Rohini Gupta's Blog, page 3

Who invented rain?

Cats, as you may know, don’t like rain. When the danger of getting their sensitive paws wet becomes too real, what do they do? I catch them looking at me as If I am to blame.

If they spoke my language this is probably what they would say..

Haiku and photo by Rohini Gupta

First published – Cafe Haiku, September 2021.

If Only….

Haiku and illustration by Rohini Gupta

First published in Cafe Haiku, September 2021.

Coming Soon – Summer WHR

In case you are wondering, yes, the Summer 2021 issue of World Haiku Review is coming soon. I am working on it as we speak. This is just an update for your information.

This time it will be a brand new website. The last one, on google sites, did not survive the upgrade. Thirteen years and about 27 issues – the formatting disappeared overnight, making it difficult to read. The task of putting it back together was just too daunting; far too time taking and energy sapping. It is easier to begin a new site, which is almost done. Eventually, I will migrate the old issues too, when I have the time.

The new website, with more functionality, is coming – and its coming soon.

☆

In the meantime,

– here is a link to read – Raamesh Gowri Raghavan interviews me about haiku and life for Cafe Haiku.

An Oceanic Viewpoint

I am back to blogging now. I took a break because I had no time and the workload was too much. Between editing and writing and sometimes publishing – blogging just toppled off the table. I have picked it up and brushed it off now, so I will be back often.

Not Tomorrow

I made a few of these little posters to keep me motivated, especially when my energy and attention flagged. Its always a battle to keep going and every little bit of nudging counts.

A writers life is a solitary one. Most of the time it’s just you and the page or screen. Year after year, you have to stay enthusiastic and keep showing up and putting in the long hours. So, you learn a few tricks to stay passionate.

Sometimes that is all it takes – a Reminder to Myself.

I thought I could share them here.

Maybe they will help you too.

The Queen on her Cushion

Yes, Queens still thrive and have not lost their kingdoms.

Her majesty who rules the office

One meow brings food, one head butt gets petting and is rewarded with loud purring. One look gets everyone running around and she has many who want only to pay homage – with a bit of stroking.

She is fierce in guarding her royal territory. Anything on four legs dare not enter. She will attack on sight.

Her name is Ek which means One. She certainly is. She rules. Pay your respects.

The song of twenty twenty

Two minutes to go before it turns twenty one. 31st December, 2020. 11.58 pm.

I am in the balconey four stories above the street looking down at empty pavements and very little traffic.

There are a few sheepish fireworks but hardly any. Curfew at 11 and hotels and bars closing too has taken care of that. The threat of a new strain of covid and absconding passengers from the UK where it first surfaced, has drained away the hope.

One lone person cheers somewhere and another cheer joins. The promenade used to be packed with thousands of people, now there is no one in sight. No burst of red or gold or blue reflects in the ocean. There is no one to send up firework after firework.

I hear the ships bugles loud and clear. They are carried easily on the city’s silence not competing with crowds and noise for once. Mumbai is a port city so it does not feel like new year without hearing them. Are the ships lit up like Diwali? I can hear them from the ocean on the other side of this finger of land, but cannot see them.

The last bugle fades. One car passes. The street is empty.

So now its twenty twenty one.

Should we be happy?

Will it be better than the last?

The song of 2020

nowhere to go
no one to meet
standing by the window
above the empty street

looking for nobody
waiting for nothing

wondering
how did it ever come to this?

The Autumn Issue is Here

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Who could have guessed that 2020 would turn out to be the strangest year? It turned everything upside down and inside out. The world was forced to stay home and nature reclaimed its lost domain.

But one good thing happened too. People, thrown on their own resources, wrote – and wrote. And they sent in an abundance of haiku and haibun for ghe Autumn issue of World Haiku Review. So the covid virus themed issue was flooded with poetry, more than we expected and we ended up with 8 pages of excellent haiku besides haibun and much else.

Its been such a dreary time that I made a cheerful autumn cover with a beautiful heron drawing by Susumu Takiguchi, whose art is as beautiful, as his poetry.

Read it HERE and if you have any comments or suggestions, leave them below.

Also, look at my article in this issue –

Make my Life Glad with Nothing

Its a big issue with haiku from all over the world – enjoy.

Submit to WHR Autumn 2020

Submissions are open.




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World Haiku Review is now open to submissions

for the Autumn 2020 issue.

There is a theme – Coronavirus or the seasonal theme of wherever you are in the world.

The deadline is the 31st of July, 2020.

Take a look at these submission guidelines and send us your best.

Here We Go Again

[image error]Doesn’t every author love to see this? Your book in someone’s handbag.

The picture above – it wont happen soon. That is my first book Mantramala which has just come out in second edition – but in print since its too big a book for ebook. And my only print book is the only book no longer available because – here we go again.

The covid virus lockdown has shaken up the book trade. Bookshops have sadly pulled down their shutters. Books are considered non essentials and so you can’t just order the latest one from your favourite author right now. Well, actually you can – let me explain that.

The book world has split into two and strangely enough the sides seem to diverge even further. I am watching both because I have one foot in either camp. 

It happened with the advent of ebooks. Until then the writers path was very clear – you wrote your book and then you wrote those endless query letters trying not to sound like begging, to agents and publishers. It took me five years to get a publisher for my first book. In those days there was no option but to find a publisher.

Then came the whispers – something was happening which might upend the whole time tested business method. The whisper was about ebooks – and they were unstoppable.

Ebooks hit the book world hard. At first it was nothing but scorn for these impudent intruders. They were regarded rather like mice – a necessary evil you had to live with because there were just too many to exterminate.

There were many and getting to be more and more – and more. I dont know the number but you couldnt stock so many books on shelves even if you turned whole cities into libraries. And they were selling in quantities many did not want to admit.

Many in the old trade pretended they didnt exist. Many readers still dont even know they are an option. The book trade continued. People still bought print books – publishers still printed them.

Until covid brought everything to a dead stop. Bang. That business has run into a wall. There has been nothing like this before – this complete lockdown, the closure of bookstores, the impossibility of delivering print books since the online stores only deliver non essentials. Nothing like this has ever hit the book trade.

Everyone is in the same place, all around the world. Bookshops have closed – some may not open again. Many publishers are closed too – how to print, where to sell from with neither bookshops nor online deliveries functioning. If anything could bring the print book industry to its knees – that was the covid virus. I wonder who will survive – it does seem to me that many won’t.

Okay, let’s be clear – I am talking only about the print book trade. The publishers who did only print may or may not recover.

I am not talking of books because books are doing better than ever. There is another kind of book out there which floats unaffected. Ebooks sales are surging. Even publishers are looking at ebooks now.

Still, even with this standstill there are those who still don’t notice the world of ebooks. To them books are the ones made out of dead trees and glued together with dead animals. Thats a book.

Some readers are complaining, how can they stop delivering books? Even the bookshops are closed. What will we read?

Well, you know that Amazon and others have ebooks right? Do you know that it’s the same book, instantly delivered? The whole same book, in your hands in about a minute?

In the last month I have been asked this multiple times – is it difficult to download an ebook?

I realise the right answer to that is – it’s very difficult. The process itself is simple and anyone can do it. The mindset which allows you to do it is a mountain and going by the way people keep asking that same question year after year – it may well be insurmountable. The ‘I can’t’ barrier is the hardest to overcome. 

As a writer I am hardly affected by this lockdown. My ebooks are available at a click as always. And as a reader, the biggest store in the world is right there and yes, I have bought and borrowed plenty of ebooks to read in this lockdown. 

The best decision I took – five years ago – was to figure out how to publish an ebook on my own, writing, editing, proofing, cover art and uploading. Was it only five years? It seems a lifetime. The learning curve was very steep but very satisfying.

Today, I have 17 ebooks which continue to sell even when the print business has gone to almost zero. All it cost was the effort to write and publish them and, more important, the decision to take the path less trodden which has, yes it has, made all the difference.

Long days to fill

Long days, all the same in this lockdown. I no longer know which day it is without checking. Time itself is different. Its not clock time any more, its writing time and lunch time and cat feeding time and art time and, of course, time to go to bed!

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So I write a novel and keep the blogs going. And this time, in the Lockdown Poetry series on Cafe Haiku, I put up my own work. Do take a look.

https://cafehaiku.wordpress.com/2020/04/25/lockdown-poetry-6/

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