In the Hindustan Times today Kiran Manral, Author: ‘I hav...

In the Hindustan Times today

Kiran Manral, Author: ‘I have become increasingly self-critical over the years’

By Arunima Mazumdar

Apr 03, 2023 07:09 PM IST

The best selling author and columnist, whose latest book is All Those Who Wander, talks about writing in multiple genres

You’ve written books in multiple genres – psychological thrillers, romance, horror, and even parenting. Which genre makes you feel most creative and why?

Author Kiran Manral (Courtesy the subject)

I have always written as the story has taken me. Parenting, chick lit, humour and romance have been written when I was at a different phase in my life. Now I think the crazy and the outré obsess me and I tend to write strange, spooky haunting stories because I am constantly wondering about the what ifs and the why nots. I’ve written about a search for identity and belonging in The Face at the Window, there was some element of spookiness in it, and it became horror. I wrote about a dysfunctional marriage and mental illness in Missing, Presumed Dead, that became psychological thriller. Bereavement, grief and widowhood in More Things in Heaven and Earth plus a ghost, which also became horror. My latest, All Those Who Wander, is about time travel, closure, repercussions, and more, along with a ghost too, but it gets slotted into sci-fi. No matter what the genre, I think, for me, every book remains primarily the story of a particular person in a particular circumstance, and I try to explore their journey through that situation with as much creative honesty (I know that is an oxymoron) as possible.

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You’ve been writing for over a decade now. How do you think your writing has evolved?

I would think that is for the readers to judge and to let me know if my writing has indeed evolved over time. I do know that I take more risks now in terms of theme and style. I don’t stick to the tried and tested anymore and every book is different. I cannot write the same thing over and over again and have great admiration for those who can stay within the same genre over multiple books.

When I began, I was naively confident enough in my writing to send out my first rough draft to my editor. I have no such confidence now after 15 books. Now, no manuscript leaves my computer until I have worked on multiple drafts and innumerable edits and revisions. There are many versions of each book in my computer, and still after it all, I cannot bring myself to read the published work in its entirety because I’m sure I will find things I want to change and things that make me cringe. I have become increasingly self-critical over the years, and I know it will only get worse with each book.

In your latest book All Those Who Wander, how did the concept of travelling through time and space come to you?

Honestly, it wasn’t actually time travel that came to me when I began this book. It was the question that what if one could change the past in any way or even just have a chance to warn one’s younger self about what was to come, what could happen with that possibility. I wanted to bring an older version of the protagonist face to face with a younger self, and the story flowed from that point. Could you co-exist with a version of yourself in the same dimension? Given my fascination with space, time, parallel universes and all the fascinating concepts that we are still to understand, I naturally just wrote what I could into the book.

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Arunima Mazumdar is an independent writer. She is @sermoninstone on Twitter and @sermonsinstone on Instagram.