As I have said often, my new avathar as a writer / author post retirement began with the success of my autobiography published in 2009. Since then I have published ten books including my latest novella titled `Durga Nivas- biography of a building`
Writing
the novel has been the most difficult of
all the books I have written so far. Let me elaborate. Out of three alternative
plots I had in mind I
chose the one based on my experience of living in a chawl for the first 26
years of my life in Bombay. It provided me an opportunity to vividly describe
the lives of nine families coming from different parts of India and living like a joint family on the first floor of a
fictional building housing the chawl. A
classic example of Unity in Diversity. But I found writing the novel sitting at
my home was not working out as it requires the author to get totally immersed
in the plot and the characters. This was
not possible because I was also managing
my portion of the independent house
I was sharing with my son. Resulting in constant disturbances. So I started
writing the novel whenever I was travelling sitting in the hotel rooms where I was staying. Initially I used to write by hand and later
feed it into my computer. Very often I could not decipher my own hand writing
leading to frustration. It was a slow
progress because, the long gap between
travels would have broken the chain of
thoughts. In two years I managed to write only 12,000 words.
Then
the pandemic happened. I was staying
with my elder daughter when the first
lockdown was announced. Her apartment block on Santhome High road was located
adjacent to the Marina Beach with a beautiful view of the Bay of Bengal from
the bedrooms. Besides you could view the sunrise every morning. With such an
idyllic setting and with my daughter, son in law and grand daughter taking care of me I found total freedom to
plunge into the world of the characters of my novel. In three weeks I managed to write
22,000 words. It was amazing.
While
writing the novel, though I had an overall idea
of what I had in mind, I could never plan the details of each episode.
Every morning when I started pounding on my lap top the ideas simply flowed. The
fact that in the last one year I had graduated from handwriting to directly
feeding the matter into the computer, helped.
As
Jayakanthan the well known Tamil writer once said that `the characters in novels had a life of their own and authors did not
have control over them; they were not puppets to be pulled with a chain` I
experienced this while writing my novel. Most of the conversations/dialogues
between characters were not pre planned. They just happened. Unlike my essays which undergo several revisions
before I finalise a piece, I did not have to make any major changes to my original idea of the novel.
I
circulated the first draft to my family and a few friends. While I received
overall appreciation for the novel as most found it engrossing, some pointed out a
few inconsistencies in terms of names,
timelines. Some even suggested recasting the order of the presentation. I then
got a professional editor to go through
the novel. She helped me fine tune the presentation and also made several
corrections without affecting the flow of the novel as I had visualised. The
whole process took almost five months as
the draft saw at least three revisions by the copy editor.
Once
the manuscript was ready I approached my good friend Diwakar of Compuprint ,
specialising in Digital printing and Print on demand facility, for printing and
publishing the book. Things started moving fast. Based on photographs of a
typical chawl shot by my bother Seshadri, the dynamic team at Compuprint came
up a with a striking design for the cover and a pleasing page layout. Diwakar
also agreed to publish the book under his banner Creative Workshop and look
after the requirements for uploading the
novel on Amazon, FlipKart and on Kindle. Ashwin of Odyssey Book Shop agreed to
sell the book in all branches of the shop in Chennai & Coimbatore.
Since
physical meetings were out of question for a formal launch I decided to
announce it on my FB page and also
use the direct mail route to reach all
my contacts through email. I also decided to offer my friends who wanted signed copies of my book to place their order directly with me with a promise that I would courier the book
to them at my cost. The response has been overwhelming. I was touched when a
few friends decided to order extra copies of the book to be gifted by them to
their friends. The fact that the entire proceeds from the sale of the book will
go towards the activities of Prabha Rajan Talent Foundation(PRTF) is also
helping the sale of the book. Within a three
weeks of the launch I ran out of stock
and had to order for reprints. I am yet to reach out to a large no of friends in my network.
As
many famous authors have said , if a book has to sell well the author has to
market it shamelessly. And this is what
I am doing as I also have a target to reach for PRTF. PRTF is an unregistered Trust without
any bank account. All the contributions
for the PRTF activities are funded from my personal earnings and as a matter of
policy I do not accept any direct donations.
The only exception is when I sell my books to readers and spend the
entire proceeds towards the activities of PRTF. Here my view is that I am
giving some value to the buyer of the book and it is not a direct donation.
Judging
by the number of unsolicited favourable
reviews I am getting I am sure I
have a winner on hand. Though I have
received a couple of critical reviews about the unconventional presentation, the majority of the readers have found the
book `unputdownable ` As one reader
wrote, `Overall,the
book is a breeze and good read with some
element of anticipation. I finished it in one sitting`
Readers
who have knowledge of life in Bombay are particularly finding the book nostalgic. If you buy the book I promise you
value for money spent.
Priced at Rs
290/- the book is available on Amazon & Flipkart and also on Kindle. If you
want a signed copy from me I will be happy to courier the copy at my cost. For online
payment details please connect with me on rvrajan42@gmail.com
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