We remove the shroud of mystery and actually talk about work type things

Sorry for being all vanish-y and AWOL, but creative genius (well, the downside of creative genius anyway) was happening and I had masses of edits to do on the book, which was hopefully, the LAST of the massive edits. Man, it's time for me to write something new now. I have been so embroiled in this one with its characters and world and people, I feel like I'm rising out of this fog to learn that maybe I have other worlds to write about too. Also, I haven't been feeling particularly like writing lately, I don't know why, just general meh-ness.

So, today, I thought I'd talk about the book a little bit. I've had some emails and some comments asking about how it happened and so on, and besides now that it's almost here, I feel READY to talk about it.

Back in 2005, a publisher approached me saying she had read my blog and would I be interested in writing? I have been writing, you must know, since I COULD write, so yeah, the story for the book was something I had been toying with since college. Growing up in urban India, being young in a world that seems so international and yet, at the heart of it is so traditional too. I wanted to talk about the India that generally doesn't get talked about, away from mango pickle and elephants and arranged marriages. But at the time I only knew vaguely what I wanted the actual story to be, so I said, "Okay, let me get some of it done, see if I can actually make a commitment to writing a book and get back to you.' I took two weeks off at the end of 2005, spent the entire day in front of my computer, not leaving the house at all, and I got a fair chunk done. Things were falling into place. I had a main character I liked very much, her world, her history, her friends all got done quite easily and in January 2006, I signed with Penguin.

I didn't even have a title. The word file was called terra firma, but obviously, I couldn't call my book that. I was toying with You Should've Been There when one day I was at Shakti's house, eating cheese toast and I told her and her husband about it and she thought a little and said, "How about You Are Here?" And I loved it. I also love the fact that Shakti is so in my book, as in, she is tied up completely with my memory of how I got the title and it makes me feel a little bit as though it's a tribute. I wish she could've been here to see how everything turned out.

The second half of the book took a lot longer. I didn't have my own laptop in those days, and I was living with Small so I didn't go home often enough to write regularly. I had my cousin's ancient laptop and I got two chapters done on that and it crashed. Note to self: always make back-up copies. My parents gave me a laptop a little later, the pride and joy of my life (and tc's, he loves to walk across the keyboard right before I've saved anything. I swear, he recognises ctrl + s) and I recreated the two chapters I had lost, plus a good chunk of the rest of the book. It took me about a year, and I only had the time to work really late at night, say 1 am to 4 am. I was an insomniac so it worked out for me. A lot of the book reads like that, like it's a conversation people are having in the middle of the night, where your voice is husky from talking so much but you keep talking and talking and talking anyway, because you feel so intimate about the person you're with.

After the book was FINALLY done, right before I moved to Bombay, I was given a huge set of edits. I printed out the first lot and carried it around with me on the train and while I was waiting for people and just worked with a pen, till it was over. That was fun. I liked to see how a formless (well, kinda formless) mass of words took on structure and narrative and a linear storyline. I tended to write all over the place and some of my favourite parts were a little confusing because the reader couldn't easily make the jump between one paragraph and the next.

That wasn't the only round of edits though. It was only the basic one, inserting and deleting things. I got a much more detailed set in January, which dealt with the little things. Make the character go to the bathroom, for instance, when she has a conversation outside the loo. Add a chapter. Stuff like that.

Edits, I don't mind telling you, are a pain in the ass. After a while you get so bored of reading the same thing over and over and OVER again, that you never want to see it anymore. I just want it out now! I'm horribly procrastinatory over chores I'm not very fond of so I just looked at them and sighed and did other things for a bit till I absolutely could not put it off anymore.

And FINALLY they're done and finally it's out of my hands (I hope) and finally I can begin to attempt to write book two. Which will also be fabulous and I'm super excited about it. I love to write. I'm happiest when I write, it's like praying for me. When I write, I'm like a different person, the kind of person I'd like to be. It may not be excellent writing, but I love doing it.

Goodbye, 2007, who could hang a name on you?

Oh, come on. You didn't think I was going to leave you without a year-end recap, did you? Even if it DOES mean posting more than once a week, it's a special time of the year and it's been one hell of a year, actually.

If you're just tuning in, the links to the other three year-end posts are here, here and here. This year, we're shaking it up a little and doing proper accounts, so the year isn't just events, it's how those events have affected my life. (Ooooooooooooooh, fancy, right?)

LIFE CHANGING TYPE THINGS:

Well, duh, I moved to Bombay.

And then there was tc--the only steady male in my life. (And in tc's life, the discovery that he is a boy)


I got my hair coloured. (Hey, it was a big deal at the time)

The blog turned three.

We made it to six months.

Leela gets hitched!

I have new flatmates.

I turn 26.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNT

How to commute.

How to get to Daman.

How to get rid of weird men who try to pick you up at bars.

How to fall sick several times a year.

How to use Craigslist on a slow blogging day.

How to fight loneliness.

How to write posts about blow jobs and realise that Indian men might, in fact, be better lovers than Indian women.

How to check your American flatmate into a hospital.

How to survive a gynaecological exam. (My cervix still cringes)

How to write to anon trolls.

I've learnt also other not so concrete things, like how to make new close friends and how to dance without caring about what other people think and how to *ahem* make what I call the eMpolitan, a pink concoction I devised last night at Kalyan's party. I was trying to amuse myself by putting lots of alcohol and various juices into the blender and ta-dah, a drink was born. I even had requests for second and third servings.

ZE LOVE (I USE THE TERM LOOSELY) LIFE

I had a second date.

There were moments where I considered changing my sexuality.

I had a nonboyfriend, in a committed fling. (Sighhhhhhhh. That memory still makes me wistful)

I tryst with exboyfriends in my dreams.

Almost, I meet someone new.

I discover dating, with a capital D. ATING.

I meet Volt.

We finish.

I developed many random crushes on and off during this year, which were great fun, just for the heart flutters and the putting on perfume for someone else. Sadly, none of them actually went anywhere. I'm still too chicken, even at this grand old age to make the first move. But they were fun while they lasted. Right now? I'm footloose and fancy free, which means if I decide to have a torrid beach romance in Goa for the four days I am there, it should be completely stress free. Keep your fingers crossed for me!


FAME AND FORTUNE (HAH!)

THE Telegraph UK article. (I don't have links to the rest of the stories, but this is the one that sparked the rest off.)

Over the next couple of months, since it came out there have been a bunch of other articles and blog posts, some nice, some not so much. It's been an interesting experience though. I won't say entirely fun, but interesting.


AND SHAKTI

Who I miss most when I'm in Delhi. I have to keep reminding myself not to call, that there's no point in calling, that there will never be the hanging out, the chilling, the intimacies. God, 2007 was a random year. So random, so senseless. If this is character building, these heartaches, I'd rather stay characterless.



NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

This year I will be good. (Well, not SO good that I'm boring, but I will try and avoid being bad.)

This year I will keep account of my finances.

This year I will learn at least three new things--like politics and French and playing the guitar. Something.

This year I will join a gym and get in shape.

This year I will save up and go on at least one foreign holiday.



Off I go now, to more festivities. I'll see you next year.

Now I remember why I used to use song lyrics as post titles, headlines are tough. Therefore, this post title is: Life Goes Easy On Me

> Can you believe it's October already? Today is Puja's birthday, 26 this year, but for us, always twenty. If I were in Delhi, I'd be at her house, for the chanting and the meal and the chatting with her mother and assorted friends who gather twice a year--sometimes more--to celebrate her memory. Grief gets easier with time, it's simple now for me to focus on the happy stuff. To lose two friends in five years is hard, but then at the same time it reminds you of how transient life is, how it could all vanish in an instant. Thanks to Puja, thanks to Shakti, I love harder now, and I say what I feel always. I know my other friends feel this way too, or maybe it's just us mellowing over the years, we don't squabble and if we do it's brief and fleeting. We, most of us, think of our friends as part of our extended family, I know I do, but not in the taking-for-granted way, in the I'm-so-glad-you're-in-my-life way. I'm so glad you're in my life.

> October also means it's Leela's wedding in about three weeks which is terribly exciting, and also for me, the first friend's wedding that I've attended. Knowing someone from when they were two and half to now, at 26, means that there should be at least three extremely sentimental moments. Bring on the tears! I've been planning the bachelorette party, which really shouldn't be called that because there are *gasp* BOYS attending. I threw a huge internet hissy fit, to which Leela responded by email saying, "Boys are (mostly) not the enemy." Hmph. I wanted the Jat stripper! And the blown up condoms! And the penis shaped cake! If you're a girl friend planning on getting married soon and planning on asking me to help organise the bachelorette party; let me warn you, I will use all these things. I'm not going to be cheated out of a Jat stripper TWICE. (Yes, apparently there are male strippers in Delhi, this one was on Pieces' reccomendation, and apparently he's quite dishy.)

> Being in a relationship for me always means I'm writing reams and reams of bad poetry. Don't worry--it's SO bad, I'm not going to inflict any on you, but it's sorta fun to indulge myself in the whole our tangled limbs lie across your bed thing. You know, when you were a preteen and in the throes of your first crush and you doodled their initials over and over again? Similar. Incidentally, my first crush's initial was A, and to this day when I'm doodling I make fancy As and tiny as and As with shading in them and then write M, m, M, m everywhere. That and snails. I do a good snail.

> The Bagel Shop now stocks Goan Pork Sausage bagels, which is dreadful because they are so good. And so full of calories. I'm not normally a calorie counting person, but in the last week, two people have watched my eating habits and shaken their heads. "You'll be fat someday," they both warned, and I can see the day when I'm all large assed and bloated, grease running down my chin but still it only makes me eat more while I'm still skinny.

> And because I haven't done a party round up in a while, here's what my last week has been like: Sunday, a heritage walk around Crawford Market with Deepti and another friend, Himanshu, and then, because Himanshu's cool like that, we toddled over to the Press Club and the rest of the evening was spent in general debauchery. I woke up the next morning with a stamp on my wrist and no idea where it had come from, which made me puzzle for a while till I remembered us briefly staggering giggling into Polly Esther's and dancing. Yeah, it was one of those evenings. Monday, I went with Sameer, Chrisann, KVA and a bunch of other people to Soul Fry to sing karaoke. I volunteered to sing Fever, but what I didn't realise was that one of the people with us, an old friend I haven't seen in ten years, Ostrich, in whose honour the evening was organised, was actually a rock star. No, I mean it. I forget what she sang first, but she did this version of It's Raining Men that made people actually dance to her singing. And yell out "Encore!" So, yeah, when it was my turn I declined, but Chrisann made me. But thankfully, she sang too. We did a nice job. Or, it just helps that we have boobs. No one boos you if you have boobs. Tuesday, I went to spend some time with Volt, after watching Loins Of Punjab Present with Chrisann and KVA (sweet movie, you should watch it). He has a flu and is like most of his gender, rather grouchy during it all, but we watched yet another movie (The Princess Bride) and did other fun couple things. (Although, I think I caught his cold). Wednesday, I went out with Sameer and Ostrich to Zenzi, where they most unsmartly chose the outside non-AC section (which to be fair is where I normally sit, but yesterday was like a tropical rainforest). "Air conditioning," Ostrich got out before she collapsed across the table, so we took her to *ahem* Janata, where there WAS air conditioning and where we drank much cheap alcohol and speculated about the table next to us which had two oldish men and one blonde child, who looked about 12. (We came up with: toy boy, business partner, albino, really, really young looking 25 year old). Whatever is the world coming to?

My friend Shakti died on Saturday night. It made no sense her death, I thought it was some sort of April Fool's joke or something. She was awesome. She sparkled. She was kind. And even now, applying the past tense to her name seems so odd, so surreal, so like I'm talking about someone else.

Shakti loved this blog. She really did. She asked me many times when she was going to make an appearance, and she did, as Mrs Editor-Poet. We met like close to two years ago, at a party, and then the day after that was our housewarming party and her and her husband came for that, and then the rest was history, because we started to hang regularly, and talk. We were both about the same age as compared to most of the other people we knew in common, and when we did book parties or literary gatherings, usually we gravitated towards each other and gossiped and compared outfits and did many other frivolous things.

And I met her whilst the two of them were in Bombay for the Kitab fest, and thanks to them, partied very poshly, and we talked about relationships and whether she ever regretted being married, because she was quite young and she said, "You know, it's like the difference between a sonnet and blank verse. Marriage gives my life structure, and this way it's always two people on my side." And when I was last in Delhi, we hung out at Cafe Turtle, and drank coffee and talked about various creative projects, and then I met her again later at 4S and showed her my Sarojini Nagar shopping and then we hugged as I was leaving and promised to meet again next time I was in Delhi.

I can't make any sense of it still. This post has been written and backspaced over for the last three days, I just couldn't. It's a world without Shakti in it, and that is so bizarre, because she was so so so alive, you know? I know people say this about everyone who dies, but she really was. When I think of her, I think of sitting in her living room watching her hula hoop, backwards and forwards, smiling, her hips working, her arms outstretched. "You're a lucky man," I told her husband once, with all sorts of hidden innuendos at that hula hooping and he smiled at me and said, "I know."

And, hah, it's so strange, the one person I feel like calling and telling about her death is Shakti, calling and saying, "Hey people are saying you're dead." And she'd say, "What? People are crazy" and I'd say, "I know, hey, I'll be in Delhi on Friday we should hang out." And she'd say, "Absolutely." And this entire thing will have never happened.

Already I miss her so very much.