Shuvashree Chowdhury's Blog, page 29

On writing Literary Fiction and Poetry

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Literary fiction writing: I’ve always been someone who looks deep into something or someone. That’s because I realised from a young age that there’s always more than what meets the eye. Also I don’t like to interview people or write about what they tell me consciously. I love reading people’s silences, and interpreting what they don’t, or can’t tell.

This is why, I choose to be a literary fiction writer. And not merely to satisfy a need to prove my intellectual capacity as you might imagine.

For The City Of Chennai.

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I’ve lived in Chennai for over eleven years now. And have always been given to understand, even before I moved here – through my regular work trips, that the city though economically progressive, tends to cling to conservative traditions.

My bold view of the city and its people as sketched in my new novel Entwined Lives, is exactly the way I saw it, only after I got married to a journalist and moved here. Yet I was apprehensive about having chosen Chennai as the novel’s location, to tell such a woman empowered tale. This was especially so after Chennai based authors, that I met at a book fest, who had no clue I had written 3 chapters of a novel based in Chennai, cribbed about how difficult it is to sell Chennai in literature. They even depicted the same by showing me that their books on Chennai had not been stocked at the fest even though they were panelists along with husband, at a discussion on Indian cities. I was obviously deeply shaken at this learning and contemplated reworking my new novel and shifting it’s location to another city. But then, that wouldn’t be me, would it!

A Wedding In The Sky.

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Dusk approaches

with an orange veil

of Bridal Illusion tulle,

sheilding ardent Day

till she’s wedded,

from the dark

amorous

eyes of Night.

PS: I’m at this wedding now, from my rooftop in Chennai, even as I post this.

‘Entwined Lives’: My 2nd Novel.

This below along with my photograph is the provisional back cover/blurb of my new novel, titled Entwined lives to be released by late August, hopefully in time for my birthday.

Entwined Lives is the story of two attractive, independent women, Sujata Anand and Aparna Nikhil, and of their lives in fateful conjunction with each other, from loving the same man Anand, a Chennai based media baron. Sujata is married to him after college, whereas Aparna returns from Mumbai to work for Anand, from a marriage gone horribly wrong due to her husband Nikhil’s alcoholism that eventually turns fatal. She briskly works her way up, to the position of editor of the newly launched Friday supplement – a lifestyle magazine. But has Aparna earned her promotion, or is it a privileged benediction of her boyfriend? Sujata is miffed and nurturing a romantic liaison with the much older Shekhar, sets up an event management followed by an executive search firm.

The novel charts the loves and ambitious lives of Sujata, Aparna, Anand, and Shekhar, through a trajectory of societal issues – male and increasing female alcoholism, unrecognized emotional and physical abuse, extramarital romance and sex as fallout, sexual harassment, not the least perilous – social media hoaxes and internet financial crimes. It is a kaleidoscope of middle class life in metropolitan India.

 

I look forward to your comments and feedback on it the photo and the storyline to finalize them…even as the book is at the editing stage.

Though the plot is very simple, modern and on your face, the literary thoughts vividly conveyed in it are in the line of seriousness as my first novel and all that you’re used to reading from me.

My collection of 26 short stories titled ‘Existences’ and another of over 80 poems titled ‘Fragments’ will follow the novel in a few more months.

A Way Back Into Love

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I trusted you with all my heart

After you gave me hope we would last,

That this wasn’t just another fling

You’d expect me to brazenly indulge.

 

After my heart was worn to shreds

I risked allowing you to sew it up:

With the light I saw in your eyes –

A silent passion you emanated on touch.

 

You lent wings to my career dreams,

Assurance – with persistence I would excel,

For I had the talent and potential

 To become anyone I truly wanted.

 

How could you then break my trust?

Allow the crystal ball of my heart to collapse:

Crushing with it all our beautiful moments,

Into a Kaleidoscope of painful events!

 

I know it’s never easy for you to find words

To reflect the melody of your heart,

For you’re afraid of vulnerability:

But in lieu of fear, don’t write me off!

 

Find gold lacquer – a way back into love,

For you, callously broke the porcelain vase

That held the blossoms of our hopes:

Kintsugi can beautify it again, reflecting cracks!

 

PS:  Meaning of Kintsugi – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

This poem is inspired by the 2007 – Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore (two of my all-time favourite actors) movie ‘Music And Lyrics’ that I just watched again on television, a couple of hours back…just scribbled this initial draft while watching the movie…

The trailer is in the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C6sSZlVKZE

The title is inspired by this song from the movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Ztq2hu5Kg&feature=share

 

 

 

 

 

The Twilight Sky

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White clouds float over me in the dusk sky

as if patches of cotton-wool embalming my tired mind,

above a solo bird reaching majestically for the sky,

even as a band of coconut and mango trees rustle

in the heady sea breeze – to cheer its climb,

urging me to converse with the half moon,

like the lone star romancing it tenderly –

under the blanket of the cozy grey sky.

PS: Wrote this impromptu, while as I’m still watching the romance of nature.

Writing Versus Acting, and Insanity

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Writing versus Acting, and Insanity

Living Free

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Ever since a child, I was bound by people’s expectations of me, based on their deductions of my capability, be it my parents, teachers or colleagues: I was too quiet and timid to be a leader – my teachers thought, my parents considered I was too reserved and shy to go out and work, while my senior colleagues did not believe I could stand up and fight resistance as required in senior roles, perhaps due to the way I looked or due to lacking the perceptible aggression in my voice and body language. But I always waited for an opportunity to find the gates to these perceptions open, to run out and prove my worth, then return to prove them all wrong, and all this several times in life.

When I was about to start on my first novel, I had plenty of detractors – one of whom a close friend who actually said to me “you’re climbing the wrong tree.” But his words challenged me to cut him out as my friend, just as I did other negative influences, to complete what I set my mind to do.

So yes, I’ve often had to even fight with myself for the strength and conviction to break out of the gates of portrayals caging me…to be able to do what I wanted, but it’s all been well worth the run around in life, so that little can hold me back now.

It’s only when you are constantly bound in shackles by the perceptions the world has of you that you develop the strength, the ability to break free. So if you’ve wondered whether I was born free, grew up free…hell no, I was more leashed than most of you have been, but sure am living free now.  

Letting Go

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Before me the river Ganges peacefully flows,

Its ripples rise and fall frothing over white cobbled stone;

But over boulders having no visible force – it caressingly glides,

Yet it gently flushes my heart of its obstinate toxic woes.

I sit for hours engrossed in the waters rhythmic flow

As if it is singing classical raga to the strums of the sitar:

With my back basking in the suns warm glow

I’m anointed by the cool breeze swathing the holy green flow.

As my soul seems liberated from debilitating worldly ties

I feel one with my creator, need no identity – causing fear of rejection:

My sense of self consolidated, free of a lifelong urge for projection –

A palm-full of its own water I offer Ma Ganga thrice in obeisance.

Yet unable to leave I now slowly walk close to the water’s edge

For a deep attachment I’ve developed for this holy current;

That’s a crutch to my soul, in filling the void in my heart I’ve created:

I still need a while to be free from craving worldly affections!  

PS: I took the pictures myself…the ones I’m in also I composed.

Rumi Love Meditation: How I fell in love with Sufism

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I fell in love with Sufism, at an ashram on the banks of the most sacred Hindu river – Ganges, at Rishikesh. As bizarre as it may seem, it is precisely what happened to me, over the span of just seven to ten days. This experience was almost like a calling from God and a test of my true spirituality – the ability to truly ‘Let Go’ of what I believe in or identify with as a Hindu by birth, even though I have grown up with Catholic values at a boarding school and then Protestant ones at a residential high school.

It’s like in the past fortnight, at the International Yoga festival I was attending in Rishikesh with over 1000 participants from 101 countries, I was mentally and spiritually sailing the universe focused on the universal values of love and service, deserting the illusions of ego to reach God, while anchored to my core inner self.  I have considered myself to be spiritually inclined – the realization dawning on me over the last ten years – simultaneous to my new journey as a fiction writer – novelist and poet. Thus I came to Rishikesh, with a mind and heart whose doors and windows were flung wide open, in the quest for greater spiritual awakening – not remotely religious.

The man who led my mind and heart literally by hand, to fall in love with Sufism – walked into the garden-lawn of the ashram, where on the evening before its commencement I had just arrived for my registration for the week long International Yoga Festival that I had reserved a seat for online. My first sight of Mert Guler, was him striding just behind me as I incidentally turned back – purposefully and with much élan, as if the moon had just floated into my view over the clouds, even as I was entering my room from the open balcony I had been standing in. I did not know his name, and would not for a couple of days yet, but one glance at his immense confidence, positive energy, and the aura he exuded – flashing the widest and most radiant smile I have ever seen, and I knew he was someone who had a very assured place under the sun. On his tall, lean, lithe frame, under a halo like crown of longish finely curled hair over his handsome face, Mert wore a white muslin kurta and pants. Close at his sandaled heels, strode in about eight strikingly pretty women. The sun was just setting over us nearing 6 pm then, but with Mert’s spontaneous Namaste to everyone around with a slight bow – the whole garden bordered by a series of tables manned by several men and women who knew him, lit up. The numerous desks were well manned to expedite the registration process. Mert Guler exuded so much positive energy that I kept looking at him in awe – wondering who he might be that he had a dedicated team of followers who walked literally at his feet and ensured their smiles matched his in exuberance.

Later that evening, on the way to dinner starting at 7.30 pm, the group breezed past me with Mert’s smile floating ahead of him – like the moon lighting the path of his followers. This time, I drew my roommate’s (we’d just about met) attention to the group and she agreed that there was a striking positive energy and aura about the man and his band of female followers who walked with similar speed, energy, the expanse of their smiles – to match his steps.

The next day after dinner, wherein we saw Mert again, on describing him to our third roommate, a Hindu – who came to the festival repeatedly, we learned his name and that he was a reputed yoga instructor from Turkey, Istanbul. She finished with – “He just makes you laugh all through his classes and does hoo-ha, hoo-ha only, for an hour or more…there’s no way I’m going to his class again…he’s so funny.”

Her statement, piqued my curiosity and led the 3 of us into further discussion on Mert wherein the other woman – a Christian, who had agreed that he had a positive and dynamic aura said – “His eyes look like he’s in a trance always, don’t they? He must surely be on some addictive substance to be high always, as it’s not uncommon among yogis to take drugs and the like. Moreover it looks like all his 8 women followers are in love with him and perhaps in a relationship with him too. Don’t they all look like they are?

“But how does it matter – if it makes them all happy?” I said and we both agreed. Then I added -“Moreover this angle makes it an interesting story for me to write about. There must be a reason why I’m bumping into this group several times ever since I arrived at about the time they did. I’m observing Mert like he was my latest character…And am very curious about what makes him tick. But much more, how all these women in a relationship with one man are so close-knit and always together, but then that’s how it is with the practice of having several wives.”

 “No, no, the women are all in his team and Mert has a girlfriend among that group. She had come last year too.” The repeat participant intervened convincingly, changing my perspective again.

“Did you notice them around the fruit-seller at the aarti-ghat this evening, there was one feeding him coconut water from her hand.” The other woman added. “She must be the girl friend.”

“Yes I noticed and I’m really more curious and looking forward to watch them at the next class.” I concluded this discussion, with a firm resolve to attend Mert’s class to figure out the dynamics myself.

At the class – that was full of bonhomie, positive energy, love and warmth for each of us participants – I found no chemistry/vibes amongst this group to suggest they had anything more than a common love for life, humanity, and love between them – and not a relationship of the earthy kind. After the ice breaker rounds and of immense laughter – the Sufi style of meditation that we learned of whirling around with hands skywards and head tilted, as Rumi the poet did in a marketplace for 26 hours, puts one in a relaxed, then happy, and trance like state. At the end of the class it was much more exhilarating than dancing and drinking for hours at a discotheque might be or from drugs. The motion of your body blanks your mind completely and you are in that state of meditative trance with no mental effort to tie your mind that’s like a monkey that tends to hop around and about the world even as you try to force it into a meditative state in the Buddhist style by concentrating on your breathing.

After the first class I felt compelled to return to the second one on the next day. The first was   called ‘Sufi Meditation’, and the second – ‘Rumi, Love, Meditation.’ In my view as I write this now, Sufi meditation is the most effective form of meditation there is for beginners.

At the festival, where we had yoga classes from 4 am to 9.30 pm interspersed with spiritual discourses by great spiritual leaders like Mooji – most of which I attended to enhance my thoughts as a poet and literary fiction writer, I learned and practices various forms of meditation. Yet it was Sufi meditation that I’m all set to be practicing henceforth – even ordering a skirt to make my whirling more effective, this after recording a number of Sufi music albums from the shop outside the ashram.

My newfound love for all things Sufi, was substantially enhanced after I watched and joined Mert playing Holi with his team with as much happiness and love, as while in Sufi meditation class. Mert applied purple and pink colour on everyone in his vision when we played Holi and this included me too. He and his team love life in all its facets and teach you to love it too.  At both his classes, the other enthusiastic participant as myself was a 28 year ‘Hare Krishna’ follower from Columbia, who is a civil engineer with a master’s degree who quit a safe and successful corporate life for a life of spirituality at 25 years.  My roommates and I think, we might see this young Hari Krishna follower who we became rather fond of and referred to as Krishna or Radhe-Radhe, join Mert’s group or take up Sufism by the next festival. He was as inspired by Mert – as I learned from my conversations with him as by ‘Hare Krishna.’

Let me end by admitting to you humbly, that for all my spiritual bent of mind, my two roommates who did not attend any of Mert’s classes, have throughout the week been teasing me of being in love with Mert Guler and not only his teachings. Well, and so be it