Kiran Manral's Blog, page 44
August 23, 2015
Monday Guest post: Attitude not abhiyaan by Rohan Bhade
So let’s get straight to the point, last year the Govt. of India launched the “Swachh Bharat”, “Beti Bachao” and “Give It Up” schemes among many others (thankfully none of these are named after an actual person). And the message did not come from the individual ministry under who’s jurisdiction the scheme would be run, it came right from the top – The Prime Minister of India. Previously such schemes would have a “bureaucrat drafted” statement, a photo of the Prime Minister and the President on a full page newspaper spread and that would be the end of it.
But cleanliness and sanitation (especially for girls) featured left and center during the PM’s Independence Day address to the nation and that gave it the initial escape velocity that it deserves. Soon everyone was on the bandwagon, from local bodies to 15 minute fame seekers to film, television and sports personalities to large corporate houses and news channels, this instilled hope and the year was 2014.
Snap back to the present and there are some reports that the “Swachh Bharat” scheme has lost its momentum. This if true is truly sad, not for the Govt. but for its citizens, this should also serve as a reminder to all – success of any governance initiatives is only as good as the grass root participation it garners. We claim that more Indians are getting educated, are more aware, more connected and needless to say getting wealthier. But somehow this modern day materialistic evolution doesn’t seem to translate into “situational social awareness and wisdom”, I mean the simple question one needs to ask themselves is “Do we need our Govt. to tell us to keep our surroundings and by that country clean”. And it isn’t that big of an undertaking, it is actually quite simple – treat ones locality, city, state and country as you would treat your own house.
Personally, the attitude that makes one litter is driven by indifference and a general lack of social responsibility. It stems from the thought that “someone is getting paid to clean up my mess, so I’m gonna make a mess”.
That brings us to the next issue that was highlighted during this years speech, the complete absence of dignity of labour. This is a status agnostic issue. General tendency is to look down upon janitorial jobs, then there’s the other kind that won’t take creative vocations seriously (I can recollect a tweet where a writer/blogger was faced with the “writing is fine, but what do you do”).
So in the words of Aretha Franklin
“R-E-S-P-E-C-T”.
Then comes the request to “Give It Up” and we aren’t talking income details to the taxman, but the LPG subsidy. The number of citizens who have surrendered their subsidy is encouraging BUT it could have been significantly higher. Somewhere the ones who can really do without the subsidy think “it’s not going to reach those who need it so why bother” and a prolonged culture of middlemen driven corruption drives this mindset. And it’s justified to quote the Gita “do your part without expectation of result, outcome or gain”. To the eternally optimistic me, just the satisfaction of the surrender should be good enough and surely the Govt can release evidence as to how these noble citizens have helped another one of theirs.
At the end of it, Govt succeeds by the participation and involvement the citizens show in its initiatives. Great ideas have failed for the want of great implantation, and the implementation matters.
To sum up, great abhiyaans require the right attitude from the citizenry.
Time to play our part, over to YOU the citizen.
(Every Monday I post a guest post. If you would like to post on my blog, do mail me at kiranmanral@gmail.com)
August 21, 2015
My iDiva.com column this week: Why I Hope College Girls Will Continue to Wear Shorts
By Kiran Manral | posted Aug 21st 2015 at 1:56PM
Kiran Manral
Kiran was a journalist before she quit to be a full time mommy. Her blog is considered amongst India’s top blogs. She is the author of The Reluctant Detective (2012), Once Upon A Crush (2014) and All Aboard (2015). An advisor on the Board of Literature Studio, Delhi she is also an Author Mentor at Sheroes.in. She now blogs at http://www.kiranmanral.wordpress.com and you can follow her on twitter @kiranmanral.
A prominent college festival in Mumbai has banned girl students from wearing shorts. This is in addition to the numerous bans we are already grappling with, which seem to increase day after day, and which one must now make out an excel sheet of in order to remember what is banned currently in the event that one might forget and not comply with the ban, and end up being hauled up to the clinker.
The ban on girls wearing shorts though is not a clinker level ban, but merely a diktat from the educational institution the girls are at. The boys at the educational institution, lucky sods, have no such restrictions and can continue to flaunt their hairy legs much to the dismay of hapless onlookers, in all their unwaxed glory, and single-handedly cause a spurt in the sales of eye drops.
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I find this grossly unfair for the simple reason that if shorts were to be banned as an item of clothing, the ban needed to be extended equivocally to both sexes. That’s all I say. What sense does it make to ban shorts for the girls, and allow the boys to roam unfettered, baring their legs, inciting lust and longing amongst the hapless onlookers, who then would not be able to contain themselves, and lead to a security issue, as the wise authorities have decreed?
I have an issue with shorts and that is primarily because I have legs of the version that aren’t flattered by the garment in question. You know. I have been caught on rare occasions in public wearing shorts, and most of these have been on vacation. Banning them, for me myself, would be a good move, because then I wouldn’t dare inflict my chicken legs on an unwary world and have them wince at the offence to public sensibilities I presented. But that is me. I do not dare speak for the world or those who love the item of clothing in question. Shorts have a lot to recommend them. For one, given the humidity of the climate we live in, they allow for adequate air circulation, and keep the body cool. For another, what better garment during the dratted monsoon in our city where a drenched pair of denims right down to the ankle can cause skin to rot till it turns green and falling off the bone until one manages to reach home and change into a dry pair, not to forget the ensuing fever and chills and work days lost in the process because one was drenched to the bone and stayed wet all day.
In Sweden, a couple of years ago, they did ban shorts during work hours for train conductors. While shorts were not termed a security risk in this case, the issue was the question of propriety and dress code and ban extended equally to male and female conductors. What the Swedes did in response to that ban was what I call inspired. They took to wearing skirts. Male and female. And the train company with amazing maturity, made no nose snorting disapproving noises of the skirts not being gender appropriate when worn by men. Their rules stated skirts or long trousers as a uniform. And as long as the rules were being adhered to, they were absolutely fine with it.
In Israel, school girls who were asked to stop wearing shorts when their male co-students were allowed to wear them, didn’t take this gender discrimination lying down. They took their protest online with a hashtag #ItsMyRight. Girls in Fiji had things worse, with a British colonial law allowing them to be flogged in public for wearing shorts, a law that was only just recently revoked.
Why is this ban on shorts only for girls by an educational institution something we should all be worried about? Two reasons. The first, and the most obvious one is that it officially gender discriminates between students and does so at an educational institution, which should be telling girls that they are on par with the boys. The second is that this ban takes the debate right back to the perennial problem we women face, that of victim-shaming, and the ‘she was asking for it’ and all such that rightfully deserves to be euthanised and interred forever.
Instead, what we need to tell our girls is that no one has the right to touch them without their consent, no matter what they might be wearing. And more importantly, we need to teach our boys that a girl wearing a pair of shorts is not asking for it. Never is. And they would do well to keep their hands to themselves.
Read the original here
August 20, 2015
All Aboard on clinical psychologist Sonali Gupta’s blog
A chat with author Kiran Manral on her new book – All Aboard!
August 20, 2015
Tell us about the book, and how it connects with the youth today in matters of love, betrayal and moving on?
The book is about a girl who is practically ditched at the holy fire by her fiance. She goes on a cruise with her aunt, to get away for a while and clear her head. Being jilted is never a pleasant experience, apart from the uncomfortable practicalities of calling off the wedding and dealing with the financial matters of cancellations and such, there is also the very real trauma of dealing with rejection. This can be quite shattering emotionally–a jolt from which it is terribly difficult to recover for some. What I do find is today’s generation is rather practical in the way they deal with emotional betrayals, they move on.
What most fascinates me as a psychologist is how much of your personal value system influences the way you write the books.
I’m rather old fashioned, I believe in romance, in being swept off one’s feet, of having a knight in shining armour rescue one and in the happily ever after of love stories. I think somewhere, the stories I write do reflect that. On the flip I am also of the belief that a woman needs to be her own advocate and earn her own living, and that seeps in too, in some ways.
This book has a powerful narrative, is there a message that you have for the audience?
I think what I believe in, that it is never the end of the world, no matter what happens. There could be something that is even better for you waiting just right round the corner. If I distil it down to one word, it would be hope.
Travel, escape and betrayal – what do these themes mean for you or your character?
They’re all interconnected in this book, there’s betrayal which leads to a need for escape and as a consequence leads to travel. I think love, betrayal and escape are such universal themes that they exist in everyone’s lives in some form or the other, and travel is a human need that has existed ever since early man traipsed out of Africa. These themes resonate with everyone, and each one brings to the reading their own individual experiences.
Often in therapy, clients ask me if the only way to heal from a break up is to fall in love again. As an author and someone who has written on gender issues, what is your opinion about it?
Unfortunately, I have not experienced a break up–I married my first long term boyfriend and we celebrate 20 years of being married to each other next January. But having said that, what I do believe and what I think helps the best is allowing yourself to heal completely from a break up–to get closure, to resolve the residual anger, resentment, guilt, self esteem issues that arise from a break up before opening yourself up to love again. Unless of course, love blind sides you completely unannounced. Having said that one is definitely more vulnerable when one hasn’t completely healed from a break up. And love on the rebound can be a great thing if it works out well.
Tell us where can the readers order your book from.
The book is available on Amazon India for pre orders right now and this is the link.
Read the original article here.
All Aboard is the book in focus this fortnight on Writer’s Melon
“I want to do something splendid…
Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead…
I think I shall write books.”
― Louisa May Alcott
Writing a book needs desire, patience, energy and utmost attention. We love those who write it, just write it.
Introducing Author Kiran Manral who is all excited to take our readers ‘All Aboard’. She will be sharing interesting bits and bytes around her ‘third book’, ‘the art of etching characters of the book’ and ‘being an author in the digital world’ with us at Writersmelon. Keep watching the space because we have a giveaway coming up too.
Third book is making me as nervous or excited as the first one —- Kiran Manral
Every book is different. My first book, The Reluctant Detective, was written on a hope and a prayer and sent out to a publisher cold turkey. I was lucky, very, very lucky that the first editor I sent it out to liked it enough to sign it up. And there I was, with a book contract in hand and a book I’d dashed out in a frenetic writing spree out in print and paper. What did it feel like? Surreal. Seeing one’s name on the cover of a book is something that gobsmacks you the first time you see it. There is that moment of disbelief, then the sudden swelling of immense pride. That’s mine, I have created it. Go forth into the world and find your place on the bookshelves of the world, you tell your creation, daubing the corner of your tearful eye with a handy cotton handkerchief, or a tissue if that happens to be handier.
My second book, like the second child, was written in the aftermath of the first, so it emerged, tremulous and uncertain, eager to be a follower of its older sibling, and looking for all sorts of reaffirmations about what it meant to be a book out in the market, and to take tips on survival and struggling to get to the top ten spot in the Amazon bestseller list from the one that went that route before it did.
My third though, ah, this is a baby all on its own. It is written differently to begin with. It is a romance. There is humour yes, in bits and pieces, but not as all pervasive as it was with my other two books. It is set in a different location. My previous two books were set in Mumbai, this is set on a Mediterranean cruise. This is a different book, one that I had great fun writing. It makes me as nervous or as excited as the first one I wrote, because it is so different from my previous two. And perhaps, that’s what makes it precious.
Read the rest of the article here
August 19, 2015
On Lavanya Donthamshetty’s blog…
August 19, 2015
Kiran Manral is one of the most prolific Indian bloggers you will ever see. She runs many blogs and will diligently update each of them like clockwork. It is this dedication to her craft and her work ethic that first attracted me to her body of work. She became a published author when she turned 40 and has just kept going. She’s now on the road – virtual one, I mean – with her third book, All Aboard!, and here’s the author, Lady K herself, talking about her favourite creations.
In every book I write, the focus is definitely on the protagonist and her story. There’s Kay Mehra of The Reluctant Detective and her mad search for some purpose to her life. There’s Rayna De of Once Upon A Crush, terrified she’s going to miss the bus both professionally and personally and end up a complete failure in life. And now, in this, my latest book All Aboard, there’s Rhea Khanna who is trying to heal a broken heart.
But apart from the protagonist, there is always, always a character who is perhaps dearer to me than the protagonist is, and who is a story by herself, with a story which is perhaps more of a fist shake at the universe than the protagonist. In The Reluctant Detective it was Runa, the detective with the khukri in her backpack and her earth shaking bike. In Once Upon A Crush, it was Pixie, trying half heartedly to get away from an arranged marriage, knowing in her heart of hearts that she would cave in, go back and settle down as her parents decreed. In All Aboard, it is Rina Maasi, a feisty character in her own right.
Rina Maasi is a retired boarding school headmistress, deciding to live up the remainder of her years post retirement doing all that she wanted to do, including travel the world. She’s had an unconventional life, in fact, she’s a story that needs writing. She divorces the man her parents chose for her, with no reason offered other than a cryptic statement that he bored her. She moves out of the parental home, gets a job as a teacher in a boarding school and lavishes all her attention on her nieces and nephews. She’s fun, a little loud, a little eccentric and she’s the kind of aunt everyone has one of in their families or the aunt everyone should definitely have in their families.
As for Rina Maasi’s role in the book, well you would just have to read it to find out.
Read the original here
August 18, 2015
All Aboard by Kiran Manral: A sneak peek
Originally posted on
‘Are you sure you want to do this? Your…’ she paused delicately, ‘…friend and Naina might not like the idea of being left behind on the excursion bus while you come away with me on this…’ She waved her hand weakly to indicate the line of taxis waiting outside the rental agency for tourists to hire them.
‘It doesn’t matter, I’m doing what I want to do. I’m not keen on trudging through a tour of perfumeries with forty other people I have no interest in being with when I could be seeing a town I want to visit instead and spend time with you.’
Rhea gasped but he gave her no time to continue the conversation that gave her heart a flutter, and moved ahead to find them a taxi from amongst the line-up. She stood where she was, watching him have what seemed like a long and complicated…
View original 841 more words
August 17, 2015
#GuestPost by Author Kiran Manral: Why I Write Chick-Lit
#GuestPost by Author Kiran Manral: Why I Write Chick-Lit.
Once upon a time, there was a young girl, who read a lot of books. In fact, she read so much that her mother often worried that she was living too much in the rarified stratosphere of the books in her head, that she called her down, very insistently back to earth and the woes of air pollution and acid rain and all the much we have to deal with down here on the surface. This was rather disheartening for the young girl, the world up beyond the clouds, conjured up by the books she read was much better, there was always joy happening there, laughs and a guaranteed happy ending.
The young girl grew up and in the process, read more books than should be considered legal. She read the funny ones and the sad ones, the ones with the happy endings and the ones with the sad endings, and realised that she preferred the happy endings most of the times. She discovered that wonderful genre called chick-lit which was about girls like her, a little too sassy for their own good, looking for happiness, looking for love, looking for validation, surrounded by friends, trying to find themselves in the maze of chaos that career and personal lives were.
So when she did start writing her own stories, she wrote about these girls, girls she knew, or girls made up of bits and pieces from many girls she knew.
That, in a nutshell, is the story of why I write chick-lit. There isn’t much of a story to it, except for the fact that I love reading it, I love a happy ending, and I believe in comfort reading, reading that you turn to in order to soothe your soul, much as you would turn to a full tub of double chocolate ice cream on a blue day.
Do I get frazzled by the label, do I find it derisive, do I wonder why men who write about romance don’t get slapped boxed into a similar genre? I used to, earlier, but now I tend to laugh it off. It doesn’t really matter, does it, the labels, the serious and the quotidian.
At the end of the day, all stories serve their purpose, and to this end, chick lit does to. They’re fun, peppy reads that make the reader smile. They help them to live out unfulfilled romantic urges vicariously, they take them to places and situations they would love to experience. And after all, isn’t that what all writing must do, let the reader escape to an alternate life, in their pages?
Interview on Pushpee’s World
Kiran Manral Speaks:
What was your inspiration behind writing the third book?
It began with an anecdote I heard about a friend of a friend who decided to go on her honeymoon after her fiancé ditched her at the last minute, albeit taking a friend along for the company. I thought that was a most fun way to deal with the heartbreak, it was the mark of a survivor, and somewhere the seed was sown for this story. Of course, I did change it around a fair bit, but that was the genesis of this book.
Share some resources that help you when you are writing
Spell check on the computer. Seriously. And of course, Google baba.
Your favorite character
From this book? Rina Maasi. She’s this eccentric retired school mistress who is the protagonist Rhea Khanna’s aunt and she’s a livewire.
A paragraph of your work before and after editing
Ah, the work goes through so many infinite versions, from first drafts through four edits plus a rewrite to simplify my tendency to run on and on with sentences as long as paragraphs, that this is quite difficult, because one really doesn’t have first drafts anymore.
Your favorite (not too famous Indian) author, why?
I must say Annie Zaidi. Not because she’s a dear friend but because what she writes goes straight to the heart, always.
You prefer: twitter or facebook..why?
Both have their place, but twitter definitely helps you to reach to a lot more people a lot quicker, facebook is limited to friends and family and a few acquaintances in my case.
Three books you would read in isolated places
Ah, I prefer to read in a crowd so I am not compelled to make conversation. But books I can read over and over again, Jerome K Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, anything by P G Wodehouse or Dave Barry or Erma Bombeck, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
You prefer: Ebook or hard cover, why?
Can I be contrarian and say I prefer paperback. Ebook, I have still to acquire an electronic reading device. If Kindle decides to convert me, I’m open to the trying of it. Hard back is too much of a pain to carry around and I have a book in my handbag wherever I go. Ergo paperback.
Favorite place to hang out: beach, cafeteria or library
None of the above. My favourite place to hang out is at home.
What book you reading now? How do you choose it?
Am between books right now. Therefore am busy re-reading Bridget Jones, Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding. It is great fun to read Bridget Jones, she’s someone who could have been me.
Thank you Kiran for sharing your thoughts, wishing you success on your new book. Shine on…….
The Pre-order links for the book here:
Read the original here
Interview on Literature Studio
Posted by Vibha Malhotra on Aug 17, 2015 in General Reading, Inspiration and Opinions, Interviews | 4 comments
It is always lovely talking to Kiran Manral, Author of All Aboard, The Reluctant Detective, and Once Upon a Crush. And when she recently disclosed that THREE NEW BOOKS written by her are coming out this year, within a span of a few months, we had to know the secret behind her amazing efficacy. And with someone as warm and welcoming as Kiran, we thought it would be better to ask her directly, and also take this opportunity to extract some bonus pieces of wisdom.
So here goes:
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Vibha: Three of your books are coming out this year. Wait! Are you kidding me? How on earth did you make it happen?
Kiran: Trust me this just happened, all three books were written at different points in my life, in three different genres and submitted at different times to three different publishers. If anything, this is complete proof of how disorganised I am and how I can’t make things happen because any sensible person would have planned it out, I just tend to go with the flow and let life happen as it does.
Vibha: Serious question. So far, you’ve written mainstream fiction, chicklits. How do you classify your upcoming books? Can you share a bit about them, if possible?
Kiran: Book 3, All Aboard which is being released end of August from Penguin Random House is pure romance, chicklit, commercial fiction—a light, fun read. It is the story of a girl, who has been ditched practically at the altar by her fiancé and goes on a Mediterranean cruise with her aunt to cheer herself up and finds herself terribly attracted to someone on the cruise who seems to tick all the boxes that she does not need. You know, we’ve all been in that situation sometimes where we’re attracted to someone who seems so wrong for us but just can’t resist ourselves, that’s what this book is all about. Book 4, Karmickids being published by Hay House, is a book based on my parenting blog, which was also called Karmickids, basically is an anecdotal, first-person account of bringing up my son from age 0 to age 10. It is funny, poignant, and something I think every parent will identify with. My Book 5, The Face At The Window, being published by Amaryllis, is something completely different from what I’ve had published earlier, it is a more serious book, the story of an old Anglo-Indian retired school teacher living alone in the foothills of the Himalayas, waiting for her life to end. They’re all rather different from each other, and each was absolutely delightful to write.
Vibha: Some authors write in spurts, some every day. What works for you?
Kiran: I believe in the discipline of writing something every single day. Even if it isn’t fiction, even if it isn’t creative writing, even replying to a questionnaire like I’m doing now, or putting up a blog post, or writing out my column. Writing is like a muscle you need to keep exercising, until it becomes almost like an involuntary muscle, where you can put your fingers to the keyboard and feel the words flow out without having to stop and ponder and retrace your steps and lose your thread of thought. If you write and if you read every single day, you have done all you must do to help yourself as a writer. I think of it as a daily riyaaz—one doesn’t expect a sportsperson to perform well if there hasn’t been rigorous practice, nor a musician, nor any person from any other skilled profession. Why should writing be any different? You need to practice the craft, to put nose to the grindstone, to keep writing even if that writing is nothing that will see the light of day in print and ink. Folks see the fact that I have books out now, but the fact is that I have been a writer from the time I was in my teens, and I have been writing professionally as a features writer for over twenty years now. I’ve put in my hours of practice. I shall continue to put in my hours of practice.
Vibha: As a writer, what is the best thing that has ever happened to you? “Getting published” doesn’t count as a valid answer here. 
Kiran: As a writer the best thing that ever happened to me is my mother and my husband. Getting published comes a distant third. My mother always believed that one day I would be a published writer and never gave up on that belief even though I drifted into nothing –gave up full time work after I had my baby and meandered into freelance writing of articles and content which was great because it let me work my hours but wasn’t really very fulfilling creatively. She would keep reminding me occasionally that I needed to write my book, and finally, to make her, and two dear friends who had also been similarly pushing me to write, I sat down and wrote my first book in a complete incredible writing spurt and I was lucky that Westland liked it enough to publish it. It gave me the belief I needed in myself and my abilities.
I also say that my husband is the best thing that ever happened to me for the simple reason that he stays completely out of my work space. There is no pressure, no expectations, no censure, no criticism, nothing from him. He gives me all the space I need to work to my heart’s content, with all the support I could need. And that makes things so much easier for me when I know that he’s around, like a rock, always.
Vibha: What advice do you have for writers who write well but cannot market themselves?
Kiran: I really don’t know, to be honest. Everything does rather seem hinged on marketing oneself well, and I’m barely keeping my nose above the water myself in this era. All I can say is take pride in your work, put it out there for as many people to know about it, don’t hesitate to talk about it, and that’s half your task done. Reach out to your potential readers in every which way you can. Social media has made things rather easy to reach out to groups of people via reading groups and book clubs on Facebook, you can set up a Facebook Author Page to keep people posted about the updates on your book and the events you plan around your book. You could use twitter as a medium to reach out to readers. But most of all I would say, don’t really think of it as ‘marketing’. Think of it as reaching out to your readers—whether it means going to bookstores and reading from your book, going to schools and colleges and chatting with students about what it means to be a writer or whatever your target readership is. Know who will read your book and reach out to tell them about your book.
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We love Kiran’s candor and her practical advice, and we hope that you will also find her suggestions helpful.
Read the rest of the article here.
All Aboard on pre-orders here: Amazon.in, Flipkart, and Amazon.com.
