 Hello, welcome. Thank you for inviting me. Latest edition of Dreamers in Unicorns. So we have a dreamer here and a unicorn combined. So ladies and gentlemen, delighted to introduce my friend Kiran Manral. Kiran, you know, for those of you who like reading, if you like to read, if you like to read about parenting, you've read Kiran. If you want to read about murder mysteries, you've read Kiran's books. If you want to read columns, you sort of have read her columns. If you want to look for a mentor, then you sort of connected with her. Kiran, what am I leaving out in this entire process? So much Abhiji. Thank you so much for inviting me to this show. And it's such an honor to be here and most happy to talk about what you've left out of that. Very generous introduction. No, I'm so delightful that, you know, when people say, what do you do at a party? How do you introduce yourself? What do you tell them? What is the easiest way to do this? So, you know, Abhiji, I just recorded a little video for Goatridge Lafayre, I think yesterday or day before, about something that happened to me a few years ago when I went for a party. It was one of those, you know, movers and shakers and networkers type. I don't know how I landed there. It is not my kind of party and I don't go for parties. So very dapper, elderly gentleman asked me, so what do you do? I write books. Oh, that's all very nice. What do you really do? So I really write books. Just edge it away very carefully for me. What is it that you do? Shock me, I write books. That's the thing. It's difficult to introduce yourself as a writer. People don't really take it seriously unless they've heard of you and one is not heard of yet, I would say. What do I do? I write books. We are just being supremely modest about the whole thing and, you know, when you look at this whole concept of writing, is this something that you intended to take up as a career? Is this something that you stumbled into or was it a conscious direction in which you moved? How was it for you? You know, I blame it all on my great 10 school teacher called, she was Miss Shirley and I forget her surname as we all do. She just continues to be Miss Shirley in my head. I wrote an essay which was in retrospect, I think quite terrible, but she read it out to class and then, you know, that was it. I was destined to be a writer because she read out the dreadful essay to class. Well, I didn't know it was going to be a writer, but I went into advertising, journalism, research, multiple things, blogging and then finally I wrote my first book and I hit 40. What about you? How did you get into writing? You've been in the corporate world for so long, so it was a complete shift, I do write nonfiction and popular based stuff, but writing as a passion, how did that come to you? For me, I started writing as a kid there because I used to write letters to my grandparents and I would write a number of funny letters, you know, wherever I would travel, I would sort of write about that. People that I met, I would write about that, draw little cartoons and all of the side lines and that was how the entire thing started for me. Writing a piece of fiction was on a luck. I didn't really have it. When I was leaving Mumbai, somebody presented me a notebook, which was a blank notebook and one day I kind of just thought that, okay, let me just start writing a story which was in my head, which was, you know, a little bit of my experiences of being in a preschool. I wrote about that. So first two books were fiction, then I wrote three nonfiction books. Somehow I seem to think of you as a nonfiction writer. I didn't know about the fiction books. Thank you. I must check them out. Yeah, those are the MBA books. One of them is called Mediocre, but the sequel is called Married but Available. Both MBAs. Okay, MBAs, both MBAs books. There's an entire genre of MBA writing. What do you think, the MBA fiction that we have? Oh, you know, that's a very fertile kind of a canvas in which you can write many different things. So, yes, what do you enjoy writing the most? You know, when you, beyond reading out that essay, did you very formally learn how to write or this is something you've affected over time and how was it? So, honestly, there is a lot to be said about the merits of formally learning how to write. But I don't know, I never really formally learned how to write. I was always a very passionate reader of it. So I read and read and read, like ruined my eyes and I had to have music twice in my life. So I read so much and I think that was my training ground for writing. And very honestly, you can be taught all that they can teach you about writing, but if the words don't flow from within, you can't write. So to have those words flow from inside, you need to have that much of reading. That's what I feel, that's my take on it. I'm sure people might feel differently. What about you? How do you get the, did you sort of learn the process or did it come to you naturally? No, no, I'm completely uneducated about this whole thing. I've just, you know, slaved away. And I've learned a lot through reader feedback, I think, because I started blogging. And for me, that's really been the way I've learned to carbon the craft. Though I kind of see that there's a long way to go, but I think that's really what works with me. And, you know, when, do you think that it's something that can be taught because there are lots of courses on creative writing and you've also worked in advertising for a bit, is that right? I run an advertising agency with my husband for quite a few years before we shut it down. So, and I did start up in advertising as a copywriter at a very small agency. So that experience has been there. And I also did my mask on, I mean, not the full course, but just like a certificate, whatever, from XIC. So advertising was there. Advertising teaches you how to get to the point and make it brief, make it catchy. But writing books and writing fiction is a completely different skill set I did learn on the job when I was a journalist. But that is writing the crisp reports and features with different skill sets, you know, you learn to shift between them. And at the end of the day, yes, you can be taught the craft, there are plenty of masters and fine arts in writing and creative writing and people are doing some wonderful work after graduating from them. And I'm very envious of them that they have done those courses and I wish I could. But too old to go back to school like you're telling me. But at the end of it, it boils down to your facility with words. You can be taught anything and your ability to think, I think from another person's perspective and to have that curious wild imagination in you that allows you to put yourself in anybody else's circumstances or if that doesn't exist, you can be taught anything and from the best teachers and professors in the world, you only have to write something that will touch another person. So it may have style, it may not have that emotionality or that pull or that tug. That's my take on it. So what do you just their own, whatever works for each individual, I guess. But you've also worked for a newspaper where the kind of writing that you do is closer to more factual reporting or it could be even closer to nonfiction, if you will. And then you've also done a whole range of many different things. Just walk me through the, you've done about what 12 books, right? I always feel extremely jealous of you and let me tell you this, I'm not in a good way. I feel extremely jealous of people who manage to write so much and, you know, it just makes you feel completely inferior when I think about that. Don't even think about it. You're being worshipped. Are you taking off your Aarti at home? Hello. I don't take off my Aarti at home. At home, it's like a home-cooked dal. So what is it? So no, no. That's my moment of doing the evening presence. Sunset time. Yeah. So don't be jealous about the 12 books. They're 12 published books and this, it just looks very nice. But then when you think, tell yourself, P.G. Buddha wrote some 98 books and he died at 94 still writing his book. And you feel like, oh my God, I have a long way to go. And then there's this one wonderful Andhra Bhaddi who's on her like 28th book in nine years. And then I just feel like crawling under the table. So there will always be, you know, parameters and parameters. And number of books is no judge of output, P.G. As long as your books are light and loved, I think that's enough, even if they're one book or ten books. So, but my journey actually is very strange. I started, it makes me sound very didsy. I started in advertising as a copywriter. I went into journalism. I worked at age. We just had a very, we just were in the news, our entire batch of Asian age, first batch girls, and more power to Priya. Then Asian age, I went into Times of India as a Features writer. I was at Cosmopolitan as a Features editor. I was at Trikaya Gray for a very short while in PR. And I realized that PR is not something that is makeup of tea. Quit had my baby as most of us do. And got back into entrepreneurship, started a content supply firm back in the first dot-com boom, supplied to Tata Nova, Satyam, a whole bunch of the new websites had come out there. We were supplying all the content that ran on their sites. The dot-com boom went bust. Then we closed down shops that have an advertising agency closing. Oh my God, it's terrible. I've done too many things. I've been going to research. It's just been like jumping feet first and then hitting the ground running. So got into research, worked with Gapno, Iconoculture. It was just Iconoculture back then. It's a U.S.-based trans-potting agency, research agency. I was the Indian cultural lead for, I think, five or six years. Then consulted with Pector Insights LLP as a senior research consultant. I was the consultant ideas editor. I see the people and I have, since the pandemic, been doing nothing but writing. That's the joy of the pandemic, I think. So that's been my career graph. God, it's just amazing. Talk to me about the work that you did in trans-potting. How do you do trans-potting? What is your method? What did you do? Well, there was no method and that was the madness. So for me, I went in, as I said, blind. I'm not trained to be a researcher. So I work very intuitively. So my job is basically to look around and see what is possibly going to come up as a trend in consumer behavior, what are the consumers rearing towards, whether food consumption and fashion and lifestyle choices and how this would translate for brands in terms of developing new products and new product ideas, how they could capitalize. You know the draft, you know the stuff. So it was basically that. And of course, you have sometimes commissioned researchers. That was not so much fun. But the stuff that you really put your nose to the ground and you went through all the newspapers and you took ST buses around and listened to stuff and gossip and went into the little tea shops. That was great fun. So it was near to the ground seeing what's happening and picking up things that just flew. What was the one, you know, talk to me about something that went from let's say eavesdropping gossip on gossip to a trend that you sort of identified. Talk to me about one of those pieces. How would you go? So online spirituality. Back then this was I think around over a decade ago. We sort of saw the trend in terms of people not wanting to physically go to places but to online darshan and things like that to do there. And now it's common you're doing your bookings online and you're scheduling your Bhagavanki artis and stuff online and it's just coming out. It was something that we never thought would be possible back then but it's happening now. As also in terms of fitness the entire boom towards fitness wasn't so evident back then but now it's like everywhere. I mean it's from the youngest to the oldest. Fitness is no longer a choice. It's like a lifestyle for many people today. So we saw it becoming big back then in terms of diet range, in terms of local consumption of regular foods and sweeteners and things like that. This was way back 10-12 years ago. So there's something that makes people want to focus on looking good. Is it a sign of confidence or is it a sign that there's not I mean you're feeling not so good about a number of things and therefore want to look good. Which way does it flow? What is your experience? I think very honestly we are a very hyper aesthetic society right now. Also we are very youth worshipping. So this entire fear of looking older and therefore being considered obsolete specifically in the corporate workspace where being there's this paradox where you can look too young and not be considered serious enough to take orders from or you can look too old and be considered out of it and therefore not relevant anymore and people are afraid of crossing the divide on either side. So and if you say that we have a midlife crisis so even that is not right. Yeah yeah we are all midlife crisis happily if you notice you know it has escalated in the past few years even in recruitment policies Abhijita you know how it works. I mean anything over 45 is like not considered a good choice to recruit even at senior levels they are looking for younger with some 40 years of experience. I don't know how that works but it seems to be that way these days. So I guess that is what is driving people to try and look fitter younger healthier and also our lifestyles had become rather unhealthy and this is an entire backlash against it. So I don't know what you observe in all the corporate workshops that you do and stuff like that how is playing out there you know one of the things we were sort of looking at you know there is this clubhouse room which is where I was listening to some people discussing trends and all that one of the things that I wanted to talk about is so somebody mentioned that there is this whole trend of booking concerts which know fully well that they are not going to go to or booking holidays which they are not going to go to so that was an interesting trend but if you think a little harder it's not that hard to figure out why because in some sense every time you hear people using the word the new normal it is actually a way for people to sort of reassure themselves that okay all the change has happened now things I said this is the new normal it used to be A now it is B okay we were unhappy about moving to something unknown now we know it is B this is how it is so this is the new normal it is actually in some sense when there is a lot of churn you want to figure out a way to sort of anchor yourself so that is the new normal is the you know this whole thing that I think is the way for people to find that chance the second is it's sort of changing the way people are getting back into you know revenge consumption in some sense that people are saving that money and because they are not going out or they are not doing that so at one level there is uncertainty which heightens the anxiety so will I return my job or if I have my business will things be as good tomorrow so there is anxiety for the future but at the same time there is this whole thing that will hate you know I don't know if I live or die so let me just go ahead and enjoy myself and so there is you know this I think we are going to be seeing this duality a lot more is my view what do you think absolutely I agree with you this duality is here with us for a long time and also the compound with the climate change crisis that's happening so a lot of people are worried that you know we are going to be surviving long enough to see the earth tipping over our kids are going to see a different world from which we brought them into and this entire flux that we are going through right now through the pandemic through the climate change crisis I think as you said the new normal is something that we have accepted something that we are trying to settle ourselves into slowly and steadily and trying to figure our way through it but yet in some ways we are grabbing back to the old normal we are listening to you know a lot of retro stuff still going on with us we are going back to old songs to old books there is a lot of happening back to what was comfort in terms of maybe food in terms of listening reading there is again a duality in what we are consuming so let's see what it takes us hopefully we will accept this new normal and get on with our lives so that your last book was a murder mystery yeah so how does one sort of when you write I have never written a murder mystery I am just interested in sort of dabbling in that I have a plot which has stayed with me for a long time I have written it rewritten it and I never found myself comfortable enough to complete it who do you like a murder mystery you can start with the first thing that you kind of say that this guy killed this one and that is the mystery and you work backwards or do you kind of work your way through from the way the audience is unveiling the mystery which one is it called this book the kitty party murder and the relative detective they are primarily comic mysteries so they are not procedurals they are not forensic heavy I know that is a brand new genre that you created so tell me about that so they are funny books they are books you read for a love so my premise the murder is incidental to the entire thing there is not one murder there is not two murders there are three murders but she is not a detective by any standard she is just bumbling her way through it so she is having fun doing it and I hope that the reader has fun so for this kind of book there is no plotting it is me writing and rewriting and making a mess of it and then rewriting again and trying to figure out what it is going to make it funnier that is about it but that is not the ideal solution as you know this is a horrible way to write it is very time consuming it is better if you sit and you plot it out and you have your chapter wise synopsis ready so you can fill in the blanks especially if you are doing a murder mystery because you can't have loose and hanging around and you can't have one clue going off in one direction appearing from another direction you have to sprinkle little clues for the reader to be happy and feel like yeah I use my brain cells here but I didn't do any of that I just wrote it very badly and then rewrote it and rewrote it some million times until I felt okay I can't rewrite it anymore and then I gave it to the editor and I don't recommend that at all what is your writing process like both for your fiction and your non-fiction you know I think writing fiction I think now I feel that I've evolved on a method for writing non-fiction which is a lot to do with you know we're looking at how do you build the ability to structure a logical flow you know so think about a non-fiction book like an office presentation except that it's a different format also in that sense you have a point of view and then you sort of want the people to think about things in a certain kind of a way so that is how I kind of look at that but when I think about fiction for me the entire thing has to be in my head and I'm just simply doing a blind documentation and dictation from what's in my head so I drew the entire plot of my head first and then you know I worked with that so that's how I have sort of worked on fiction so it's not the most see I think that's what I meant that you know if I had gone to let's say a creative writing school I think I would have figured out a way because there are software which you can use for writing and you know it sort of helps you chapterize the entire stuff it's just so much more logical except for the fact that when I think about if somebody gave that to me would I find it useful the answer is no because you know it just needs a different kind of a person to widen that kind of a logical way you know so I have a logic I have a thought process so I'm not that kind of a person I am a little more free flowing so I have to get the entire plot in my head there only start writing and then you see my table is full of posted notes and little this things and is very chaotic and then I'm sort of saying gosh wasn't that supposed to be later oh okay yeah then I so it's a very chaotic thing which I have to structure and put it in mind. But that's the best way Abhiji that's the best way because you know you have your posted notes and you have all that up there and that's your conscious mind working on it but when you're asleep and when you're off your desk your subconscious is also working on it if you have everything logical and plotted and all you will never know where your characters could take themselves that's my joy of writing unstructured because so many things happen when the characters decide okay we are going to do what we want to do you keep quiet and just write it out so that's the best way. Yeah and which is what I meant you know when I said that you kind of in my mind when I write fiction I'd write the entire thing in my head because that's the only way you can give characters a free reign and say don't you boy and somebody decides to you know go ahead and do something crazy and then you say that okay now how is this going to ever fit in and you know then and the characters really don't care so let's say that's your problem figure it out so yes it is a very chaotic way of writing but yeah that's perhaps the fun way do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and write has that ever happened to you no what's your thinking time my preferred writing time is between bread and butter work oh my god between bread and butter is all the jam and all the stuff. So yeah I have multiple windows open so some research report will be happening somewhere something else will be happening and then in between make paragraph clear that's how it has been throughout. Hey how long you take to do a book from start to finish from idea to first line to final manuscript what's your average dream life so there are books that have taken shamefully little time and there are books that have taken years and years so you know how it is up if you've written books it depends on the type of books so there are books that have been a couple months and there are books that have been like four years five years making so from start to finish I would say if there is no research involved I can get a first draft out in six to seven months of serious book yeah and of a fun book two to three months that will be the first draft and after that I will agonize for years and years before I let it out of my hands I'll hold on to it like no no I still have work to do and it is the first draft and that is the tough part getting the first draft out is easy but then the rewrites and the first draft don't look anything same so it's difficult to quantify what about you how long do you take for your long terrible it's embarrassingly long if you really look at the time it's been on an average about three years from one book to the other it's been about approximately three years so shelf to shelf if I were to sort of look at it one book on the shelf another one on the shelf roughly three years that's sort of how it has been by and large I started so I published my first book year 2005 actually maybe a little more than three years I've done five books now till 2020 so 15 years five books so it's about three years yeah okay that's the math that's lovely yeah so but no no it's just you know it's I guess it's not about the amount of time but you know because I tend to do a number of drafts so and you are right I mean and sometimes the first draft and the fourth draft don't look anything like you know each other so it's that what do you enjoy writing one particular genre more than the others or one more challenging than the other more fulfilling than the other which one how could you describe it and the reason is there not too many people who span so many genres I don't know how you do it but you know it's just really very enviable that you do it is supremely talented that you are able to do something like this and no no that's very generous of you it just means that I'm terribly scattered and I can't focus on one particular genre my publishers always find it very difficult you know because where do we put her romance, chiclet, horror, thriller and the poor readers are all confused so what do we expect next rumour so it makes me difficult to kind of market you know it's easy to market somebody who is writing only mythology somebody who is writing only historical somebody who is writing only whatever thrillers whatever whatever but I am like too confusing for the poor reader how do I do it I think that's the way I read so that's the way I write I read across genres so I write across genres and I have a very low boredom threshold for instance I know I will never be able to write romance again it pours me to death so why is it do you watch a lot of romantic movies I don't watch a lot of romantic movies I have seen confession time I suddenly fallen into the K drama rabbit hole so there are romances there but there is so much more to life than romance here let's move on into other stuff maybe that's an age thing and you know maybe I crossed that age where romance used to excite me but while reading I love my two extremes of reading a horror and humor so this PG Woodhouse who's got to me the Stephen King who's got to me so I think my writing sort of bridges that so I write humor, psychological thriller dark stories interview to Stephen King I write my funny books in PG Woodhouse and I think those are the two that I really enjoy writing and yeah the rest is all is it important to be a voracious reader if you want to be a good writer I should think so because reading gives you the tools of the craft reading gives you the language the vocabulary the syntax the way to plot the way to create your character ask the way to have different narratives and if you don't have the tools of the trade what do you do so don't think of it as reading for indulgence or reading for pleasure you must read for pleasure I see people soldiering through books that they hate because you know they're hyped and they're un-bookless and we have to finish it because we need to talk about how to read don't if it doesn't appeal to you just abandon it life is too short why you won't struggle to stuff so read for pleasure I always say read for pleasure but if you want to be a writer if you're planning to be a writer then you have to read for the to know language otherwise you have people who are writers who proudly say I don't read because I don't want to be influenced by a chair yeah yeah what do you feel it's really like thing that I can't make a film if I don't enjoy watching films because I don't want to be influenced that's a little crazy for me because you have to be able to look across different styles to be able to evolve your own thought process because until you know what lies on the shelf it's very hard to find a gap which you can write for and sometimes you don't even think about it as writing to fill a gap where you have a certain amount of stuff you know which you experience and it's triggered your imagination then you kind of write about it which is why I think a number of times when you look at the first book a lot of your own autobiographical scenarios it doesn't have to be on autobiography but a lot of what you've gone through actually gets reflected what's your first book also like that well they say my protagonist Kannan Meher is exactly like me so I would like to think I'm thin so yeah I think you have to get the first book and the autobiographical elements out of the way in order to keep writing so that will come out it's just a purging of yourself and that happens it's inevitable if you don't get it out then how do you erase yourself in order to create other characters because first the self has to go but having said that I do know people have written wonderful first books with no autobiographical elements and I think whatever works best for each individual yeah but I think you know the way I look at it is that the autobiographical element is the sort of you know you have to uncork the bottle and you kind of throw the first fork out and then when you pour the liquid you find lots more variety I think it really works like that so especially for fiction I think that's what it is when it comes to nonfiction also I think but nonfiction maybe you know you write best what you've studied yourself or you worked in yourself and you have a point of view so I think nonfiction potentially stays with you you know you don't really get out of that frame but yeah that's how it would be and for you for nonfiction when you write your nonfiction how do you arrive at a theme how do you decide this is what I want to write about because your experience works so diverse so how do you choose that this is my theme and this is your topic does it sort of ruin you for a while and then sort of condense into this theme because I'm very curious about nonfiction it's a I find writing nonfiction difficulty even with the journalistic background so you know I do a number of columns and you know newsletters and all that stuff on LinkedIn etc so I think a number of things that where I'm writing about some of them actually I sort of talk about it you know what's going on so the articles and newsletters etc are typically what is happening right now and then when you sort of see 15-20 or 50 of them over a span of time it creates a pattern that you know for example I found digital when I wrote digital tsunami it was really around the fact that I saw so much happening in that space and my assumption and you kind of observe that then you make a prediction so my prediction was that it is something because you know 2016 five years back and I kind of thought that this is going to completely change business models I mean besides of course talking about jobs and all that stuff I never really thought it's going to put people out of jobs but I definitely thought that it's going to put people out of the skills that you know the skill that I have is going to get replaced with something higher order and therefore it's really like saying then imagine a job where they say you could complete if you completed your ninth grade you can apply for a job next year somebody says oh you got to complete your 12th grade and then two years later somebody says unless you have a Ph.D. you can't do that that's the kind of a shift so I was really fascinated by that aspect even in unicorns there are not many more things but yeah that's what it is those articles and posts and all really eventually germinate into something one or two of those creates a pattern then you kind of sort of build on that so I think in that now what about you how do you go from posted to manuscript so it's very strange I think the city brief section of my newspaper is my most inspiring spot so I will have my first book in fact came from a little news snippet in the daily newspaper about a dead body being found in the back road of where I lived at that point so that's how one story came and another story that's the face of the window came from a place I had come to Mukteshwar in Uthakanthara holiday and that was my first trip to Pahar so to speak and I was sitting down in the room and I saw this cottage bang on the edge of the mountain and nothing around it for miles and miles and I thought into myself how do people stay and how do they live alone and what if something happens and that's how the face of the window came about and Mrs. McNally the retired Anglican school teacher came about to conversation with my mother who taught at Convent of Jesus in Mary at Masuri for a long time and she I think probably had somebody like that there so so that give me one second sorry so that is how one these stories come it's just life it's just people around you and it's just you know listening to stories missing presumed dead was a story of something that stayed with me kids I played with their mother just walked out of home one day and I was free of thought at that point it stayed with me all these and came out of the book because you were really disturbed at that time how would a mother just walk away and leave her kids so after 40 years 45 years it came out of the book but but I also think that sometimes when you look around I've always felt real life you want to grab a glass of water yeah I'll just do that yeah so you know go grab a glass of water if you like so when I think about this whole process of you know finding triggers in the world around you I think there is a lot to be said that you know when you think about the world around you there's always so much happening and I believe that life actually is far more complex and interesting than let's say what people can actually ever read in a work of fiction chances are that if you replicated a real life incident in a work of fiction most people would find it very hard to believe that such a thing could have happened and I've met so many people fascinating kind of stories I only see if I had written that people would have said this is impossible it would have never happened like this and I say wait in order to write it in a book I actually have to dial it down do you feel that too absolutely they say truth is stranger than fiction yeah so in fiction you have to make it plausible that's one compulsion of fiction unless you're writing even science fiction something like science fiction it has to be based on actual theoretical science you can talk about galaxies far far away and you know going at warp speed and all but it has to be theoretically possible for people to believe that it could happen even a story like wandering earth where they are trusting the earth out of the solar system because of a possible the sun exploding it had to be theoretically possible and to make it plausible in science fiction but in reality tomorrow something could happen the sun could just explode who would have thought we would have been in a pandemic that would shut down the world I was just re-reading Isaac Asimov's spaceship policy 2001 and in that there was a little slide paragraph about the China virus showing the synthetic virus sending it out in the world and this was written in 1968 we are both living in 2021 so back then it was plausible what is happening to us today yeah when I saw this movie Contagion I was actually completely blown away by the fact that 11 years back somebody has talked about you know a virus which is going to spread by touch you know is uncanny how accurately it reflects the way this pandemic happened and that's really the weird thing so this time I kind of found that typically at the beginning of the year number of times people talk about you know trends what are the predictions for the year I kind of always find it very funny because here we find it difficult to predict the weather for tomorrow and making grandiose statements but that apart this time I found that there was some agencies and I wrote about it that I think it was the frog design agency which used human writing as a way to predict the future trend you know for the year which I thought is often a lot proper because many a times people who write fiction are able to live in a fairly unconstrained world and so therefore they can predict so what is the prediction for you know this year what would be the prediction for this year you know my what would be a prediction for this year it all depends on how the virus behaves I think we are not going to get into the trend of realm of trend spotting wouldn't it yeah we are not going back to the way we were Abhijeet we are not going to go back I think everybody has said that we are going to go more internal we are going to go more work for more it's going to be all that stuff it's going to be the norm and we are going to be close the entire circus but I do see a rise in consumption you know for all that we have been deprived as you were saying we are booking holidays which we are never going to take we are booking concerts which we are never going to go to so there is going to be a sort of grabbing back of what we feel we have lost in the past year and we must become the new normal I hope not all my lipsticks are going to be very sad if they do but and we are going to be no use for lipsticks anymore but maybe eyeliners will take off and then eyeliners and eye makeup is going to become really really hot and I do the fact that I thought red lipstick could get me through everything and now I have to learn eye makeup at my old age so we are going to change the way we are living and I don't know I would place my bet on the fact that I think once vaccines so the deciding factor is going to be once a certain critical mass of people who have got the vaccines in terms of revenge sort of behavioural people will go right back to you know just to experience the freedom of being back in the office so yeah I would buy the fact that maybe you will work from home on a couple of days a week but I think people value the opportunity to hang around with some colleagues etc you know and everything and human behaviour there is one extreme or the other but I would think that most people so I am sort of going out on a limb and making that prediction and I think we will go back with the confidence because you know there is just a certain amount of freedom to say that I can go to a concert without worrying that is going to kill me you know touch is such an important element of building trust if that sort of goes away I think it takes away a certain element of humanity so I think it will sort of go right back there is skin hunger there is this entire research on skin hunger now people have been reporting skin hunger as a deprivation to the senses so definitely yes I get you but I also feel people are going to be more tighter and more insular in terms because we have learnt that we don't need to be out there all the time we have learnt you know we sort of contained ourselves let's see how it goes small correction I said Isaac Asimbo with Arthur C Clarke and that has been neglecting me 2001 space Odyssey Arthur C Clarke I am so sorry that's fine you know I would sort of want to know what is if you divided your typical day like pizza you know and slice it out by the hour I mean what does your typical day look like you know very very boring actually you get the chores done you run the household you get your desk so if I divided it like a pizza with eight quarters I would say around ten quarters I spent sitting at my desk and two quarters I spent ensuring everybody is fed and nourished and you know everything is kept in working condition in the house and things are running so it's it's a cave person's job Abhiji to know that you're a writer you're a person you're just at the desk the whole day and doing different different things so ten of eight we have eight quarters right so six of eight will be at the desk two will be rushing around the house like a headless chicken that's it not really exciting stuff no I think you're right that you know writing is essentially a very lonely profession you know so which is why I sometimes wonder if extroverts find it harder to write books I don't know if extroverts have written books but I oh heavens no I'd be very happy if I was left alone and never had to see another human being again till I wanted to see one wow but that's just me for today and this moment and tomorrow I might change my mind and come on you say I just want to go out with vengeance instead of meet everyone who wants to not everyone okay very selective but no I I'm not an extrovert and I think we writers are actually very schizophrenic we like people because we draw on people for to create our characters sorry and because we do we need to be out with people but at the same time we need to be left alone in order to create so that's that I got me that we constantly need to be balancing in order to create so that's something I think we all grapple with how much do we be out there how much do we go into ourselves in order to clear because I think you know there is a phase where you're right where you talk about getting the more number of people that you meet the more unconnected things you can connect in your head and then of course you just need to have that terrible phase where you lock yourself and just put pen to paper that should you enjoy that process more for the first one more that's a very good question it takes more effort to put myself out there what about you are you a people person or do you prefer to be left alone how does it work for you so I think you know that's where this is a tough one to write so what I do is I actually start to write very early in the day so I wake up very early and I write because then as soon as the sun is up and you're in a little bit life starts too many people start to fall and meet and this and that so I think in that situation my day is spent like that and so I kind of steam those couple of hours early morning and then I really try and keep that writing going so that's the way that I kind of find the opportunity so it's a combination it's never one or the other and I'm sure you would also sort of say that you do need to find some figures do you have sort of a hero in terms of writing the light who would that person be I think all the best writers I wish I could write like I wish I could write like Stephen Keane I wish I could write like B.J. Woodhouse I wish I could write like J.R. Alton Keane I wish I could write like it's not politically correct to see this anymore but J.T. Rowling there are so many Murakami, Ishuguru even Jane Austen she was considered the chiclet writer of her time but look at the way her books have survived the test of time so Dave Barry, Irma Bombak I mean all of them might be all standing on the shoulders of Giants I think so each one of them has shaped me in some way and I don't think I have one specific hero I keep finding new heroes every single day at the end of the day I think anyone who's writing has moved me I wish I could write like them because I want my writing to move my reader that's for you this is interesting my heroes a lot of my writing was shaped by Bengali writers who I grew up reading I did a fair bit of Bengali writers first so if I would really look at my influences early influences I had I think it's Ray and the real Bengali women two absolute favourites I think I've read many most of them writing a couple of times so that certainly was one big element the second phase was when I read a number of Hindi writers and few writers in particular Prince and then Shivani really influenced me a lot and the third phase I read a few English language writers so that you know continues so you know I kind of don't unfortunately I don't read as much of Hindi writing as I used to I would love to do that but you know I have not been able to keep up with Hindi writing as much I've occasionally try you know Bengali bring out during the Pugas the modern writers so that for me is a quick way in which I stay connected to you know some of the more contemporary writers who are doing that there are lots of good translations which I have enjoyed reading so I have not read so I've read some books which have been written in Bengali translated in English I have enjoyed doing that that's another way to you know sometimes see it's really in my mind like tasting cuisine which you are very familiar with which you want to see what somebody else prepares at life it's that curiosity so if somebody has chicken tikka masala in another country how do you prepare it does it taste like what we think of is chicken tikka masala so I think it's really like that absolutely actually that's a very interesting point reading something in translation unfortunately most of my reading of Indian writers writing in languages has been in translation I haven't read anything in the original language and I'm ashamed to say that so completely agree yeah you know if you if you were to think of giving some advice to budding writers what are two or three things you would suggest to them for me to give any advice but I would just read every day read as much as you can write every day I think we don't practice writing enough as a skill we think of it as something that the muse will come and make you write and once the muse arrives you write your best and it doesn't happen that way you just have to practice it every day as a skill and exercise the muscle the way it is for any other craft I guess you don't tell an athlete not to practice every day so why should you as a writer expect to get the craft and the skill if you don't write every day and I'm sure you do it too your LinkedIn writing is your rears I would say for me my blogging was my rears back in 2003-2005 so that was the rears you put in and then the writers the books come about absolutely what are your tips I think tell me I need four tips because I'm in writing rut no no no I just think that I I don't have any writing tips I think it wouldn't be very different from what you just said I think writing is I think it's a tough craft so I think as somebody said you chop wood every day and then one of the days the news visits you so I think it's a lot to do with that but on a different note I think when you sort of write for different media so I do whenever somebody says would you want to write for us and I always say yes because when you write for a different audience each time I think it builds your capability to speak a different language and you know say the same thing sometimes in 200 words sometimes 1000 words sometimes 5000 words so I write for academic journals I write for you know popular kind of things and so I think the more variety of audiences open mind when you write the easier so even Twitter actually is a great resource I spent some amount of time in those days I kind of do that my nemesis is you know I am just like a master of typos so that adds to the job no it's just like hugely annoying you know but that's just something that I have to work to get out of but yeah it's thank you Kiran this is really just such a fun I have with you to talk about how you view the world and you know your way of writing and you've written across so many genres and all that I just find it really admirable that somebody can have so much of skill to be able to span genres and I'm very grateful that you came and shared your ideas with the readers and viewers so thank you so very much for being here thanks a lot thank you for inviting me thank you so much it's been an honour to be on your platform and all the very best for all your writing in the future look forward to reading your limited posts every day so more power to you thanks so much and see you soon and may all your books be best sellers always thank you cheers cheers bye bye