Tahir’s Comments (group member since Jun 18, 2012)

Tahir’s comments from the Q&A with Tahir Shah group.

Hi Toni,

Self-publishing doesn't have to be crazily expensive... you can start off publishing a manuscripot as an eBook and then do it as a Lulu.com print on demand and, if you get solid sales or just want to bite the bullet, you can do a short print run, or even a full print run as I did in Hong Kong. There are so many ways to print -- electronically or on paper -- and I'd suggest looking at these and not necessarily using one format, but several.

Hi Ryan, I think the best way to reach this answer is not to search for it, but allow the answer to find you. I often get all swept up on a trail and get infuriated when answers aren't forthcoming. Then, I'll find that something diverts my attention and I drop my quest for a fraction of a second and, it's in that moment that I get the answer.

I've said it before, but only because I believe it so strongly: the best route to anything of value is not straight, but zigzag.

Thank you, Ita. Yes, revenge is strong in Occidental society, just as it is in the Orient. I sometimes gets very worked up and angry and find myself hankering for revenge. Then I remember what my father said. He used to tell me, 'Don't waste your time getting revenge, because sooner or later some else with thump that person, or react to them in a way that you never could.'

TS

Hello Hector,

Yes, I know this information fro The Sufis. My father mentioned it several times to me, as an example of something that has become distorted as it transgresses from one culture to another. And that's what's so intriguing to me -- how something with a know value in society A moves to society B and changes its meaning and association.

Hi Neera,

I think the key to this is observation -- learning to see what is right in front of you but invisible most of the time. Sometimes I do a little test for myself... I sit on a street corner or in a cafe, and I look out at the street. I keep sitting there until I see what I think I understand in a new way. Sometimes it takes hours. But like any training, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

The best place to start is in a room in your home. Look at things and think in new ways. Question what you see. Turn it around. And enjoy finding new ideas and information from the ordinary.

TS

Hi Janet,

What i like about Morocco is the side of life that you don't ever hear about in the news. It's Morocco from the indie out... And you know, tourism always shows you a version of a country head on, straight down the line. As far as i am concerned there can be no viewpoint as worthless and utterly boring. Far more interesting is to look at something from a new angle, to hold it into the light and to gently turn it until real magic is revealed.

This is how I see Morocco. Yes, it's wonderful as a tourist destination... but much more magic is revealed if you descend down through the layers, until you reach the cultural bedrock that escapes most visitors.

Hi Sue,

oh yes oh yes, I had had to curtail the wilder side of travel since having kids. The wakeup call regarding that came when I spent 16 days and fearful nights in a torture jail's solitary in peshawar back in 2005. I promised after that episode not to go willingly into the jaws of danger and discomfort.

But travel off the beaten track is such a joy to me. And, I must admit, while driving along with Rachana this morning we were listening to the bad events in Istanbul (riot police, tear gas, protests etc), and i said to her: "This is a damn good time to get a good deal in Istanbul". The thing you have to remember is that place's aren't nearly as bad as the media portray them.

Thanks Maggie... While writing it I kept thinking how trapped we are are in what we perceive to be the right way of thinking and behaving. I wanted to shake people up, and hope that the book did that just a little. TS

You're so right that stories -- whether from the East or the West -- use animals to represent humans and their society without distracting us. The attention of people is diverted when considering other people and, in this ways, the use of animals is a useful technique in literature etc.

Hi Naomi, what an interesting an intelligent question. Thank you. I am no great expert on society, but I see when a society goes off track and when it doesn't. And most of the time it seems to go off track when ancient mechanisms are ruptured. I see this happening all the time, especially in northern Europe and the US. I'm talking about, for instance, putting old people in homes, where their communal knowledge is lost. Or the obsession of having new books and material when people forget to read what they have already churned out. Libraries lie dormant while people obsess about the newest, the latest book. Our food manufacturing processes are also chronic and the lack of nutrition in the food is compensated by medicines and prescription drugs. We live jam-packed in cities that are no way anything like we are programmed to understand. It takes us longer and longer to learn to live in this world --and that seems wrong to me.

Thanks Paul. I have known Doris very very well all my life and I rate her as the most important inspiration outside my family. She is the one person i know -- other than my father and grandfather -- who doesn't give a damn about what others think. She writes for herself and herself alone.

Self-publishing is getting easier, especially in Print On Demand and eBook levels... I think publishers are ROTTEN at doing their job and that almost anyone is better off doing it themselves.

In the 19th century there was masses of pulp fiction... just go through the review sections of The Quarterly Review and others and you'll see how many thousands of books were written and published each year... and most are long forgotten. Have a look at the output of a writer like Conan Doyle or Kipling and you see how few of their titles are commonly remembered today.

Thanks for this question and apologies that it had escaped me until now.

You may have noticed that I go through phases of doing lots of social media and then very little. That's because I get waves of enthusiasm. And recently I have been channelling it into writing. i find it hard to do writing and social media, because they use different skills -- one is introvert and the other extrovert. I find it hard to switch from one to the other. But, yes, i like making little videos and plan to do a lot more.

My father and his siblings, and myself and my two sisters, were brought up all to shun convention and to fill our lives with experiences that interested us to the very core our being. It sounds like a cliche, but I remember as a child I was rewarded for doing things that no one else was doing, things that challenged the way I understood the world. I learned very little at school, and almost everything I know by travelling. And it's for that reason that my favourite saying is "Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened".

I loved it all... and find myself re-reading that book over and over.

I have so many. There are writers who style I love (eg Mark Saltzman's Iron and Silk), or Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines. And then there are authors whose characters I adore -- Heinrich Barth or Samuel White Baker from the Victorian age... or storytellers, whether they be novelists or the writers of stories, like Thomas Harris, or Paul Theroux.

I look for details and piece those details together until I have a kind of magic quilt, and I create a book or a story from that. I love noticing things that others have missed, and am so amazed that in our society we all get overloaded with material, but we actually end up missing 99% of what's thrown our way.

Hi Kevan,

Thanks for your message... I strive to do what interests me and not to pay too much time listening to anyone who holds me back. My advice to anyone is to stop listening to others and to start listening to yourself.

T

Thanks Purnima, how good of you to write. I was in Hyderabad with my wife and the kids a year and a half ago. we were lucky enough to visit some of the old mansions downtown, which are in a sorry state but they stole my heart. I LOVED them! We also stayed at the Falaknuma, which i wrote about... wow, and wow again... And I was in Hyderabad for the first time a zillion years ago (as I wrote in Sorcerer's Apprentice) when i swallowed a live fish at the Gowd's home.

I am a slave of time. I think I wrote my thoughts on this in a blog once... but my feeling is that time is ticking and if I don't keep my eye on the ball I'll lose time, which i can never get back. I am obsessed about wasting time, an obsession that is linked to guilt. It's manic at times... but it's the engine that drives me. I get myself impossible tasks and so even if I manage half of them I still would have been more productive than most other people I know. Another thing that has helped me is to stop listening to what other people are telling me to do. This has freed me up to follow the route I know it right for me.