I began my writing career at the age of ten when my first poem was picked up by “Children’s World”. There was no stopping me then. I was published every week, including a story on a monkey called Chimp that was serialized and had a huge fan following. A few years later my mother sent off a bunch of poems to the “Shanker’s International Children’s Competition” and lo and behold I got my first letter by registered post! I had won the Nehru gold medal for my poem “Solitude”. My mother preserved the news cuttings with my picture and interview, where I boasted to the world that I wanted to grow up and be a writer. I did not live up to the promise at all.

In the years to come as I finished my studies, entered a college as lecturer, read and taught literature, fell in love and married, brought up my daughter, travelled to different parts of India, including Varanasi, I did not write a single sentence of creative writing. Then one day when I was spring cleaning and putting all the books in order I came across old copies of ‘Children’s World”. I showed them to my daughter and her response was, “Why don’t you write now?” This was in 1998. That night I wrote my first sentence and have been writing since then, compulsively, to make up for lost time.

I began with children’s writing because I was writing for my daughter. I wrote a non-fiction on the unlikely topic of “The Bhopal Gas tragedy”. I wrote a work of fiction simultaneously. Both got published – The Bhopal Gas Tragedy: A Book for Young People by Tulika, Chennai 2002 (a revised and updated second edition came out in 2005) and the A Tale of the Forest by Rupa & company, 2003. I went on to write a young adult fiction Waiting at the Crossroads that is still with me, for as a genre, young adult writing has not come of age in India. It was while writing my third book that a new idea took shape in my mind. I wanted to weave a story centered on an urban, upper middle class family that gets destabilized when “family secrets” that lay dormant for 20 years start spilling out. Each character is compelled to face their inner selves, and come face to face with the “choices” they have made. Though the boy who acts as catalyst for the plot is not more than ten or eleven years of age, I knew I was not writing a children’s novel. Writing young adult fiction had helped me make the transition.

Avinash comes to live with the Sengupta family in Delhi from an ashram, and I knew that Varanasi would be my first and only choice for setting of the novel, weaving the twin city metaphor into my story. At one point in his banking career my husband had been posted to Varanasi and my first visit to the “ancient city” was fraught with mixed feeling. I was repelled by the turgid religiosity, the collective hysteria and yet fascinated by the narrow galis where eternity and confinement co-existed in perfect harmony. I knew I was coming back to Varanasi but I had no idea how.

It took two years of intensive research to weave a story set in Varanasi. I chose particular sites like Banaras Hindu University, the Ganges, the Vishwanath temple, the Manikarnika and other ghats and an ashram in the Rajghat Plateau area. It is difficult not to be overwhelmed by the heritage of this bewildering city, and to find a way of processing myth and metaphor into fictional matter. So I allowed my story to flow, with each character “seeing” Varanasi in different ways. I used much of the Shiva lore and juxtaposed it with other universal notions on death and sin. Varanasi is “the confluence of realities”, and for each of my characters their inner selves are explored in relation to the cityscape. To that extent I do agree that Varanasi is another character in my novel.

Usually a novel with “family secrets” has elements of suspense and mystery; Across the Mystic Shore has its own dose of excitement but I am not writing a thriller. The “dark, disturbing secret” is philosophical and is as much about the break down of middle class notions of family and relationships. Ultimately what I seek to do is search for alternate spaces, defined through different kinds of relationships without validating any categories. So my novel does not have resolutions like in a mystery novel, but is open ended. It asks many more questions than it chooses to answer. But I do love the old fashioned art of story telling, and I believe that a tale has to be well told. It is not a linear novel but moves backward and forward, across two cities and through time. Both time and space are mediated through my character’s consciousness, and each of them tells their own story. In that sense too my novel is about story telling as empowerment, and this is specially so in the case of Uma and Romola and David to a large extent. I think for me the sheer enchantment of discovering my own ability as a writer after a gap of so many years is conveyed through these stories.

Across the Mystic Shore is about love but not in the conventional sense of the term. It is as much about thwarted desire and the possibility of loving without possessing. It is about motherhood, and again not in the stereotypical sense of the biological or adoptive process. It is about “yearning” and discovering the pain, betrayal and fulfillment of the maternal instinct. More than anything else it is about healing and living through the trauma of loss.

I have lived with these characters for two years, so they are real in more ways than one. They are not autobiographical, but they grow from a keen sense of observing and knowing people. I am told there is too much of me in this book, particularly in the sense of “authorial presence”. I believe that styles evolve and this is not necessarily the style I use in my next novel. But in Across the Mystic Shore there is a sense of unfurling meaning, and like Varanasi the stories are “layered”. My characters understand each other, themselves and their circumstances in bits and pieces; that is how the “secret” is unraveled. Their thoughts flow in and out of each one’s perception and therefore one gets the sense of the author as all knowing. But in reality the novel is full of ambivalence, and the impossibility of knowing something as the truth.

My characters are individuals not types. I loved creating Abha. Romola sprang up in my mind as suddenly as she enters the novel, and once she came into being she dictated the plot and did surprising things. Uma and Romola are my personal favourites. They are enchanting, fable like and subversive. I enjoyed creating the child characters, and especially in the case of Mira and Avinash there was a story waiting to be told. I let it remain unsaid and moved on to other lives. Writing a novel is like vicarious living, the sort of “negative capability” that Keats describes. It has been a personal journey full of many surprises, happy turn of events and sense of achievement.

Last but not the least, I am proud to be part of the team in Pan Macmillan UK, which tried to do something out of the ordinary by seeking to publish new authors. I thank god I belong to a generation that can reap the benefits of net and get to know about publishers in different parts of the globe. I was looking around for a literary agent when I found Macmillan New Writing. That was luck. But I was chosen from 4000 manuscripts sent in; that I believe is much more than luck. I have rediscovered myself as writer – that is a blessing.

I am writing my next novel with the assurance from my publishers that they are interested in nurturing me as author. All I can say about the new book is that it is still untitled, very different from Across the Mystic Shore, it is not linear, has a very contemporary feel, the characters are like you and me, the story has the feel of being “your story” and it is in many ways a dark, deeply tragic novel.

Our World is our Weapon : Selected Writings by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Seven Stories Press, New York, 2001. Utterly brilliant, it captures with heart breaking intensity the voices from the Zapatista Movement. This book makes compelling reading; I have read it again and again with quickening heartbeat and a lump in my throat.

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, Fourth Estate, London, 2003. This book is about reading literature in captivity and discovering its power to transform and set free. Tender, deeply moving and gritty it is a novel that will remain with you for a long time.

Transparent Imprint: How a Publisher’s Decision to Tell the Truth to Authors Stirred up a Storm by Micheal Bernard, Macmillan, London 2006. It is not vested interest that makes me recommend this book, though it does tell the story of how Macmillan New Writing was conceptualized. Funny, hard-hitting and perceptive it is a must read for all those interested in writing and publishing. Believe me, I had no idea how creative, innovative and full of pitfalls is the process of bringing out a book in its final form.

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