 This is so old from when I was three years old, three or four, tough toys. They don't make them. The he-man that wrote on it is long gone, God knows where. And what's that other dragon-like thing? This is from Chuck Palaner. My brother sent him a letter once ages ago and he replies to readers and sometimes sends them like these little gift boxes. So he sent my brother this dragon and like a toy severed finger and some other stuff. Yeah, yeah, he's big with props. I mean even in his readings, he brings these severed hands and throws them to the audience and would know. Now that I've been to one, but I've heard. Oh, I have been to one, but yeah. You can start your life. The most random use of a severed hand ever. Yeah, can you please give me a hand? Jyotsna says we are live. So let's get started. Hello everyone. Welcome to Antel inside science fiction book club. Today we are shape shifting with Indra Das. Before we begin a few reminders, please keep your mics on mute. We will be having a Q&A at the end. So please keep typing in your questions in the chat box. To introduce myself, I am Vijay Lakshmi Harish. I am the author of Strangely Familiar Tales. My poetry and short stories have been published in various journals online. And my writing on pop culture and feminism also be found in Women's Web. My co-modulator today is a wonderful TG Chenoy. TG Chenoy is an SFF enthusiast, columnist and critic. He is the writer of India's longest running weekly SFF column New World's Weekly for Factor Daily and the Specifics column for Bangalore Mirror. He also curates the SFF track for Bangalore Litfest. He has featured in podcasts such as the Taliharete Kannada podcast and even such as the Sri Lanka Comic Con to talk about SFF in general and Indian SFF in particular. He hosts to Bolly Go, a fun SFF quiz every Saturday. He is also an advertising and marketing professional and is currently a consulting partner with Search's 100 Consulting. Today we are speaking with the brilliant Indra Pramit Das. Indra Pramit Das, also known as Indra Das, is a writer and editor from Kolkata, India. He is a lambda literary award winner for his debut novel The Devourers and a Shirley Jackson award winner for his short fiction, which has appeared in a variety of anthologies and publications including Tor.com, Slate Magazine, Clarksworld and Asimov Science Fiction. He has lived in India, the United States and Canada where he received his MFA from the University of British Columbia. Welcome Indra. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me here. I'm a fan. So it's an honor to be here as a guest. Pleasure to have you. Thank you for coming. Yes, pleasure to have you. Chennai, would you like to get us started off with an intro on The Devourers and Asim Deed. Yeah, The Devourers, sort of, when I read it first, kind of blindsided me to be, you know, it was so unexpected. The intensity of it all and the depth of it all and the way, you know, it's one novel that's got everything. For those of you who haven't read it, I'll just give you a quick summary of it. It's a story that travels between time, the narrative between time between Mughal India and present times. And we have this professor, Aaloh, who's approached by this shape-chifter to sort of be a scribe. And he hands this shape-chifter where Aaloh hands him this little document, this little diary to sort of transcribe. And the parchment is, you know, the document is written on human skin. That's that diary is human skin. So you get a fair idea of how it's a sort of no-holds-barred approach to, you know, the detailing of it thereof. And that tells the story of this bunch of favels. Yeah, it's not favels, but favels like you've never seen them before. And if you read The Devourers, you won't look at favels the same way again. I mean, they're not shining and sparkly by any stretch of the imagination. And they're definitely not vegetarians because they feed off human souls. I don't know whether human souls are vegetarian or non-vegetarian. We'll wait for Indira to confirm that. So we read about this love story between the shape-chifter and the woman. It becomes a hunt of this woman who's carrying this half-human, half-chip, the child in her, or the other, her companionship with another different favels. And in all of this, we have Alok the narrator who's grappling with his own identities and all of that. So it's a novel that packs in a lot. It's a novel that packs in a lot that there's gender issues. If you can look at it as historical fiction, you can look at it as fantasy. I mean, no wonder it won the Lambda literary award for best LGBT fiction in the science fiction fantasy and horror category. And the prose is just so gorgeous. Sometimes even if the things on the page make you wince a bit, it still, the prose just keeps you going. And the way it makes you think, each page makes you think it's one of those books that you will be pausing every few books to think about yourself and all those things that your preconceived notions and all of that. But then we could try to rationalize the story, but then the favel in the book itself says, I mean, and a paraphrase. Indra, pardon me if I get it wrong. It says that where it tells Alok the professor that I'm merely showing you the benefits of rationalizing a story, there are none. Stories of fiction made up. And then Alok himself says, you know, that perhaps the way I was just wanted to tell his story to have people listen to the very end like I did. But that said, we'll try to sort of rationalize it, we'll try to discuss it with the best person on this planet to do it with Indra Das, the writer himself. So Indra Mai, before having I keep rambling on, just wanted to ask you that. The reader has put into the heads of so many different characters. You're in the head of Fenrir, you're in the head of Saira or Sira. What's the pronunciation? Saira? Sira. And then Alok and then we see their motivations and when it comes to topics like love, simple thing like love or revenge. So how it changes depending on, you know, which character, you know, we're following, right? So how was it to sort of get into, go so deep into the character's heads, especially since, you know, you make a spilling in something with one character and that same thing is just turned on its head. How was it to shift between the characters and to write all these in such a sort of organic way? First of all, thank you for your very kind words on the novel. But to get to your question, you know, I'm not a planner at all when it comes to writing despite this novel's scope. This is obviously the project where I had to plan the most because simply because of the research and the length of it. But in terms of the characters that came out of it, I didn't start with a very clear picture at all. The entire process of writing the novel was quite haphazard because it started off as a couple of pieces of shorter fiction that I wrote in college and then in university I wrote the entire draft as a novel and I kind of turned those pieces into seeds for what came after. So from one of the seeds was the first chapter, which was a short story. And then the other seed was the scene with the three werewolves kind of sitting around chatting near the Taj Mahal. And you know, writing that my intent was very much to try and explore a non human viewpoint, like to actually get into what it might be like to be completely or as far as I could comprehend detached from human morality and human kind of a human viewpoint. So that's what I was really trying to delve into. So that was, it was, it was a lot of fun. I mean, honestly, it was, you know, I've always liked stories that kind of go into these the viewpoints of non human or or just or into perspectives that are are not to be found in our human reality. You know, there's that deep tree junior story. I forget the title always forget the title. Love is the game or love is. And the game is get something that it's from the viewpoint of an alien going towards meeting cycle and and it's and I it's one of my favorite stories. But anyway, not to ramble too much. It was, it was easy to get into that non human viewpoint because it's fun but then once you get into what they're doing. That's when it becomes more challenging because it's they do some very grotesque things. But also, when I wrote that in college that piece, it was from, you know, it was entirely from the viewpoint of Fenrir. It was called Fenrir at that point. But you know, it was from the viewpoint of this monster that raped a woman and justified her. And there was no viewpoint of anyone else. And later when I was writing novel. Again, even the first chapter is only from the perspective of the monster who again assaults a woman. And, and you know, looking at both of these and I was thinking, it was so natural to me to kind of approach sexual violence from this viewpoint. And, and I wanted to kind of interrogate that why I immediately went to that and told the story of awful violence from the point of the violator and bringing any room to any to the people actually affected by the violence. So that's where that's where Sierra came into the picture when that's where I was stuck on how to expand the novel and then it became so obvious, you know, it became so crystal clear to obviously, this needs Sierra's viewpoint and you know, and that's where that's when it really just took off and, and I really truly loved writing, Sierra and it was, again, I don't I don't want to say easy writing is not easy but you know, once I started to get a feel of her character that's when it really just opened up and her interactions with the monstrous characters and opened up their culture and that's really always how I write just I don't have a, I usually don't have a connection and I just see how the characters interact with each other songs like improvisational theater in a way where you kind of set the stage and you put these two characters together and see what they'll do and it's not in a kind of hooky, you know, the see the characters come alive and tell me what the story is not not like that it really is like it is like being an actor like an actor with multiple characters you're trying to figure out how would you respond if you were this character and then you just go with that and then the background kind of comes in. Interesting way of going out and somewhere between writing Henry's part and then Sierra's part and just a look just happened to sort of wander on to the stage and a look was also there from the beginning because you know at the first chapter. It's pretty much the same as it was written way back then in college very little has changed from that. So he was always there as the frame narrative but his story obviously came later I mean when I when the first chapter existed in its earliest form. I didn't. I didn't necessarily see it as a love story. I mean if you can call what they have a love story. It is a love story it's just very twisted and an unhealthy love story. It is definitely a love story I mean yeah, it is because they do feel love for each other. However, however, depraved some of that love a place of depravity it comes from on at least on the monster side. But yeah, I mean I look was always there but his character again came was fleshed out later and it was only later that I realized that what was going on here. It was so clearly a seduction and that's where that's when it kind of entered the realm of what we see in the book. I mean, just about 10 minutes in and I like the words. It's not often that you use you hear the words grotesque and depraved. The first 10 minutes so gives you a sense of the book for those who haven't read it. And, you know, and what makes it awesome because of it all despite it. Yeah, thank you. So, I mean, good grotesque and depraved and all that but a result of all that grotesqueness and depravity when you're reading the book as a reader is that it requires a lot more engagement from the reader than most books because you are not giving any easy answers, you know, like, there's so many different perspectives and you as a reader have to keep shifting between them, you know, empathizing with each character. And, you know, in the process you also have to pay attention to your own thoughts and feelings and responses to these characters, you know, and question your own biases and preconceived notions while you're reading. So what advice would you have for a reader to aid that engagement. Yeah, I try not to be too prescriptive towards readers, you know, I want like I wouldn't want to tell people how to read the novel. Because ultimately, all art is down to personal interpretation, but I would say if someone has trouble with the book and I've often and I've often seen in Goodreads reviews and even from other people I do read Goodreads reviews at times. But even from other people I've I've often heard the sentiment that people dislike or hate even the first the first section of the novel. And because Fenrir is a big part of that and Fenrir is a rapist and monster. But I think it's the rapist part that is more disturbing because, because it's a human evil it's a completely human evil unlike, you know, the way these shapeshifters eat humans that's not something that we can relate to on an everyday level but rape and sexual violence is very much a thing that anyone you know can perpetrate so or enable. So I think yeah it's Fenrir is a very, and since he comes first in the nested narratives it's it can be difficult for people to get through that because it's just him justifying his act of violence against this woman nonstop and kind of wallowing in a self pity so it's definitely a very kind of heavy section of the novel because he's so filled with self loading but also unable to use that self loading to realize how loading how load some an act he has actually committed. So, I mean if people have trouble with that section I would just tell them to maybe wait. But of course if it's too triggering. It's only sensible to stop reading but so so you know I wouldn't want to give any advice as such but if you can get through the disturbing aspect of Fenrir is narrative I would just say, there is more later and it's not just Fenrir at the whole time, and we do hear from his victim as well. Absolutely and I'll admit I was one of those people who had a lot of trouble with that section but you know it was like almost immediately after you have a look saying you know that am I supposed to really feel bad for this person. Like, you know, okay that is something else in this. I was, I was definitely worried, you know, when the book was releasing I was quite worried about the fact that Fenrir's viewpoint comes first and we did. I did debate with my editor and agent whether or not I should put it afterwards but it just doesn't work like that you know it would not fit the novel at all to bring Sierra first. So yeah I'm glad we kept it the way it was. Yeah, it works it works the way it is as long as people can get through that section. And let it's getting like you say. I'm glad we got to this point of the discussion because one thing is that this that this book is sort of hard on some readers who maybe triggered a lot or who we usually describe as sort of squeamish. Okay, it's graphic, it's violin, right but it's not, I mean as speaking as it is not graphic or violin for the sake of being, you know, graphic and violin as some films or some even some books tend to be I mean there's a point to it when you get to the next part of the narrative of the other perspective. You know it's, I guess you need those sort of extremes to sort of drive home the point sometimes that's what I feel and that's sort of what brought it alive for me the sheer intensity of it all. Right, it's so graphic it's so Israel it's so intense. So I just wanted to check with you I mean, what was it an intentional choice to sort of really amp up those those details or did it just happen again I mean no pun intended organically what was your reaction when you first wrote it. Right, I mean because I've seen you have, you know, I've read your stuff and have watched you in your interviews and all the way you a nice man person so how was it to sort of, so, you know, was it a conscious decision and what did you feel like I didn't know I had this in me. Like, what was that like. It was it was definitely a conscious decision. It didn't surprise me at all I've always been interested in horror and gore to be honest like as a kid I loved horror movies I loved gory movies. Of course, many of those were gory in a very different way in kind of pulpy way but but you know but as growing up I did see a lot of extremely disturbing movies. And, and, you know, like so many people of our generation in India, when it comes to adult anglophone literature Stephen King was one of one of my earliest kind of entry points into adult fiction and Stephen King was renowned for his gore and and disturbing content I was reading all of that quite early and Stephen King. As I said was literally was one of the earliest adult authors that I read so he made a very strong impression me and you know I was had been in my early teens I was writing gory stories in class creative classes and teachers would be a little disturbed, but I mean I didn't go overboard but I do remember this this school teacher who told me that gout is not a word that can be described that can be used to describe blood, and I told her no it definitely can because I read it in Stephen King book. Anyway, so yeah, I mean, it's, I've always, you know, I mean, it's not all I've all I wrote as a kid, but I did write some gory stuff so it wasn't a new thing, but in this novel, you know it plays a very central role and I wanted it to be not fun you know I wanted to be extremely visceral and disturbing because again I wanted to enter that non human viewpoint where morality is left behind and to kind of just suppose that with our kind of yearning for beauty and our yearning to create beauty and you know it's where an incredibly strange species that is constantly interlocked with our own desire to aspire towards beauty and curiosity and also our own desire to kind of shut everything off and commit violence. So yeah, the gore the gore plays a very strong role in the story because I wanted people to really feel how immoral these creatures are, and to understand that human beings are very capable of everything that these monsters are doing. And in a way worse than them because these monsters are feeding, they're eating, they're literally sustaining themselves, they're like lions or tigers or wolves, where they become evil is when they try to be human and that's that is the core of the novel. They're not evil until they try and aspire towards humanity, because that's when morality comes into the picture. And how? I mean I like to say that the problem happens when you try to aspire to humanity so it just sort of puts things in perspective, right? Because we can, you know, we can never live up to our ideals and we're always setting them, but we're also hypocrites because we're always changing those, the standards of those ideals and we all do, you know, we all, every single one of us is a hypocrite, is a moral hypocrite to some degree or the other, because we live in an endless cycle of injustice and we're all benefiting from someone suffering and we choose when to take cognizance of that in our daily lives, otherwise you would literally break from the share horror of what we're living off of. Yeah, we are creatures of convenience all said and done, it's just that quote-unquote convenience where it's taught, you know, how far do you stretch that bit, but the creature bit I think you're all agreed upon that we are creatures of convenience and what suits us and in many cases as we've seen sort of, you know, do as I, you know, do as I say not as I do. We're quite sort of, you know, vague morality in that sense, it's just a question, it's just a difference of degree not of kind, I would say. It's shifting all the time, our moralities are always in flux, like everything about us. That's what like the point that Vijay was trying to make, you see a bit of yourself in all of those characters, in all of those perspectives and then once you're done, okay, listen, I'm the best of all of these are so one hopes, are so one hopes. True, true, yes, oh God, and that's a very interesting perspective about, you know, the whole monstrosity being monstrosity when it approaches humanity. But yeah, yeah, that's something to think about. Another thing that really stood out for me in the book is that there are no conventional relationships, all the relationships that we really remember and which really stay with the reader are, you know, ones that are unexpected. And the ones where you would expect a conventional relationship to be like, you know, that of Alok's with his parents, those relationships have not stood the test of time. So I wanted to understand that choice bit from you, you know, of having these unconventional relationships be stronger and even to a sense safer than the relationships that you would expect are close and safe. Yeah, you know, I think that was something that came out organically while I was writing the book and I guess a part of it was just literary convenience because I was writing the novel the first draft towards my MFA deadline and I didn't have much time. So it was just simpler to focus on fewer characters, which is probably why I went with, in the beginning at least why I went with not showing our looks in a family, even though that's such a huge part of Indian political middle class life, you know, family life is a very integral thing. But then once you know once it became a queer story like once it became the story of Alok trying to come to terms with his own queerness and then it also made sense for him to be isolated. So, you know, same with Sira, she's isolated completely. And, you know, again, when the novel was coming out, I was kind of leery of the fact that she doesn't interact with any other women in the book and that she's completely, and she's basically the only woman in the book. And I was wondering whether people would really hate that. And, but again, it's thematically kind of makes sense because she's, she is completely alone, like she's entered this realm of kind of almost this animalistic masculinity and and she's surrounded by that and it's about how she deals with that. And again, she's disenfranchised in multiple ways. But you know I did try and balance that with her love for her mother that she didn't have that relationship with her mother. But yeah, I think a lot of it was just trying to keep the novel as streamlined as possible because it is very unwieldy in terms of it's just in terms of the way the narrative moves. You know, it's got all these pieces and it's kind of doesn't have a very smooth through line when it comes to plot and barely even has a plot. So, so I wanted to keep things fairly simple and it kind of fit with the thematic nature of the book that these are people who are completely alone. And even the shapeshifters alone because they're kind of exiles from their own tribes and their transgress in multiple ways. And, and so yeah it's all it's all about these, every character in the book is alone in their own way and kind of trying to find contact in some way and in monstrous ways and not monstrous ways. So yeah, it's very much about that and it makes sense because you know some fun family is a very big part of queer narratives, as we as we can see in a lot of art now I mean you know it's quite common now to see that focused on in queer stories. True, that is true. And that one scene of Sira with her mother that is a memorable scene because it's not quite that you don't get the full sense of what the relationship must have been but you know that it was something that you felt very safe and very loved in. Thank you. I mean it's diverse for me is truly I mean it's normal just sort of far ahead of its time, right, you know, in many more ways than one I mean all those all these issues that we've been talking about it's, it's, you know, it's a lot more prevalent now it's gotten so much more into the mainstream but when when it came out, right, I don't think there's, you know, there's so much more in that genre that is going on which is one of the reasons why for me it was such a revelatory read in that sense to see about these unconventional relationships and add in peace and you know this talk about all the things that we sort of think we know. And you know the way it went about shedding light on it and like what you said in there that you know there's hardly any plot I mean, you know that, but this, you wouldn't guess that because there's so much happening. You know, you're thinking all the time with every page with every shift, be it in perspective or in time that you really don't feel doesn't feel like there isn't a plot so well done for sort of leaving it all together like that. I think, I think non was non Western readers often have problem with this kind of novel I mean, or maybe people who only read within genre. I mean, that comment with a lot of stories like mine, and my stories as well where people, people will say there's no plot and I think, is there not I mean is is is everything that's going on these characters not considered plot and but there's a thing it's just again ultimately it's all arbitrary I mean I see. I see so many people talk about literary novels and again literary is a terrible word that using it because it's the market term realist novels and and saying there's no plot and but so what I mean why does that matter so much you know I read. I've read so many incredible realist novels that have no plot in the genre sense you know it's not about someone overcoming an antagonist and antagonistic force and then learning something. Sometimes characters don't change but they're still incredibly rich, you know and you, you reflect on these characters and how they relate to the world, you know that that matters as well. And to come back to the thing of dealing with all these with these themes I certainly wouldn't say that my novel is the first step all but maybe in a fantasy Indian space. And these the themes and these themes of queerness one to hardly explored but definitely there's of course a rich tradition of clear literature in India as well way before me and in fantasy elsewhere. And we've always had trouble with expanding our science fiction and fantasy repertoire in this country because because publishers don't really know how to deal with it, but hopefully that's, you know, it is changing slowly. I don't know who knows with the pandemic and what now, but we'll see. At least there are more way more writers who are visible and writing even even in the short fiction scene. People often forget to look at short fiction. When they're you know when they're talking about Indian science fiction fantasy, and I think they should pay a lot more attention to that as well because that's where people start off I mean that's where I started off as well. It definitely bought me back to reading more of Indian SFF the devourers because once I discovered that is you know when I started looking for more and that's how I came in touch with Chennai actually on Twitter and you know obviously he helped me discover a lot more. So, I'm glad to hear that was really really really made a difference to me personally. So on that note, Indra I mean it's since I've spoken about the gorgeousness of the pros and how beautifully it's written. Quick reading from the book. Of course. Your, your, your favorite passage or, you know, an extract that you might like. So I just start and go ahead. Go ahead. It'll be very short now. You don't mind that the campfires and oasis of light. The bowels gather on flames glistening on their dark swamp damp skins, twinkling in their beds. They sing to ward off the encroaching darkness, their words lifting with the woods parks towards the stars. They sing and heating of signatures on paper of land exchanges and politics of the white traders and their tensions with the Nawab and the Mughal Empire. Here in the firelight, they make music and tell stories to one another to the land to Bengal, to Hindustan which does not belong to them, not to the British, not to the Mughals. There are things in the wilderness that neither Mughal nor white man has in his documents of ownership. Things to be found in stories. Then again they also claim to be mad. I watch the bowels. I can see the others in the gloom crouched amid the reeds circling slowly. More approach from afar that claws sinking into the mud. I can hear them though, the rustle of their spine deferred, the twisting of rushes against their backs. They're dark. The bowels falter but continue singing, holding tight to the instruments and now the staves. I can hear the mosquitoes whining around them, the lighting on knuckles popping against skin and gorging, dying in the heat of the fire. There's a young woman amid this group of traveling bowels. She looks out into the darkness, the words of their song dissolving on her tongue. Her hair is so black it melts into the night. After the taste of her lips, moist but cool from the night air, she keeps her eyes beyond the borders of the fire. Searching a wilderness stirred in dissensions by the noises of insect and animal. Cricket and cockroach, moth and mosquito, snake and mongoose, fox and field rat, jackal and wildcat. Her bright patchwork cloak is wrapped tight around her body, marking her out. Her head short and unarmed and stands no chance of surviving the attack. None did the others do either. I can smell her terror like sweat against the gritty spice of wood smoke. The wet soil of the marsh is cold between my toes. The insects catch in my fur wrestling it, tickling like the reeds and plants surrounding me. The woman knows we are here beyond their firelight. She knows because I told her myself as a young man with long hair and kind eyes, tiger belt on my back. Your party will never reach the tannity and the banks of the river. You are being hunted. You have a data runaway for we are patient and draw out the hunt for pleasure and sport. I said to her in her sleep, while my own kin were unaware. She had no shape shift after all and not without my abilities. She heard me in her sleep, this bowel woman with dirt in her hair. Her lipsticky with just a little oil. It is perhaps, it is clear that she remembers my warning, but she has not run away. Perhaps one of the bowels is her father or mother or sibling or friend or lover. It does not matter. She will not leave them behind. She begins to sing with them now, her scared voice streamed. She hears my smell, senses it now beyond the fire and the tangle of the dark. More of us come from the horizons, the scent of cow's blood, a slaughter on their muscles. They have eaten. Their hunt is not over. Their eyes weave trails as they run, leaping fireflies tracking their loping gate. They flank the group of humans, cutting off escape. The full moon watches through the clouds, eager for massacre. The bark of exhaled hair, the clatter of tusk on fang respring. The bowels' song is loud and beautiful in its imperfection. It is their last. I run with my pack, my tribe. The bowels are surrounded. They sing till the very last moment. The first kill is silent as they are running, a glistening whisper of crimson in the air. The last is louder than the baying of a wolf, and rings like the bowels' mad song across the marshes of what is not yet old Kata. I can hear the howl as I run with this human in my arms, into the darkness, away from the shadows of slaughter. The howl curdles into a roar, enveloping the scream of the last time menstrual. But she is alive against me, shivering against my due dappled fur. She is alive. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That is good. The cadence of the pose just takes you along with it. Indra, you also, in the recent past, sort of, I think you're the go-to person for short fiction from India. I mean, if I was an editor out there putting together an anthology, I'd definitely go to Indra because going by, what shall I say, quote unquote, data, having an Indrada story in anthology is, you know, sort of makes it a show in for at least one award and many best of lists. I mean, be it the New Sun's anthology edited by Nisi Shol or Mythic Dream, which was edited by Dominic Persi and then Navavul in which your stories come, both of them have, you know, won awards and have been on so many best of lists. So just wanted to talk to you also about your short fiction. We'll start with Kalina, right? For those who haven't read it, Kalina is from the Mythic Dream anthology and it's the story that recently won the Shirley Jackson Award for short fiction. And it's brilliant in the way it's a fantastic mix of science fiction and fantasy as much as it is a commentary on our current contemporary times and the sort of climate that we have in the world, especially in this country and the inequality that sort of drives it. So at the core of it is this mega corporation. I mean, you could call it a neo cyberpunk story as well. It's a story in which this mega corporation creates this AI modeled after a goddess and people queue up to donate cryptocurrency to have a darshan and, you know, as usually the trolls come in and the TV as with any good AI was supposed to be granting bones and she uses her the behavior of the trolls and of these devotees to sort of train a neural network and the transformation it goes and just suppose with that is the human diagnosed Durga, like who's who what she is looking, you know, she is also she's named after the goddess and she tries to find some kinship and, you know, part of the goddess is a part of the goddess in her and it truly happens so without giving out any spoilers. So I just wanted to ask, I mean, it's in a time where whenever you see mentions of gods and goddesses or Indian myth, it's usually sort of these tired jokes, you know, bad Ramayana remixes, you know, sort of more unwanted, you know, Mahabharata fan fiction. So to cover this, I love the way Kalina went in terms of how it used these familiar tales to sort of, you know, give it and give it a near future veneer to make such a nice company. So how did it come about and how did it feel like to win this village accent award for this. So it came about through invitation I mean I was invited to submit to the mythic dream by Dominic and Nova, which I'm very grateful for, of course, and the team was, you know, retail a myth and so I did have quite a lot of trouble starting it because I didn't I really couldn't decide what myth to retail and once my battery is running out. So as you say, you know, I didn't want to do, you know, another tired retelling of Durgha even though that's Durgha and Kali etc. even though those are what I was most familiar with growing up. But then I, I think I was just kind of watching ghost in the shell to innocence, which is I strongly recommend it excellent, excellent movie. And I was, you know, I was seeing the, I was thinking about how it didn't need to be fantasy I was thinking in terms of fantasy and retelling, you know, in a more kind of quasi mythic historical wave and then I thought, you know, it can be science fiction why not. And I remember that story about that Microsoft AI that became racist after, you know, absorbing information from trolls. And so that I thought, what if instead of becoming racist and AI kind of fought back against that and that was kind of like the seed of that. And then of course there was the climate in the country. This was, this was before the BJP came into power the second time it was right. During those elections, I think, or before the elections. It was before the election. Yeah. So, you know, the hope was that they had the, the Hindu nationals would be ousted. But of course that didn't happen but you know that I was like everyone in this country where we're really from, I forget the timeline now but at that point it was primarily lynchings and demonetization I think it was before they really amped up to fascism with their second term. But you know the signs were all there so I wanted also to write a story about Hindu nationalism and its grip on this country as a political force and, and then there was of course the obvious thing of trolls and how you see people every day dealing with people, marginalized people dealing with armies literally every day of their existence on the internet so it was just coming from a place of a lot of anger and frustration and so it was very cathartic. I wanted it to be a cathartic story about this, about what if, what if a goddess were not a symbol of majority supremacy in this country but a symbol of liberation and of, of, you know, of resistance and which is why the protagonist also that's what she's looking for as well. And that's how it came about I mean you know, and then I just wrote it and it, as I said I don't plan very much but reading, reading through the myths and it kind of all came together and the main thing was just figuring out how to show it in this VR world and, but I liked including the lesser known bits, fragments of Kali myths as well like the thing about her washing her blackness of, you know there's various origin myths and I wanted to kind of skip over a few of them, I mean I touched on all of, not all of them but multiple retellings of it. You're muted. Sorry. Double laptop, sorry. I also quite like the little wordplay about how you spelled VR there, you know, so. I've been doing for a while in my stories when I said that in India in the future. You read it as VR but the first time, first couple of times and because your brain just reads a pattern of words you read it as warrior so well done, well done. Yeah, it's definitely a cathartic story, like you say, Indra because he does speak to a lot of our current, you know, political land social realities but the solution that emerges without giving away any spoilers is something that I found very elegant and very comforting. What I'd like to do is if there's any hope for us in real life, the way there is hope for Durga. I mean, not in that way certainly no because as we all know tech is not the answer to anything I mean in this story. Tech has progressed to near magical point. I mean, not to that great a degree but you know they have this self sustained world almost that they can go to as do we but it's, it's not self sustained. But you know it's not what Durga does in the story and what her friends do in the story is not possible because you can't escape the grip, the corporate grip on tech and, and you can't escape the nexus of right wing fascism and and corporate and you just, you can't, you can't have a liberation movement online without it being stymied at every moment, as we can see you know people try people have tried I mean, we all remember I hope we remember the Arab spring and how it seemed like this incredible thing and it wasn't incredible thing but, but you know it's not so easy, you know, a revolution is not something that can happen easily at all either online or offline. But you know it's stories are are a different thing you know I wanted people to come away with some sense of hope, and I wanted to feel hopeful at that point because we were literally right at the point of the election and I was really hoping, and that hope didn't come true, but, but you know it's, I don't think we have the hope that Durga has that you can just create this take over, say, Twitter or social media and turn it into our own space because it's just not possible but there's, I would, I would like to hope that there is always hope, you know, because, you know, as you can see now in a time of incredible crisis like this country has rarely seen a crisis of this proportion or a tragedy of this proportion. So people are using social media to literally help others just to save lives and you know, and it, and it does make a difference it is making a difference I would hope obviously not on a, on a massive scale but every life saved matters you know every person who finds a way to get some oxygen or an ICU bed at this point in time really matters and people are really ganging together to help people find those things to help people find the things that the government is not giving them and doesn't care to give them you know has absolutely no regard or concern for, for literally an entire country that's dying. So, so you know it, there are facets of that in real life as well you know people do use social media and technology to aid others to kind of progress resistance and liberation, but, but it's very hard and you cannot, absolutely cannot just depend on tech, because it is the, it is a ground zone with salt you know it's it's absolutely corrupted by, by the people that was founded by the people these systems were built by. Obviously, those people aren't solely responsible it's these systems were created by thousands and thousands of people were working their asses off but it's the people at the highest levels who are responsible for turning them into spaces that are primarily for making money and keeping power in the hands of a very small minority in the world, and that is their primary function so it's. Yeah, that's a very long answer. I try and you know I try I would like to believe that there's always hope that certainly it's difficult in in these times and in this country, but if you can entirely give up you know then what's the point. I would add a caveat and that if you're in a position not to entirely give up, because not everyone is in that position. Yeah. Speaking about, about in human people, you know, demons brings me to shadows we cast through time, which is from the nuisance anthology edited by Mrs Shaw, another fantastic story, which if previous on the way again by invitation so good choice by Mrs Shaw there to invite you and these again I mean you go back to I mean it's a story about this settlers or this colonists on this far away planet who come across this. The other creatures of fungus which turns them into demon like creatures, you know, sort of adapting humans to their environment and it's about humans becoming something else altogether again. It's again a recurring theme, Indra in your in your stories about what does it mean to be human and what we look at it as the other or as the demonic and then we become that. What was, what was, am I reading the story right and you know. Well as always is no one right way to read any story, but definitely it's transformation is a major theme in my work always and the way humans might change into something else and how they would react to that. Essentially just humans facing death, you know, debt is one of our is our terminal transformation and something that every human has to go through, and every human we know as to go through and it's, it's I think, I'm very interested in that and how, how so much of what we do is centered around how a lot of art is a reaction to debt and, you know, trying to establish a kind of immortality and beauty that will outlive us and so much of everything is that really everything in human civilization. And in the story. It's, it's very much a story about how people might react daily in life in the classical sense like with with them and Solaris and whatnot. I wanted to imagine a truly alien being and but how that might also react to humanity. But even just on a simpler level though it's, it's also kind of inspired by Earth life, you know, like fungi, cordyceps, the fungus that takes over insects and kind of when they grow these little antlers. So, you know, that was popularized by the video game series. The Last of Us. Wait, is that it. Is that the name of the series. Yeah, Last of Us. It is the last of us. Yeah. Yeah, so it was kind of like that. And you know, the story, the seed of the story came from a sketch I did of of a humanoid entity with these black obsidian horns, this crown of horns kind of growing out of their head. Again, there was no, it wasn't really a pre-planting at all. I just focused on that image and tried to write a story around it and then it just kind of unfolded naturally from there. So I'm quoting from the Los Angeles Review of Books Review of New Suns, which says, this is not to say that there is no trace of the non-white positionality of the authors in the contents of the anthology, but it has less to do with what is there than what is not. Any hint of celebratory fantasies of exploration, colonization or conquest. Your story, the shadows we cast through time. I think it's a really great example of that. Would you like to comment on that? Yeah, I do love stories about humans on other worlds, but as always, especially in this era, that comes with the entire psychic payload of what it would actually be like if humans had the ability to colonize other planets. It would be horrifying and we've seen it on our own planet, how we colonize others and how the people with power and wealth affect and destroy ecosystems. So, you know, encountering an alien ecosystem might be, it would be catastrophic probably for that ecosystem and perhaps for us. I mean, it's not something I worry about in terms of people like Elon Musk and Bezos because we don't have the technology. That's all complete nonsense. What they're selling is just a scam. I mean, sure, they're going to spend a lot of money on sending spaceships into space and they might send humans to the moon again and they might mine the moon even, but we're not going to have even a colony on Mars anytime soon because we can't survive. We don't have the technology to survive there on any kind of sustainable level, so it's utter nonsense. It's just the dreams of these completely just evil. I mean, there's no other word for them. I mean, they're evil people with way too much money and time on their hands and this is what they dream about while people die on this planet. And this is not to say I'm opposed to space exploration and developing space technologies, but we're in a global crisis and there have to be priorities. So anyway, to get back to the theme of colonization and science fiction, I do whenever I write stories about human settling alien planets, I always try and consider the impact of colonial mindsets. I try and envision settlements that aren't precisely in the colonial model but you know naturally kind of still are under that influence because there's always this kind of corporate background so this settlement in this story have tried to be independent they've tried not to mine or exploit or harm the ecosystem that they're living in. And essentially, it's led to their own death and way to their own absorption in the ecosystem because they don't belong there. I mean essentially these people don't belong there. But if they're willing to, they're willing to acquiesce to the alien life there, then they become a part of the ecosystem. They become literally in, they harmonize with it and become life on that planet. So it's about alien entities clashing where the aliens and are the aliens. And you both kind of have this give and take, which is the only way you can survive, you know, like within an ecosystem and that's what I was trying. Well, I wouldn't say trying from the beginning as always it's very unplanned, but then organically you get a grasp of what these ideas in your head are trying to tell you. And I forget who said it but there's this quote that stories are more intelligent than their writers and that they can say things that the writers don't intend. And I think even within the process of writing a story that happens where, you know, you don't know where it's going, but then there's these symbols just kind of lock into place because we were always thinking about the stuff. And our brains are constantly lit up with these little mythologies and and you know mythology and folklore or something I'm obviously very interested in, and I like to bring that into science fiction as well, because it doesn't always have to be scientific. Science fiction. The term isn't is not great to describe everything under the umbrella because a lot of it is not science fiction is just its fiction set in space or in the future or whatever but it's they've got nothing to do with science like my stories. The other one is not, not in the least bit scientific as, as some review outlets might tell you, some were very annoyed by, you know, by the fact that my aliens make no sense you know where the how could they absorb human DNA well, welcome to science fiction you know in the xenomorph. How is it, the impregnating a human being and and growing in size to 10 feet without absorbing any mass it doesn't work but it works because it's a beautiful piece of storytelling alien is not my story. But you know science fiction is is about exploring the unknown, which is also what science does you know the unknown in terms and temporally and spatial. Science are fast one hour mark to go to the Q&A others would have loved to discuss the rest of your short fiction especially I think the first one that I read was in the breaking the bow anthology Seetha's descent. The AI and then the ASU story song between worlds is like absolutely beautiful and a lot of the responses say to that as well and probably my favorite Indian steampunk story of all time so far little bacon. Nice. It's there in the strange world strange times anthology for those who would like to read it's brilliant, but it's time for the Q&A running short of time to keep doing this, which will take some questions. Yes, let's do that. The first question is from Bhaskar M. Who asks, how did publishing your first novel change your process of writing. I wouldn't say the novel. Well, that's a game because because I'm such a messy writer it's hard to articulate because every project I begin. I'm learning to write again and I know a lot of writers express this sentiment. So it's unique to every single piece that I work on short or not. The novel of course, it did teach me a lot about writing, you know, characters on a longer time scale, but nothing, nothing that I can really articulate I just know that some just this year. The amount of writing I did on that kind of improved my craft in a way. And taught me a lot of things, but just in terms of how I approach any new piece of writing I don't think it's changed a lot it's still, it still scares me it's still, you know, it's still daunting. No matter the size of the piece and yeah it still comes from a place of pure blindness and right in the beginning, you know, and then taking an image and going from that. Yes, writer one asked a couple of questions. First is, is there a lineage that can be traced from Citas descent to kalina. That's absolutely it's almost like a spiritual sequel, or a remake of Citas descent. Again, I don't think it's something I really thought of when I was writing it. But you know writers repeat their themes very often and often tell the same story in different ways. As does culture as a whole as you can see right now, we're constantly recycling stories because, because that's what we do it's everything is cyclical in terms of mythology and storytelling and fiction. Yeah, it's not something I don't think it's something I was consciously aware of when I was writing the story but once I finished it as well. This is, this is literally Citas descent retold in a different way. Yeah, I mean, an AI that takes on the sort of powers of the mythical namesake so it's and reacts against against injustice and yeah. Is critical re inscription of mythology the way to go for SF. I don't think there's any one way to go for SF for any literature, you know, I really am not want to put things in boxes and even the even genres don't really matter to me, except as a way to find things that I'm looking for. But ultimately, there are, you know, to me, a hierarchies of genre or you know, whether genres should do a particular thing, these are completely irrelevant to me. I think people should write what they want and it should. They want to write multiple genres and one story they should you know try try while things you know it's no there's no one function for any form of art, you know, it's not even necessarily. I mean functional is such a clinical work. You know this art should do whatever you want it to do as an artist. Indra, I think we're way past time so let's thank you so much. It's been an honor. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you for saying yes. It was a pleasure. And this has been a real respite from everything else that's happening around us. I hope so. Yeah. Thank you to whoever came and listened. I know a lot is going on right now. Yeah, I hope it provided a little bit of a break. I hope that everyone who's come today. If they haven't read the devourers go pick it up. You know look up all of others in this work. Thank you Shenoy for being such an amazing host. And you as well. Thank you. And thank you to everyone as Hasgeek, Zainab, David, Richwin, Jyotsna, everyone who's handled this for us today. And of course to the audience. Thank you so much for coming in. Stay safe everyone and we shall see you in the next edition of the Antel Insights SF Book Club next month. Thank you. Bye. Live long and prosper.