I went to Loktak Lake near Imphal in Manipur in Dec 2021. It is a huge freshwater lake, that looks like an inland sea. It is like a living lake with fishermen and farmers living on various floating islands called ‘Phumdi’ locally. Loktak has a lot of history associated with it. When we took a … Read more
One of the perks of being a writer is to read a lot. I have noticed that without reading a lot, it is almost impossible to write. Not only does reading provide inspiration for writing (real or like Anu Malik too sometimes, which isn’t all that bad!), but it also keeps your eyes open to … Read more
It is much cheaper to make a movie like Kahaani or A Wednesday or Khosla ka Ghosla than to make a Ra.One or Brahmastra. Even if you add the costs of stars, it might be cheaper to make a Zindagi Na Milega Dobara than Adipurush. But I guess creative people cannot resist the lure of … Read more
In the old days, most creative outputs had gatekeepers. The people who evaluated what you wrote. Or the labels that checked if your music would work. Or the galleries who assessed your paintings. Much of their work was to work for the audience and curate something they thought would sell well and enable them to … Read more
It was exactly five years back that I started writing my first novel – on this day. Since then, I have stuck to writing as one of my primary preoccupations, resulting in publishing many more books. That doesn’t necessarily qualify me for advising anyone on writing. But at the very least, it qualifies me on … Read more
Hundreds of books get published everyday. Maybe thousands. And most of them don’t sell more than ten copies. Some not even that many. Yet, no one who has ever written a book regrets that they wrote one. So what are the reasons to write a book? I came up with a few. Here is the … Read more
The other day we decided to watch a movie on Netflix. There was one I had in mind but there were no ratings for it. So, we didn’t choose it. Then, after 15 minutes of browsing, we still hadn’t decided and switched off the TV. Life used to be simple. You go to a bookstore … Read more
A friend of mine who climbed Mount Everest (yes, really!) was interviewed (many times over), and in one of the interviews was asked if he realized the enormity of his achievement. He tried to play it down saying, “I am just a normal guy. Anybody can climb Everest.” And the interviewer stopped him, and said, … Read more
I had been told to get on Facebook when I started writing. I did. I used to have an author page where I kept posting blog posts regularly at one time. Then I was told to publish them on LinkedIn. I had never bought a book, especially fiction, after reading about it on LinkedIn. Or … Read more