Kiran Manral's Blog, page 33
February 16, 2016
Ava reviews The Face At the Window
Kiran Manral – The Face At The Window
Julia McNally is an old woman now. She watches her body degenerating slowly. It is gradually becoming harder for her to go about her daily routine. Her joints are creaking and she is besieged by ill-health.
She is a retired schoolteacher and lives in a cottage on a remote hill-station along with her faithful retainers who take good care of her. There are caring neighbors that she can depend on. Her beloved granddaughter, Nina, studies in a boarding school close by and visits her whenever she can.
Despite all appearances, Mrs. McNally is not at peace. She is beleaguered by her past. There are secrets she has that she has not shared with those closest to her, her daughter Millie and her granddaughter Nina. Surely they need to be told things from her past that affect them as well. While she is mulling over these thoughts, she finds ghosts from her past reach out to her.
The Face At The Window is beautifully written. It takes some time for the reader to sink into the story, as most things are referenced to, but not explained. Once you get the drift, the story sails along smoothly. A lot happens which keeps you glued to the book.
I grew fond of all the characters in the book. Mrs. McNally is the narrator and she grips our attention and our heart. Nina is a young teenager who is trying to learn about life. She is a happy go lucky child and does not have the angst that her mother and her grandmother suffered from. Dr. Sanyal who takes care of Mrs. McNally’s health, Sumit the author, who lives close-by and is writing a book, Bimla and her husband who are Mrs. McNally’s retainers, Col. Dayal, a neighbor that Mrs.McNally depends on, all these character flesh out the book nicely.
Not all of us are destined to a clear identity. Right from the birth of a child, the parents are around, the family is at hand to provide a child with an unambiguous legacy. What of the orphans? The little babies who are discarded at birth to be brought up in orphanages? What goes on in their minds? Don’t they ever long to learn about their natural parents? What of the people who die in disgrace and are buried hurriedly, do they return as ghosts?
Kiran Manral has written books that cover all sorts of genres. All Aboard was a light romance as was Once Upon a Crush. The Reluctant Detective was a delightful book about a housewife who is drawn into solving a mystery. The Karmic Kids is about parenting.
It is heartening to see a young author experimenting with so many genres and coming up with this lovely tale where the main protagonist is a 75-year-old woman who has an unusual story to tell us. The ending will blow you away.
Posted by Ava Suri at 7:17 am
Labels: Amaryllis, Gothic Romance., Kiran Manral, The Face at the Window
Read the original here
February 15, 2016
Interview with me on ItemMom
Team ItemMom decided to chat up with various ItemMoms in this section. To get the ball rolling on ItemTalks we thought who better to start our journey with than Superwoman Kiran Manral.
She worked as a journalist with The Times of India and The Asian Age. Kiran was among the top bloggers in India, before she moved on to writing fiction. Her earlier novels include The Reluctant Detective, Once Upon A Crush and All Aboard. She has also recently authored a book on parenting titled Karmic Kids: The Story of Parenting Nobody Told You. Her forthcoming book, The Face at the Window, is due to be released at the end of Feb 16. She lives in Mumbai with her family and struggles with a serious Nutella addiction. She currently works in qualitative market research.
We chatted up and asked her a series of questions and this is what she had to say about them…
Q. Whom did you read the most when you were growing up?
Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, and of course the classics; I read a lot of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple as well. I think the best thing that happened to me was that I was an indiscriminate reader, and read anything and everything that came to my hands. I had a pile of Amar Chitra Kathas that was taller than me at one point of time.
Q. Do you have a go-to gook? Name please
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome; I must have read it gazillion times by now and probably know it by heart
Q. All your books can be divided into different genres. How do you choose which genre to venture into next?
I don’t think I choose the genre, the genre chooses me. I just write the book making the most noise in my head at that particular moment.
Q. What can the readers expect from your latest venture?
My most recent book, Karmic Kids : The Story of Parenting Nobody Told You is a wildly funny account of the raising of my son, from year one to year ten. It is based on my very popular blog, Karmic Kids, which was among the top parenting blogs in India, which I shut down when he turned ten. It is humourous, poignant, emotional, practical and never preachy. I also have other moms and experts weighing in on various topics within the book.
My next book, The Face At The Window, which is being released at the end of this month is a darker, grimmer tale about a retired school teacher living at the foothills of the Himalayas, who is trying to wind up the skeins of her life, while waiting to die. She is also, scarily, being haunted by a very vicious entity.
Q.Amongst all the contemporary Indian English authors, whom have you read and who is your favorite?
So many wonderful authors, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is definitely one of my favourites, as are Rupa Gulab, Annie Zaidi and Shinie Antony,( I was just recently introduced to her writing and fell completely in love with). I also love Mahesh Rao’s writing.
Q. It is one of the most debatable topics that can a woman have it all? Like being a winner in professional, personal and social world at the same time? What do you believe in?
I would say why we want to have it all. Neither men nor women can have it all, so no point in killing ourselves trying. I am naturally very laidback so I would say be judicious of what you prioritize–and give your all to what you do. Having it all might be utopian, but giving something your all can be very emotionally satisfying and give you purpose, whether it is your work, your home, your children. And having said that, I think women multi task naturally, we can do much more if we put our minds to it.
Q. Any words of wisdom for our mothers who may struggle to find a balance between personal (child, husband, in laws, parents, and relatives) and her own (professional and social) world
Just prioritize and learn to say no. Do what is important to YOU. Don’t feel guilty about putting yourself first. Of course, don’t shirk responsibilities but spreading yourself too thin trying to please everyone will only make you the most resentful person ever. When you do what is important to you, you will be happy. And that is the most important gift you could give yourself.
Q. You have done it all…a Parent, Spouse, Journalist, Blogger, Mentor, Author, Advisor… so what’s next?
All? No, there’s lots more to come. Grandparent. Retired Person. etc.
You can find her books here – http://goo.gl/oQQ5IF
Connect with her @kiranmanral on twitter.
Read the original here
February 14, 2016
A podcast interview on MyKitaab.com
Introduction:
Kiran Manral was a journalist and a copywriter before she became an author. Her first novel The Reluctant Detective was published in 2011. She works for the causes of prevention of violence against women, sexual abuse and is involved with a group that works with the victims of the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai. She lives in Mumbai with her family and writes an occasional column for newspapers. Her latest book is
Highlights of the Discussion
According to Kiran Manral, she has no life skills (and maybe that’s why she is an author)
Her first book was titled The Reluctant Detective (Westland, 2011), followed by One Upon a Crush ( Leadstart, 2014) and All Aboard (2015), and a nonfiction book on parenting called Karmic Kids (2015). Her next book is titled The Face At the Window which is scheduled to be released in 2016 February.
She has published each of her books with a different publisher, she has changed publisher because of a variety of reasons. Timeline of publishing is one of the factors. Her forthcoming book, The Face At The Window, will be published by Amaryllis.
Kiran decided to step back from her career in journalism when she decided to have a child, She took up freelancing assignments from there on. Blogging was her way of expressing herself- she started blogging in 2004 or 2005.
She likes to describe herself as a storyteller than a writer. By nature she feels she is very introverted, but she relishes the world of book marketing. According to her book promotions particularly for fiction is a necessary evil.
Kiran plans her travel so that she is not away from home for more than 2 days a week. She has good family support system that enables her to stay away from home.
She has a presence on facebook, twitter, tumblr, blogs, instagram and youtube. She tries to reply to every comment or tweet. She has started rationing her time on social media recently.
Kiran’s appearance on MyKitaab Podcast was her first podcast interview. She likes audio as a means of communicating with the audience, and will consider publishing audio version of her books in the future.
She considers herself to be a Humor writer, and she writes for herself. She likes to experiment with genres to help her grow as an author. The reviews for The Reluctant Detective have been mixed, particularly on the e-commerce sites (amazon and Flipkart)
Her next two books Once Upon a Crush and All Aboard, are in chic lit category. Kiran is a fan of the Bridget Jones Diary series.
Kiran does not see that working with a different publisher for each book is a challenge. It does add complexity to the publishing and marketing plans, but with planning, this challenge can be overcome.
Kiran considers Stephen King as her role model in writing, who has also written in multiple genres.
While she has been a traditionally published author, Kiran is considering to publish one of her future books independently.
Her publisher ran a promotion for Once Upon a Crush in 2014 through Newshunt, which received a lot of media coverage.
According to her, translations is a tricky area. Particularly in humor, the language plays an important role in conveying the message. Amar recently came to know about the Marathi language translation of Pride and Prejudice, written by the author/ translator in 1905. This is an example of a transposition or a transformation, not necessarily translation.
Kiran would like to recommend a book called Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed , which is a compilation of her columns that the author wrote as an agony aunt and dear sugar for a magazine.
P G Wodehouse is one of her favourite authors. Given a chance, she would like to consider Aunt Agatha as a protagonist for one of her future books.
Kiran’s advice to authors: they MUST read, words are the tools of the trade for authors. To write one page, one should have read atleast a thousand pages.
Update: You can learn more about Kiran’s latest novel by clicking here: Face At The Window
Links and Resources Mentioned in this discussion:
Kiran’s amazon author page
Kiran’s Flipkart author page
Ways to reach Kiran:
Twitter: @Kiranmanral
Instagram: Kiran Manral
Facebook:Kiran Manral Author Page
about.me : Kiran’s page
Kiran’s Blog: WordPress Blog
Listen to the podcast here: http://mykitaab.in/podcasts1/kiran
Yummy Mummy: 6 Looks for Stylish Working Moms
A former journalist with India’s biggest newspapers, Kiran Manral quit full-time work to raise a son and went on to set up her own content supply firm. One of the leading mommy bloggers in India, she has a huge fan following on social media, where she talks about her trysts with parenting and shares her views on gender issues. She’s also on the planning board of the Kumaon Literary Festival and an advisor and mentor on several other platforms for women.
If that was not enough, she has also written four books, and is all set to launch her fifth one. While her earlier fiction was about youth and romance, her new one, ‘The Face at the Window’ (Amaryllis) is a gently nuanced, layered story that deals with the lack of identity and an eternal finding of self.
We asked Kiran to share her favourite looks from her recent public appearances. Scroll down for them all.
Look 1: “The theme for the reading of my book ‘All Aboard’ hosted by Gurgaon Moms was nautical so I took the closest I could find to nautical stripes: a simple dress with black and white horizontal stripes down the front and slimming black panels down the side. White and gold beads round the neck and golden slip-ons brought in some bling to the look.”
Read the rest of the article here
February 9, 2016
The Face At The Window on Sheroes.in
Kiran Manral, Mentor at SHEROES tells us a little about her new book – The Face at the Window today.
The Face at the Window is a book that is a looking-back at a life lived, at the end of it. It is the story of Mrs McNally, a retired school teacher, living alone in a cottage at the foothills of the Himalayas,who grapples with ghosts from her past, but also a strange, vicious presence in her house that seems to want something from her. It is a gently nuanced, layered story that deals with the lack of identity and an eternal finding of self, and holds a mirror to the fears we are all afraid to voice, the fear of ageing, the fear of not belonging, and above all, the fear of having no one to love you at the end of your life.
How did the inspiration of the story come about?
I was on holiday in Kumaon, at Te Aroha in Dhanachuli to be specific, when from my window I saw in the distance, smoke curling out from the chimney of a house that seemed far off, and isolated. I wondered what if someone had come out to such a remote place to live out the last years of their life, what would it be like, and the story evolved from there. Mrs McNally became that person, come to live out the end of her life in a remote place, and her last few months are what this book is all about.
Who are the targeted readers for this book?
I think anyone who likes to read would be my audience. I would find it very difficult to slot this book into a specific genre, targeted at a specific demographic, but I think across genders, any reader would find this book interesting, given that it deals with themes that are universal in nature.
Any thoughts you would like to share about future books in progress?
All still work in progress, nothing really concrete. I’m on a little writing break at the moment. Will get back to writing post March and let’s see what comes up then. One of the greatest failings I have is that I can plan nothing. I just write and whatever comes of it, does. So one just has to wait and watch. I have always been writing in different genres in a bid to shake myself out from getting into a comfort zone, and now I think I want to experiment by writing in a genre I haven’t tried before, but what that would be, I don’t know. I just have to wait for the character to come to me and build my story around him or her.
Read the original article here
Get your copy of The Face at the Window, click on the – Amazon Pre Order Link
At Lit-O-Fest 16, 20-21st Feb, St Xavier’s, Mumbai
Delighted and honoured to be part of Lit-O-Fest Mumbai 2016 at St Xaviers College Mumbai 20-21st Feb, in the company of such distinguished celebrities and fellow authors like Sudhir Mishra, Ayaz Memon, Rajdeep Sardesai, Anup Jalota, Hariharan, Anu Malik, Ashwin Sanghi, Kiran Nagarkar, Meghna Pant, Dr. Vineet Aggarwal and Suhail Mathur.
February 7, 2016
“This is a fabulous book — highly recommended. Good stuff!” #KarmicKids
Thank you Jaya Bhattacharji Rose for the kind words
“Kiran Manral’s Karmic Kids: The Story of Parenting Nobody Told You! is a book of parenting advice she shared on her very popular blog in the first decade of her son’s life. She closed the blog once he turned ten. In her inimitable style of blending frankness, honesty, humour and an ability to laugh at herself too, Kiran Manral records the various stages of her brat’s life from infancy to a ten-year-old while sharing invaluable parenting tips. The most sensible advice that seems to be stressed in the book though never stated explicitly is motherhood and parenting does not come naturally. It needs to be learned on the job which is relentless and never ending. It is not necessarily the chore it can seem at times despite the sleepless nights, the anxiety in being responsible for a blob that slowly transforms into a little human being. It is rewarding and a pleasure and she would not want it any other way. She intersperses it with advice from various experts on parenting and caregiving of a child. It helps in bolstering the book instead of relegating as just one more memoir to the many in the market. By writing in this accessible style, Kiran is able to discuss a range of issues like child sexual abuse, co-sleeping with parents, helicopter parenting, discipline, sex-education for the children, sibling / rivalry, teaching children to be independent and empowered, etc. Her writing is forthright without being preachy, it is honest and humourous. It resonates with the readers for sharing parental anecdotes that seem to be universal in the challenges of bringing up children. The last time I read a sane and practical book on parenting within the Indian context were those written by Gouri Dange.
This is a fabulous book — highly recommended. Good stuff!”
Read the original here
February 2, 2016
Tweetchat on Monday, 8th, and KGAF too.
Will be at KGAF on the 8th.
Title: No Kidding — New opportunities in publishing for children and young adults with Anushka Ravishankar, Kiran Manral & Karishma Attari. Moderated by Lubaina Bandukwala
Date: Monday, 8th February 2016
Timing: 5:30 to 6:30 pm
Venue: Artists’ Centre, Ador House, 1st floor, Rampart Row, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400 001
As a precursor will be participating in a tweet chat on the 8th at noon. Join in. Use the hashtag #VoiceVirus
January 28, 2016
Order here
January 19, 2016
my idiva column this week. 5 Reasons Why You Must Reinvent Yourself in 2016
It sneaks up on us all of a sudden, on that one day when we’re sitting in front of the telly, eating ice cream from the tub, feeling the fat cells pop as they stretch to accommodate more cellulite. Or when we get back home from a particularly stressful day at work and dread the thought of going back to the office the next day, wondering in despair if this is what life is going to be, a series of terrible days and mornings woken up with no carpe diem excitement.
We look at ourselves in the mirror and we see room for improvement, and nothing is holding us back from our ideal selves in our head, except our own determination to get there. And this could be nothing to do with appearance and helping a plastic surgeon get his third vacation home. We’ve all done this on a smaller scale occasionally, gone in for a drastic hair cut that drastically redefined what we perceived ourselves as, changing hair colour, throwing out the preferred wardrobe and experimenting with a new look or by taking up a hobby course in photography perhaps, knowing that photography is a passion that lurks on the sidelines, waiting for us to give it the attention it deserves.
Reinventing ourselves completely is something we shy away from, we’ve fallen into comfortable modes of dressing, behaving, looking, dealing with others, we worry about how people will respond to the new us. Professionally we are terrified about how reinventing ourselves will affect our career graph, whether choosing to shift track from say marketing to an artisanal baker will change our lives. Most of the times though the only thing that holds us back from being the person we want to be is, we ourselves.
Read the rest of the article here
