Kiran Manral's Blog, page 53
January 14, 2015
Just found this very kind review of TRD. Thanks Anil.
“….Thank God, Kiran Manral���s not another banker or ad copywriter who has kicked her job, not another IIT/IIM-advantaged dropout genius who has torn up his degree, not just another chick with a viewer-friendly mug and stilettos to match. More than Chick Lit, this one comes with a refreshing take (though the pheeka pinkish-green cover does unabashedly submit to a dominating stiletto illustration with a little blood thrown in under it). You just got Blue: The Tranquebar Book of Erotic Stories from Sri Lanka as Sex Lit. You can call the stuff Kiran Manral struts here as pioneering Hen Lit (with due apologies to the lovely chick of an author).”
https://wordsfont.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/hooked-on-books-and-now-slickass-hen-lit/
My Parent Quotient post for last week: How would you parent differently?
The other day I read an article which asked, quite insightfully I thought, that if you had to begin parenting your child from scratch again, what you would do differently. It made me think, really hard back to the early days of the offspring being a mewling parcel of flesh, intent on his two hourly feed and a clean dry diaper to sleep off his transition out of the amniotic sac into the unrarefied air of the polluted city we lived in.
I was a panicky new mom. I panicked about every little thing. Whether I was producing enough milk, whether I was holding him properly, whether I was swaddling him well enough, whether I was keeping the room at an appropriate temperature for him. As he grew, the concerns grew. Was I doing enough for his physical and mental stimulation, was I stimulating him enough, was his diet adequate and well balanced. Would I scar him for life by inadvertently doing something I shouldn���t be doing in his presence, like for instance, completely losing my temper. I have one of those tempers that surfaces once in a few years but rattles the window panes when it does.
It was tough on one being a mother in an age that produced so much literature on how to parent. All it did was make one feel wholly inadequate and incapable, and plague one with self-doubt and assume that every mother out there was doing an infinitely better job than you were. That is always a heavy cross to bear, so I���ve decided to put that cross down. One parents, I���ve realised, the best one can under one���s circumstances, each and every one of us.
What would I do differently if I had to start from scratch as a parent, I asked myself.
Read the rest of the article here
My Parent Quotient Post for the week: My Parenting resolutions for 2015
It was a good year to sit the offspring down and talk to him, very seriously, about the concept of New Year resolutions. Ah, you might say, from your cynical adult vantage point that New Year Resolutions are meant to be broken and children need not be indoctrinated with the need to make resolutions and bear the guilt of breaking them for the entire year, not just yet. But then, I am nothing if not a mom on a mission and we spoke, albeit briefly about the New Year and what resolutions might come.
I told him that my resolutions in the New Year included getting out more and meeting people, starting some sort of fitness routine and eating healthier. I also mentioned my resolutions would include spending more time offline than online, and cutting down on time spent on social media to the barest minimum. He listened with great interest. He promised to share his list with me soon. On the other hand, I also made a set of parenting resolutions that I must follow.
Read the rest here
January 11, 2015
An interview with Preeti Shenoy, and a signed copy giveaway
Preeti Shenoy is a dear friend, a wonderful, warm person, and also one of India’s best selling authors. Her books have all been on the Nielsen top selling books list, and her latest It Happens For A Reason is on the Crossword Bestseller list and also on Nielsen in the top 10. Here’s a quick interview with Preeti on her writing, her influences and her readers.
How did the plot come to you?
Honestly I don’t know! At any given point of time I have a hundred plots running through my head. I can make up a story about anyone I see. (In fact I am doing that many a time. Thank God, they cannot read what goes on in my head!). But I can tell you that Vee is a lot like me! She loves dogs, fitness and her relationship with her son is exactly like what I have with my own son.
What is your writing process like?
My writing process depends on what I am writing. If it is a blog post that I am writing, it is mostly spontaneous. Something strikes me and I badly want to share it. I open blogger and start typing it out on the blog itself. I just read it once and then hit publish. After that I go back and recheck typos and grammatical errors that I might have made, in a hurry to get my thoughts out!
If it is a newspaper column, then I draft it in word and it would be revided at least 8 times before I send it off. Touchwood, I have never missed a deadline. (I write a regular column called Sex and the City in the Financial Chronicle)
If it is a novel I am working on, then it is planned in detail. I usually have whole chapters outlined in advance. I would know exactly what the end would be and what other things would happen in the book. Once I start writing, it flows freely.
I can work only in complete solitude. I can���t work when people are around.
How important is discipline for a writer?
The importance of discipline depends on what the writer wants to achieve. Discipline is essential in any field if one wants to excel. A champion swimmer is at the pool at 5.00 am, come rain or sunshine. An athlete does the same. So does a dedicated yogi. A gardener has to tend to his plants every single day if he want the garden to bloom. Why should it be any different for a writer?
Who is the reader you write for? Describe him or her for us?
Anyone who believes in friendship, love and who likes to read contemporary fiction. All my books are set in places I have lived in. Many readers tell me that they know someone exactly like the characters in my books. Sometimes they see themselves in my characters.
What has been the most interesting book you’ve read recently? And why?
I just finished ���Nadia knows best��� by Jill Mansell���a very light read,a romance. I wouldn���t say it was ���most interesting��� but it took me back to my UK days and I could so relate to everything she was describing. The most ���interesting��� would be Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman as he effortlessly blends reality and fantasy and kept me hooked right from the beginning to the end.
Synopsis: When Vipasha, Vee to friends, eighteen and single, makes the decision to have her baby, she does morethan give up her promising modelling career. Sheends up cutting ties with her family and with Ankush, the man she thought she was in love with. Fast-forward sixteen years and she now has two unusual careers: she runs a dog-boarding facility and is a gym instructor. Aryan thinks she is the coolest mom in the world and hopes she will one day find her Prince Charming – exactly what her best friend Suchi has in mind for her. But Vee secretly has a thingfor Saurabh, the quirky vet.Then, out of the blue, Ankush comes back into their life. But can a decision that was taken at eighteen – more in the throes of lust than love – be the basis of a lifelongrelationship? Is there a future for Ankush and Vee? Vee, Aryan and Ankush are in for the ride of their lives. No seat belts, full speed and a very bumpy road ahead.
Two lucky readers get a chance to win a signed copy of It Happens For A Reason. Ask Preeti any question in the comments section here, she will choose two of the most interesting questions to answer and they win signed copies. India addresses only, and Preeti’s decision is final and binding.
The giveaway ends two weeks from today on January 26, so send in your comments/questions before that.
January 9, 2015
When the brat is away. My Yowoto post for this week.
The brat is away for a week visiting his cousins. When this plan was first conceptualised, hedonistic visions of debauchery and sleeping in until the rooster was burping his breakfast flooded my brain.
���Reclaim your life,��� flashed in 70mm neon letters in the brain. I pulled out my scheduler and made copious notes, which included visiting friends, going to the mall unhindered by a pair of hands pulling at my tshirt and whining about visiting Hamleys, eating the deep-fried junk at the food court and suchlike, and being able to sit down and read a book from cover to cover without the experience being punctuated by frantic shrieks of ���Mamma…mamma…��� demanding my immediate presence to resolve a crisis or be damned forever.
Go, I told him, with my blessings. He packed his bag, with a little help from me, and trotted off with a hug and a cheery wave and a face flushed with the excitement of being away from the parental control zone for an entire week, undoubtedly making mental lists of the rules he was going to break in the absence of my yells to keep him on the straight and narrow. ���Don���t forget to brush your teeth and wash behind your ears,��� I yelled at his retreating back, knowing of course, that it had bounced off him like the proverbial water off a duck���s back, and let���s not get into the oily substance coated feathers right now. I had nothing to worry about. He would be with doting aunts who would take better care of him than I would and would pamper him so silly that I would need to read him the riot act when he returned. He would be indulged in by his older cousins. I was redundant.
I returned home to unaccustomed silence. It echoed through the home like an evil wind, if an evil wind could be silent. I could now grab all the sleep I wanted, I told myself, read all the books I wanted, watch all the television I wanted, just put my feet up and relax and not be a ticking time bomb waiting to explode if things did not get done in time or if dawdling over the morning milk so that the school bell would have been rung twice over by the time we entered the gates and a stern red line would be marked to indicate tardiness. I could enter the kitchen without being propelled there by the incessant whine on a loop, ���I���m hungry.��� I could have a long leisurely bath without panicking about the suspicious noises which suggested that a wall had been dismantled by a curious pint-size and the entire building was in danger of collapsing.
Read the rest of the piece here
January 8, 2015
Cheers to the teachers: My Parle G Parent Quotient post for this week
The first day I realised I was being replaced in the affections of my child by another woman was when the offspring was learning the alphabet in pre-primary school. He returned from school at the usual time, with the usual vim and vigour of a day well spent creating a complete nuisance of himself in a classroom situation, and sat himself down in front of his alphabet chart with the air of a tenor about to burst into full-throated song.
���Ay Bee Chee Deee���.Etch���.���
I winced. It was a nail across the blackboard of my mind.
���No no no no, child,��� I said, quick to correct him, ���It isn���t Etch. You say Aitch.���
He looked at me, his face set in as much surly defiance as he could manage for one so adorable at most times.
���No no no, my teacher tole me say Etch.���
And of course, nothing hapless mammas could say could ever hope to defy the writ in stone of what a teacher would say it was. This was my first time and I thought, mistakenly, that perhaps I could change it. I tried. By the forces above, I tried. I even made him listen to sound lessons on pronunciation, but like Bond, he remained shaken but not stirred.
���Teacher sez Etch.���
And so it has remained Etch for the rest of his life, even though I quail when I hear him spell out a word and stop myself from the automated responding with ���Aitch.���
I have since come to realise that what is a hapless mother in the face of adoration for the class teacher who is in all respects perfect, except perhaps for the one he had a couple of years ago. I am sure every mother realises that there is no stronger authority on the planet than the word of a class teacher who is adored, never mind the Nine Months In My Stomach And Then They Cut Me Up To Get You Out emotional blackmail that we perfect to get them to do our bidding.
Read the rest here
December 30, 2014
Young Ones & Their Fashion! My Yowoto post for this week
The miniscule Mumbai winter is slap dash upon us and this in turn means that the early morning pre-crack of dawn autorickshaw ride to the pool is brain freeze levels of chill. Ergo, the other day, I lumbered myself onto a footstool, determinedly ignoring its creaks of violent protest and pulled down the winter wear from the suitcase where it all had been mothballed for posterity.
First out of their plastic Ziploc bags were the sweaters and cardigans, wool, wonderful hand knitted ones, which unfortunately had been shrunk whilst in storage by evil elves working in insidious ways. After trying around a couple, which resulted in a right rolling-on-the-floor tantrum, which is kind of unseemly given that he has outgrown both—the sweaters and the rolling on the floor tantrum stage, the zippered hoodies were removed from the mothballs and presented to him to try on and check if they were still wearable or needed to be given away.
Let me add a disclaimer here. Until last year, The Brat was an angel child, with no pretensions to brand awareness or loyalty, and happily pulled on whatever was first at hand in the mess that masquerades as his cupboard, or whatever was handed to him with zero fuss by the responsible adult in charge. This year, I realise, with a heart that has now sunk like the proverbial stone, right to the toes, things have changed a fair bit.
The next hour went in a loop of “I cannot wear this, it is too short/out of fashion/large/I don’t like the colour/I don’t like the design/I cannot wear this brand…” and more on those lines until I was ready to hand him a shawl and tell him to wrap himself up in it for his trip to the pool, and that it would keep him very warm indeed. And that I could hand him a monkey cap too while I was at it, and it would be ideal a look for his rather simian bearing at most times.
Read the rest of the post here.
