it is. I don’t think I can explain it to anyone who has not written fiction, who has not taken a journey into that very real world of your characters and watched them coming alive on the page. You are not yourself. You are someone else, somewhere else, drawing on your very last reserves of courage. For a writer the emotions are cathartic. On the page you can feel every emotion in its deepest and rawest form, and the more you let go, the deeper it gets.

Writing fiction is quite unlike writing anything else. You are in a different mind space altogether. I am also writing poetry and that is similar but not the same. Nothing can really compare with writing stories, any kind of story, short stories or a novel. This year that is my main work, writing every morning, writing late into the night. And I wonder, how did I get so lucky ?

 

Those who dont read

The one thing you discover when you publish a book is all the people who don’t read. When I used to walk a dog on Marine Drive I discovered how many men bark at dogs and it’s a similar thing. They look you in the eye and throw down a challenge, “haven’t read a book since the day I left college,” they say proudly, expecting a medal. Then they see your face and condescend a little so as not to hurt an author’s delicate feelings. “But I will read your book, give me a copy.”

Then I have to explain, in whatever way I can, that I have no copies. (the six I received  have long been distributed and I am hanging on to one by the skin of my teeth and my sister is hanging on to another and growls at anyone who comes near) I tell them that lowly authors don’t have a wealth of copies to give out and suggest a bookstore.

At that point they draw back. I see alarm and suspicion in their faces. I go ahead and tell them the name of the nearest bookstore.

“Where is it ?”  they ask, even if its just down the road.

I know what they are thinking. They are wondering if it is safe to do such a strange thing as wander into an unknown bookshop. I have seen them scurry by on the farthest side of the pavement, with furtive looks over their shoulder as they pass.

I try to make it easier. “If you call them they will deliver the book to you,” I say. Immediately I wish I had not said that.

“Give me the phone number,” they demand as if I carry it in my pocket. When I admit I do not know the number I know I have lost all credibility.

First I should have given them a book free from the enormous stack at my elbow, second I should not have been so crude as to expect decent people like them to step into a place like a bookstore and now, I don’t even carry the phone number handy. So I promptly put my foot into it by suggesting they look it up on the web. By then they are herding their children behind them and hunting for the exit.

I once heard a conversation in a bookstore when I was browsing the shelves. A young voice, speaking right behind the tall racks. “Hi, mom, you will never guess where I am ?  No, no, I am not with a boy, I am at a bookshop. What ?  No, a bookshop, you know where they sell books. Books. Yes, like that. Yes, of course I am okay, I came with a friend. No, mom, I promise I have never come here before. It just happened. What ? No, she just went to look for a book. Don’t worry, mom, I am really fine. I promise I wont stay long. I will be home soon. Bye.”

Peering through the books I saw two receding figures both wearing the anonymous teenage uniform of blue jeans and tight black T-shirt.  A few minutes later they walked out, no doubt with a sigh of relief. I wonder if her anxious mother kept calling, “have you left yet ? Are you okay ?”

Then there are those who, when they hear you are writing a book, look you straight in the eye and ask bluntly, “what for ?”  I don’t know the answer to that one. I wonder if anyone knows. I learnt the hard way that it is not an existential question requiring philosophical quotes from the Bhagvad Gita. They are talking about something far more mundane. I finally figured out that they did not mean, what for, they meant, how much, “How much did you pay to publish it ? Does it make good money?” and unless you want them to cut you out of their lives completely never tell them how much an author earns.

And then there is always that earnest woman who leans forward and says confidentially, “I don’t read. Why don’t you just tell me what it is about ?  Just tell me the important parts.” When I avoid that one she says, “well, if you lend it to me, I will look at it. As I said I don’t read.”

When I refuse she says she will get a copy of her own, in a very weary tone, obviously thinking that I will suffer terribly bad karma for this sordid breach of generosity. Then she has a better idea and delivers it by sidling close, lowering her voice and asking me to do her a favour. “You know I don’t read,” she says for the third time, “can you mark out all the important parts ?”

That is not the worst. I met the worst on a bright sunny morning in a bookstore café. I had just ordered coffee and she came and sat by me unasked and showed me a book which was fortunately not my own. She had made notes in the margins and underlined paras, and folded corners. “I love this book,” she said, and proceeded to read me her comments. “I come here every week and sit at this table and read it and make my comments. What was the name of your book again ?”

We left together, walking past the long shelves. Then I found she was not beside me and turned to look. She was bending over the bottom shelf, slipping that favourite book right into the corner, behind a few others.

“There,” she said, “its quite safe till I come back next week.”  With a satisfied smile she headed for the door.

Writing Mantramala

Ten years or more ago I was struggling to learn the subject of mantras There are no courses you can take in mantras, and no teachers. I had studied the Vedas a little after reading Sri Aurobindo’s classic book, Secret of the Vedas. But when I tried to learn mantras I realised very quickly that most of the mantras were secret, not translated, unavailable or impossible to find.

For years I collected all the books I could, took notes, brushed up my Hindi so that I could read texts not yet in English, took the help of friends and asked questions wherever I could. After years of work it still made little sense. The mantra texts all say that you need a guru and without a guru the mantras are of no use. But you cant just look up gurus in the yellow pages.

I looked for them. I met a few. One very bad tempered old man kept grousing about modern day evils like the Internet and the disrespect shown by the terrible modern generation. Others were not interested in sharing their knowledge especially not to a woman, god forbid, what has the world come to ?

Ultimately I did experiments on my own, with a small group to discover the effects of mantra. We met once a week and tried out various mantras. A friend helped me source out the Hindi texts, some of which are hard to find.  So many of the old Sanskrit texts are just not available in English. Over the years I collected a large library of books.

Traditionally they say there were seven crore mantras, and those only the Sanskrit ones. Of course we do not have so many. When India went through its dark ages around the 11th century much was lost. Entire university townships like Takshashila and Nalanda were completely destroyed, all the texts burned. Fortunately enough remains to keep anyone busy for a lifetime.

One of the reasons I wrote the book is that most people do not know these things. The ancient knowledge remains in ashrams but has not been modernised to be relevant to a new age. The old texts on mantras have instructions like go to a river at 3 a.m., and pick fresh bel leaves and meditate till the sun rises. I live in Mumbai city where rivers and bel trees are both very hard to find.

The main problem with doing mantras is that the mind wanders all over the place. What’s the use of doing a mantra and thinking of dinner or watching TV ?  I created my own methods of visualisation which I tried out with groups when I did mantra workshops. Over the years I learned what works and what does not.

Whenever I gave talks or workshops with my unique methods people asked me, which book can I buy ? And that put me in a fix because there are so few books around, little that I can recommend. And I had to explain that no book will have my methods, my explanations or my visualisations. Eventually I decided to write my own.

I knew what I wanted. Only Sanskrit mantras. I do not work with non Sanskrit mantras. There are mantras in many languages, plenty in Hindi, in colloquial languages,  in every dialect and I even have a book of something similar in Arabic. But I am only interested in the Sanskrit ones. I feel that, for mantras, there is just no language as effective as Sanskrit which was created as a mantric language.

Finding the mantras was a difficult task. I had decided on a structure of 108 sections covering every area of life. Most of the other books were just a random collections. I wanted my book to be very comprehensive and I didn’t discover what a task that was until I had started looking. Initially I had intended a small book, but I found so many mantras that it kept expanding until I put an end to it when I reached over 400.

Sourcing the mantras was another problem. Many of the original texts are not available. I only took mantras which I could verify. If I found mantras in which either the Sanskrit or the mantra itself was doubtful even if it was very interesting, I left it out. Sanskrit itself is a complex language and even the published texts are often full of mistakes. I had to check and double check everything.

The research never seemed to end. Sometimes I got so fed up I put away the unfinished file deciding to waste no more time on it. But after a while someone in a workshop would ask me, have you finished your book ? That, and the fascination with mantras always drew me back and I finally put my mind to finishing it.

I wrote the book for several reasons. I wanted people to know the wealth of mantras available. My methods have worked very well in workshops, I wanted to put them in a book. I wanted a modern book, devoid of mindless rituals, which is compatible with a fast paced city life style today, in modern language that a lay person can understand. I also wanted to put in some of the very beautiful Vedic mantras which are usually ignored.

I put in chapters on the meaning of the Indian calendar and the meaning of festivals which many are unaware of in today’s world. I have tried to make the book as complete as possible with all the well known mantras and plenty of little known ones.

Last and very important, most of the old texts are extremely male chauvinistic and I wanted to make it clear that women can do mantras just as well as men. Most of the bias has been added over the centuries and is part of a power game and was not originally the case.

Most of today’s workshops are attended by women and this one question is asked over and over. Can I do mantras ? Are you sure ? I wanted the answers to be very clear and very encouraging to women. If any of those  purposes have been  achieved, or even just one, I will feel that the whole long and complicated effort has been worthwhile.