Here is how I wrote my first book

Harper Collins India published it without my consent.

Chapter titles in Lean Days.

In 2010, after reading how Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, and don’t judge me for saying this because I did not read the book — Eat, Pray, Love — only gathered information from her writing process that she took notes and kept a diary along her travels. No shit Sherlock, as they say.

I thought that is the done thing. Why was I not doing it?

I discovered Gilbert through the movie adaptation of her book. The movie was an endurance test. It was Julia Roberts eating pizza and ice-cream in the film that made me google Elizabeth Gilbert — someone I may or may not read in this life.

Fast forward to 2012, when I decided, enough is enough — how long must I go on like this — writing about food and music that came rather easily to me for a website called Buzzintown that was rather easier to write for.

No one read the website. I certainly did not. Ennui had set into my bones like granite — hard, heavy, and making me immobile.

On April 30, 2012, I decided I would not go to work from the next day: May 1 or Labour Day. It was my way of quitting.

So bourgeois!

On May 1, I flew to Madras. I went to my friend Namrata’s house and asked her to give me shelter for a few days. I told her I was going to write a book.

She fed me well. She did not disturb me when I slept in the afternoon (I seek the stillness of night to write). I felt free to write, understanding that I had finally managed to put myself in an idle state to wander.

Aimlessness is the compass we sometimes need in life to find a direction.

I traveled the country for almost a year, observing people and writing notes: Madras. Bangalore. Hyderabad. Delhi. Ajmer. Srinagar. Ladakh. Chandigarh. Manali. Lucknow. Kathmandu. Lumbini. Banaras. Calcutta. Bombay.

When I returned to Bombay, I had to press my restart button for the daily grind.

In January 2013, my friend Mohit gifted me a new laptop to write because mine was stolen in May 2011.

Robbery at house this morning. Laptop stolen. Mobile stolen. Lodged complaint with police, they registered misplacement case. They say it’s my carelessness. My carelessness- laptop was downloading The Diving Bell And The Butterfly. My carelessness- cell was placed on Bolano’s 2666 next to my face. My carelessness-thief did not slit my neck since there was no money. Landlord rues loss of ‘data.’ Pardon me, ‘poems’.

In four months from January 2013, the first draft of Lean Days was ready. I had to look for work right away. I had mortgaged my life insurance policy to take a loan to write. That money was swallowed up by Bombay house rent bills.

The first chapter I cracked in January was Ajmer Days. I had emailed it to my friend Kapil who was attending the Jaipur Literature Festival the same month. He did not read it but took a print out and submitted it to Mita Kapur.

Mita Kapur is the founder and CEO of Siyahi, India’s leading literary consultancy. She also conceptualises and produces literary festivals and events. Her first book, The F-Word, is a food book, memoir and travelogue. She has edited Chillies and Porridge: Writing Food, an anthology of essays on food. As a freelance journalist, she writes regularly for different newspapers and magazines on social and development issues along with travel, food and lifestyle. (sourced from siyahi website)

She read it and called me immediately.

Where is the rest of this? she asked.

I died but you must first understand why I died.

She is like the Anna Wintour of the publishing business. Her word is the word.

I wrote the entire book with the seriousness of a chipmunk eating an acorn. Do not make fun of their devotion to food. It is a religion: writing while chewing on an acorn.

The next year, I went to the Jaipur Literature Festival held in the Diggi Palace, with a full-bound manuscript of Lean Days.

Where should I meet you? I asked Kapur on the phone.

I am standing next to the swimming pool near the Durbar hall, she said.

How will I spot you? I asked.

I am wearing a pink saree. You cannot miss it, she said.

Indeed, there she was, regal, and terse as the pleats in her silk saree.

Send me a soft copy, she said, as I pulled out the manuscript from my tote bag.

She glided away.

Uh, I thought, all this way for a soft copy!

My friend Abhishek had sponsored my stay at the lit-fest. I felt bad for us both.

In March 2014, Kapur emailed me after reading it. She said:

Lean Days is part travelogue, part diary. The nameless protagonist travels across India in search of love and inspiration. Parts of his personality and past are gradually revealed as he travels.

This is the sort of book that blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction. The protagonist is a writer and the book is written as his travel diary — the reader is left wondering where the author ends and his creation begins.

The tone is very interesting. The protagonist is a poet and writer, and his diary reflects his more introspective, analytic side. Even his trysts with various men across the country are written in a gentle, yearning tone. It is not crass at any point. You can empathise with his search for love, as well as his search for himself.

What is also interesting is that it is a travelogue with a dimension that goes beyond travel. It isn’t simply a description of the places he visits and the people he meets. This is a relief as most travel books tend to be just about the journey.

My main problem with the book is its lack of structure. I understand that each of these chapters can be read as individual short stories, and that’s fine. It’s not the link between chapters that I am missing. The chapters themselves seem to be very loosely structured.

There is a tendency to ramble and also to pontificate. At some points, it almost seems like you’re forcing your erudition down the throats of the reader. The non-linear narrative is a little jarring at points, but not unpleasant.

The book could do with a lot of editing on your part. You need to sharpen the narrative, string together the stories better and keep the reader’s attention. This is not a ‘commercial’ book in any sense, so it isn’t pace or plot I’m concerned about. Right now, it reads as a diary. To make it a book, you might have to tighten your prose.

The end is abrupt. It is almost as if the notebook in which these reminiscences were written has run out of pages. Not satisfactory. There is a sense of him coming back to Bombay, but no sense of completion. If the author can rework and send the manuscript back, we’d love to give it one more read.

This was the first review. It was encouraging. I had to find an editor. I had no money in my pocket.

I emailed the manuscript to several other literary agents, asking them to fix the book and take a cut when the publisher picked it. I could not ask Kapur to fix it because I did not have the money, or the balls, to ask her.

I started emailing the commissioning editors in the Indian publishing houses in the hope that they would pick it up. No one showed interest but said it so politely.

In November 2015, when I had given up, a friend asked me to email the manuscript to Somak Ghoshal, the then commissioning editor at Harper Collins India (HCI).

I thought why not, give it a shot. I had never heard of him. I wrote to him and forgot about it.

In February 2016, Somak wrote an email to me. He said:

“I have read Lean Days and have enjoyed it a lot. You have a distinct voice and a finely stylised prose, both of which one doesn’t encounter often. I did like the idea of having city-based chapters and the structure of the narrative, based on the erotic yearnings. I wasn’t quite sure about a couple of early entries, especially the one on Varanasi which left me somewhat unsatisfied. Also, I am not a fan of the predictive future tense, the ‘I will do this and that’ manner of narration that you sometimes assume. These are, anyway, but editorial quibbles and we should be able to talk through these matters in more detail should we decide to publish this book. I am going to present your MS to my team next week and get back to you — hopefully with an offer.

Thank you, once again, for being so patient and showing me your MS.”

By this time I had collected several rejection notes with sweet words. This one showed a ray of hope.

In March 2016, Somak emailed again.

“I am delighted to offer you an advance of Rs XX,000 against standard royalties (10% HB; 7.5% PB; 25% e-books) to publish Lean Days with us. I was struck by your subject, as well as style, both of which are bold and fresh, though in the event of publishing this work, we hope you would be willing to revise and edit it according to our mutual satisfaction. Please let me know what you think. I look forward to hearing from you.”

That money was two months rent in Bombay.

Only house rent.

I accepted the offer immediately. Who wouldn’t? I could have gone somewhere else. But I was sure no one else would publish it. Somak had impeccable taste.

Bad news immediately followed the good one. Somak emailed me in June 2016, saying:

“I am writing to say that this is going to be my last month at HarperCollins India. I’m leaving you with Karthika, our publisher, who will be your point of contact. I’m sorry this comes in abruptly, but you’ll be in excellent hands at HCI.

One of the pleasures of working in publishing has been the encounter with new voices, and yours is one of those that have most excited me. As far as I can see, your MS needs fleshing out in some parts, and pruning a few, so nothing major. I’m leaving it with Karthika so that she can assign an editor to it. It’s going to be a really special book, and I’m confident it will be reviewed favourably when it’s out.”

This email made one thing clear to me. The book was going to be ruined.

Names were being mentioned — Karthika VK, Udayan Mitra, Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri, Ajitha GS — editors who were supposed to look into the book but who kept moving out and handing the responsibility to someone else.

It is said that if one editor commissions the book and does not look into its publication, the book suffers.

March 2017- Nothing happened. One year had gone by since the book was acquired by HCI.

April 2017 — Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri emailed saying he was going to slot the MS

May 2017 — Rukmini Chawla Kumar was going to look at edits, she left

July 2017 — Shantanu emailed saying he sent the MS to someone, didn’t mention who, wrote will send edits by Aug 15

Sept 1 2017 — I emailed, no response

September 13, 2017 — I wrote to Somak who had no business looking into this — he said he spoke to the CEO — Ananth Padmanabhan who said, “Do pass on my apologies to the author. Let me speak with Shantanu and take care of this right away.”

September 14, 2017 — Shantanu emailed me with the edit schedule, release date. That was quick!

At this point I have to mention how one lady called Ankita Poddar was assigned the edits. She had textbook rigour and a flair for unintentional comedy.

Here are a few examples of her edits:

1 — The narrator (of the book) writes about a woman laughing on a terrace across the road at night.

The sentence is: Her lady-like manners don’t seem to exist.

Poddar’s comments: This sentence is really sexist, what even are lady-like manners? Assuming there is such a thing, how do they not exist simply because she’s laughing loudly?

2 — The narrator writes about a dark-skinned carpenter he sees in the dark on the terrace.

The sentence is: His skin is too dark to register.

Poddar’s comments: His skin is too dark to see in the dark? I’m pretty sure that’s an extremely questionable statement.

3 — The narrator writes about the carpenter who jokes about his dark-skinned wife.

The sentence is: Black Humour?

Poddar’s comments: I can’t tell if the carpenter is actually black racially, or if this is racist humour.

Poddar edited the chapter for grammar and she did a fantastic job (although that is not how a narrator’s diary would read), but she weeded out the poetry, and the psychological framework of the narrator.

For instance, the carpenter in Lumbini Days is called lowly, primitive, and compared to a monkey asking for a banana in a towel scene (which she changed to a dog, because am guessing that’s aww cho chweet).

As for the rest of the edits, I took a glance. She had removed all literary references. Be it Manto, T E Lawrence, Sebald, or even the overdone Kafka, who I can still agree upon can go.

She wrote about the chunky one-sentence opening paragraph in Bangalore Days as making no sense at all.

For the Srinagar Days chapter she had written a side note, a part of which said, “Some parts, like about women and the male gaze, in a Muslim society are very sensitive topics. Also, there was a section that clearly separated Kashmiris and Indians. While the author wants me to keep some of the other controversial thoughts of the narrator in the text, I thought it best to delete something that has so clearly divided countries and spilt much blood.”

Who is this ultra-nationalist editor, I thought. She had removed entire pages in the chapter.

She said things like a sentence is promoting eve-teasing, another is propagating rape, that staring into other people’s book at Blossoms (a book store in Bangalore) in against the law (she’s not being funny), and a statement about a guy wearing a vest is classist, and one cannot pee into the Ganga in Banaras, and even that the narrator’s agnostic views should be curtailed.

As a queer man, it’s not okay for the narrator to make insensitive jokes about the LGBT community she said — how can the narrator want to be treated like a woman — its offensive to the community.

Hello clueless!

I had to write to Somak Ghoshal once again to intervene. Poor Somak, he wanted to stay away from HCI as far as possible. He was naturally shocked as I was.

Prema Govindan, commissioning editor at Harper Collins India was then assigned to look into it. She made one perfunctory telephone call to me, trying to run her edits by me on a phone call — imagine!

After 10-15 minutes she had to respond to something else, so she never called back ever again.

I emailed saying I can come to Delhi, sit with the team and quickly wrap this up — at my own expense.

No response.

I emailed if I should get another author’s blurb for the cover of the book. You know like when other writers praise a book without reading it and it appears on the cover to lure potential readers. Words like “mesmerising” or “elegiac” or “a new voice” are stencilled.

No response.

I emailed reference images for the cover art because the ones they optioned were not exactly wow.

No response.

I emailed saying the book could do with some images. (Why was I thinking I am John Berger?)

The response was “too late to commission any artwork”.

On February 13, Prema emailed from her gmail id (not official id) for the final edit.

On February 14, 2018, I had flu (or lack of a valentine date) but I tried editing the first three chapters and emailed it back saying I will need a day to look through the rest.

This is what Prema Govindan WhatsApped me on Feb 14…Valentine’s Day — it broke my already empty heart. (Thank god I archived her chats)

“We are long overdue on the press dates and considering that the changes you sent me till yesterday have been carried out with a few exceptions as per my discretion, I will consider the text as final from your side as well.”

Reading this, I did not respond. What was left to say? I could say no, but I was tired of the indifference.

My first book was going to the printers without my consent.

When I received my complimentary copy in early March 2018, I noticed that she had removed her and Shantanu’s name from the Acknowledgements section thanking them for their inputs. When I emailed her asking her why she had done that, she wrote:

“Sorry I forgot to write to you about removing that, what with all the running around that was happening at the last minute. I had taken it out since we try not to include our names in books, unless, of course, our intervention has been major. I had meant to write to you but it completely slipped my mind.”

Slipped her mind till the first print was out? It sounded odd but I was beyond discussing it now. With whose consent did the book go to press then?

Who edited the book? Did it magically edit itself? Should I be happy and grateful that I was getting published?

Ironically, yes. Worthier writers languish. I lucked out I guess.

Lean Days was released in March-end 2018. The cover design was okay but the print was bad, the quality of paper used was the cheapest, the finish was awful.

I am not being an ingrate but truth holds its mirror crystal clear.

Prema assigned a girl Ronjini Bora to run the publicity campaign. She did nothing. She said they had no funds for a book launch event while all their other titles were being launched in fancy venues across the country.

She sent two or four dozen copies to Instagram book reviewers and that was it — and I had to email her that list and do the follow-up.

A friend tried to engage a Bollywood actor to launch the book (because she is the few who read), and maybe she was interested initially, but later decided to opt for her wedding instead. Well played.

The publisher did not put out copies in book stores anywhere except Bombay after I insisted for a few. The one copy they sent to the Oxford Book Shop in Calcutta was after a dozen email exchanges requesting them to.

No one had seen or heard of the book apart from the people on my Facebook friend list — and that too because I had been inundating their timelines like legit spam.

First Post, Arre, The Telegraph, The Logical Indian, Indian Women Blog, News 18, Rediff — they were interested not so much in the book, but my background — since this post I had written two months prior to my novel about growing up in a kotha had gone viral and the subsequent articles I wrote on Women’s Day, elaborating on it also got some views. To be fair, their interest might have generated sales of a few copies.

Indian Express, The Free Press Journal, Live Mint gave the book favourable reviews.

The Hindu, for which I freelanced and asked the editors to give it a look, was keener on reviewing an HCI book none of you have read — Koi Good News.

Scroll.in, where I had previously worked, would obviously not entertain my book because I had quit them without serving notice.

At this point I am tempted to say that readers have reviewed it independently on Amazon and Goodreads and have written to me privately (they still do) saying only good things about the book. It is very cute.

If I am to believe Somak Ghoshal and Mita Kapur, the book deserved better, not for me, for itself. Better print, design, marketing, promotion, and some chop-chop.

Now if only someone adapts it for a web series. I am told it has potential. I will not be writing it again.