Q.1 Tell us a little about yourself?
A. I was born and brought up in Madras (now
Chennai) (DoB: 05/January/1950). Father, late B.R.Somayajulu, was the Chief
Engineer, Madras State Electricity Board of the composite state of Madras
(Madras + Andhra Pradesh) and later of Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board
at Hyderabad. Mother, late B. Kamakshi, was a homemaker. I am the penultimate
child of their ten children.
I studied up to
PUC in various cities e.g. Madras, in Tamil Nadu, Vijayawada, and Guntur in
Andhra Pradesh. Studied B.Sc.
(Math) in Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda College, Madras(1965-1968). Studied M.Sc.
(Tech) (Meteorology and Oceanography) at Andhra University (1968-1971).
Q.2 Are we going to read more from you shortly? Any new project you’re working on?
A. Surely, once I am finished with the
initial days of my Living Pages. I
have two half-finished projects - one is a murder mystery, and the other, five
episodes of a series on a child’s adventures. As is my habit, I have jotted
down either a couple of pages or a broad storyline for a few other projects.
I also have several poems in English and Hindi, which I would like to publish.
Near future or distant future, I cannot say but I want to place in the market
all my works, before I depart for my final destination.
Q.3 Where do you get your ideas?
A. From Life. Fortunately, I have the
advantage of the long experience of 69 years on this beautiful planet. From
childhood, the anecdotes I heard, the incidents I observed, and the situations
I passed through have all left an indelible impression on my mind.
Q.4 What advice do you have for writers?
A. Write about what you feel. Feel what you write.
Q.5 How do you come up with the name of
this book?
A. There is an interesting history behind
this. Post-retirement, I along with my late wife toyed with the idea of
floating a company dealing in editorial services. We tentatively named it Living Pages. Sadly, the idea remained
an idea and never fructified. During the post-Dance of Life years, I lost my own soul mate - my wife - and went into an
abyss of depression and purposelessness. The Herculean efforts of my family and
a couple of friends brought me back from the brink and I started writing once
again.
Having published all my finished novels, I turned my attention to my
short stories. I was struggling to find a suitable title that would act
as a sutra, a common thread, binding
my 52 disparate stories into one unit, just as a thread would bind flowers of
different hues and shapes into a garland. I wished to emphasize that the pages
of the book are not mere pulp but are throbbing with life in various hues and
facets of life that we see and experience around every day. Voila, the title literally fell into my
lap! Living Pages. I added (Volume I)
in the hope that I shall continue to write and, one day, bring out (Volume II)!
Q.6 If you could tell your younger writing
self-anything, what would it be?
A. Dare to dream. Dream to dare.
Q.7 What are the most important magazines
or websites for writers to subscribe to?
A. I recommend indiscriminate reading. Every
scrap of writing is information,
knowledge. It helps; and then there is a library called the Internet.
Q.8 What is the most difficult thing about
writing characters from the opposite sex?
A. All of one’s experience, command over
language and vocabulary come to naught when one faces this important aspect
you raised unless one puts oneself in the shoes of the character portraying
the opposite sex; feel, think, and act like that character. In short, a tremendous amount of empathy must exist within oneself to portray realistically
and effectively the character of the opposite sex.
A couple of
examples from my Living Pages;
Sarita, a gang rape survivor from SHE.
While the first chapter described in detail her physical struggle to survive,
the third, and final chapter was the crucial one and, in fact, the crux of the
story. I had to convey the mental agony and anguish of Sarita. It took me
several days even to formulate mentally that crucial chapter. I am not ashamed to admit that, while writing it
down, I literally broke down and wept. Even today, whenever I read that chapter
I choke into tears. Then, on somewhat similar lines, is Sita of Symphony of Violence. I had to bring out
the physical and mental agony and ignominy she is subjected to in the form of domestic
violence.
The character
Asha Iyer of Love Eternal is close to
my heart (just as Katyayani of my novel Intersections
is). I etched with passion her ostensible flippancy with a strong undercurrent of
love and affection in a backdrop of heart-rending tragedy. Another
down-to-earth character is Naseem of Faith.
Urmila of The Confluence is another powerful
character with strong convictions. Rakhi Apte of Lame Duck and Dame Luck and Kokila of The Song I came to Sing are some more examples.
One might
observe that many of my stories/novels have strong female characters. Maybe, it
stems from my witnessing the struggle my widowed mother went through to raise
my younger brother and me after our father departed.
Q.9 How do you select the names of your
characters?
A. Again, from life. I choose common and
real-life names that are easy to pronounce and remember.
Q.10 Do you read your book reviews? How do
you deal with bad or good ones?
A. Of course, I do. I would be lying if I say
that bad reviews do not affect me; they did, especially during the formative
days of the writer in me. Over time, the writer in me matured, I think. Now
brickbats are as welcome as bouquets are.
Q.11 Does your family support your career
as a writer?
A. Actually, if it were not for my family,
especially my late wife and my second daughter, I wouldn’t be sitting here with
you interviewing me! When I was depressed in my retirement not knowing what to
do, they guided me, coaxed me, and convinced me to enter the world of writing
and enter I did, hesitatingly. Thus, my first novel, Dance of Life, was born.
Q.12 Do you believe in writer’s block?
A. I not only believe it, but I also experienced
it on a couple of occasions while writing my novels; I did not experience it
while writing short stories, though. Once, while
writing Misogynist Interrupted, I got
into a situation where I didn’t find a road ahead. I stopped writing for a
couple of weeks! Every day, we get a lot of information and trivia, which register
in our subconscious minds. This helped me. I resumed and completed the novel in
due course.
Q.13 Does writing energize you or exhaust
you?
A. Writing never exhausts me. Of course, some
situations I depict in my stories overwhelm me, and I break down sometimes. The
courtroom scene in She, where Sarita makes
a statement before the Judge is one such. In the
beginning, as a novel reached its end, I used to become very emotional and
break down, to the annoyance of my late wife and daughter. I explained to them
that the conclusion of every novel to me was like giving away my daughter in
marriage. They understood.
Q.14 Do you have any unique and quirky
writing habits?
A. I don’t know! Maybe my daughter can answer
that question better! I get an idea in my brain, which I think I can develop
into a story. I think of a skeletal framework for a story, the main cast of
characters, and the possible dynamics of narrative. I sit on my desktop
straight away and pour out the thoughts and ideas, even if in a random manner.
Computer software like MS Word is a boon for writers and so is the plethora of online dictionaries and thesauruses. If required I do some research online or in my personal collection of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases. I shall let you into a secret of mine; I am quite erratic in my writing habits. At times, I sit long hours at a stretch, and at others, I take a break for a few days. I let the momentum pour out my ideas and thoughts build up. Is that quirky? I don’t know.
Computer software like MS Word is a boon for writers and so is the plethora of online dictionaries and thesauruses. If required I do some research online or in my personal collection of dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases. I shall let you into a secret of mine; I am quite erratic in my writing habits. At times, I sit long hours at a stretch, and at others, I take a break for a few days. I let the momentum pour out my ideas and thoughts build up. Is that quirky? I don’t know.
Q.15 What do you consider to be your best
accomplishment?
A. In the world of writing? It is writing itself; then comes publishing
the works.
If you mean
the best of my own works then there are a few for various reasons.
Embers of the Pyre: According to feedback from my own editor
and readers and according to my own work-satisfaction. The plot, the
characterization, the narrative style, the flow/dynamics of the story, all fell
into place perfectly. As a writer, I consider it my best work to date.
Q.16 What is the most unethical practice
in the publishing industry?
A. No walk of life is untouched by
unethicality. It is money, money, and more money now. The sad part of the whole
matter is that traditional publishing is dead, unless one is an accomplished
and reputed writer, even if a beginner! The brighter side of self-publishing is
that even writers like me can put their works, however insignificant they may
be, in the market. Economical packages for publishing, with a horde of add-on
services are available for us to choose from. Sales figures are a different
matter altogether. Everyone has a story
to tell; go, tell it to the world.
Q.17 Who edited your book and how did you
select him/her?
A. My nephew has been my editor for all my
books including Living Pages. He is
an erudite person with good command of the language. His best quality is he
doesn’t mince words or pull a punch just because I am his uncle. He has been of
great help in bringing out my books and has done a thankless job - be it
content analysis, be it proofreading, or be it a whole gamut of issues in editing
- without expecting or taking a single paisa,.
He is an amateur, but his approach is thoroughly professional.
Then, there
is my second daughter, who coaxed me into embarking upon a journey into the
world of writing. She read and critically analyzed every word of every novel,
short story, and poem that I wrote, appreciating me when I did well,
criticizing me when I erred. These two
would like to remain in the background, enjoying only their efforts catching
the reader’s eye.
Q.18 Which famous person, living or dead
would you like to meet and why?
A. In the field of writing, I would like to
meet Agatha Christie, Alistair Maclean, and Frederick Forsyth. I grew up on
their writings imbibing every nuance of their narrative skills. They left an
indelible impact on my language and writing skills. I am Ekalavya to their Dronacharya.
Q.19 What is your favorite book and why?
A. How can I single out ONE book from the
hundreds that I have read? Still, I cannot deny my emotional attachment to The Mysterious Affair at Styles of
Agatha Christie. It was a first for
both of us, the first novel she wrote, and the first novel I read!
From Alistair
MacLean’s works, I pick The Last Frontier as my favorite for its completeness - narrative, narration, characterization,
historical base, adrenalin-pumping action sequences, and a touch of political
pontificating.
Frederick Forsyth
is one ultra-meticulous writer with a needlepoint eye for detail. Dogs of War is an example. However, my
favorite is The Day of the Jackal.
Q.20 Share the experience of your journey
so far?
A. All my answers above illustrate where I
stand in the world of writing. I shared details of my journey
through several posts on my blog.
As I stated
in the “Acknowledgements” of all my books, writing a book may be easy but
fine-tuning it, making it readable to international readers, and avoiding
pedagogism, and clichés are humongous tasks. However, the real-world struggle
begins after the intellectual outpour ends and the book is published, which are
the easier parts of the whole exercise; I refer to the nitty-gritty of book
sales. I must say I haven’t been lucky in that aspect.
Before
publishing my first book, I was only interested in placing my book, and my name
in the market. Once I published it, the uncompromising harsh reality of sales
engulfed me. Seeing me worry endlessly, my wife guided me out of that dark
abyss saying, “Why do you worry about how many copies are sold? You wanted to
publish your book, and place your name in the market; you did it. Just forget
about the sales figures, and get on with your next project.” That advice worked
like a miracle with me. I never looked back. Now, I do my duty of publishing
and promoting my book and get on with life.
I thank you
for the opportunity to speak to you and my readers through you about my journey
into the world of writing.
Share your social account links -
LinkedIn - @shyamsundarbulusu
Thanks, Ms Aakanksha Jain, for publishing the interview. Blessings & best wishes. I hope we can work together again on other projects of mine.
ReplyDeletePleasure is all mine sir :)
DeleteKudos for your Frank and bold interview wishing y all the best in all your future endeavours
ReplyDeleteThanks Ramu. You always stood by me even in my humble endeavours. Blessings.
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