The Tales Pensieve

She is PhD in Strategic Management yet you know there are no strategies involved, what-so-ever, when she interacts with you. Meet one of the most humble authors I have had the good fortune to be in the company of and the cherry on the cake (for me atleast) is that she writes in my favorite genre. Krishna Udayasankar – one of the few Indian origin female writers who is all set to tell us the story of her namesake from yesteryears in a 3-book series called The Aryavarta Chronicles. We get inKonversation with the Singapore based wordsmith whose debut book is one of those rare books I wish to re-read (the last book I re-read was The Alchemist about a decade back). Read on:

Congratulations on the first published book Krishna. You call yourself a bard narrating the Mahabharata from a different perspective, how did the inspiration come about?
Thanks so much! Its funny (and I never get tired of telling this story), but what happened was this: when I was a kid I was a terrible eater, particularly when it came to green veggies. My parents eventually, after many messed up floors and walls and what-not, realised that I was a total sucker for mythohistorical and mytho-fantasy stories, and that I’d eat anything they fed me as long as the story went on. When I grew up, I realised that both my dislike of green veggies as well as the many questions I had relating to these stories had been deeply ingrained in me, as had been a love of reading, particularly the epic genre, both Indian and otherwise. Besides, these stories have become such an intrinsic part of our culture and social fabric and they are used to legitimize or justify today’s social structures and norms. So when my turn came to write this was the frame of reference, the possible way of understanding the world we live in, that I turned to.

Tell us about the Krishna, who is not a writer.
I’m not half as interesting as my characters, so there’s not much to say! Except maybe that I lived in Africa as a kid and I’ve travelled a fair bit. Education-wise, I graduated from the National Law School, Bangalore, spent some time working for an NGO, then went on to study International Business at Sydney before ending up with a PhD in Strategic Management from the Nanyang Business School, Singapore and beginning my career as an academic. My idea of a good evening is beer and a movie at home, with my family, which includes two very book-loving Siberian Huskies, so that’s my life, really 🙂

You are a PhD and a professor, how did the writing bug get to you?
Every book is, in that sense, a product completely, of a writer’s life. In retrospect, when I look at the kind of careers I chose – law and then management academia – I can see the thread of logic, the attempt to complement my love for writing with the issues and ideas that I found fascinating, such as the philosophy of the complex socio-economic world around us. It was only inevitable, I think, that I ended up writing a book and that the story that emerged was a combination my passions in terms of subject matter.

There is some very deep research involved in The Aryavarta Chronicles as in evident in Govinda. Tell us how did you go about it?
Basically, as someone trained in social sciences research, I have tried my best to bring that strength to my books when coming to conclusions on why or how events, or relationships, happened in a particular way. Research helps build a story that is logically consistent. Reality has that kind of consistency or internal validity. Good fiction, IMHO, is about creating alternate realities that still have the consistency and believability of our ‘primary’ Reality.

And here, I get lucky, for I stand on the shoulders of giants – the amount of material that is out there – both popular and scholarly – which deals with the epic and the epic ages both is simply astounding. It took many months of painstaking work trying to reconcile legend with logic and scholarly evidence and variations in popular narratives across India and other parts of Asia too. I’m very much inspired by the scientific approach of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and many other stalwarts that I discuss in my note on references in the book and there are some essays on the research process on The Aryavarta Chronicles website as well. I know that doesn’t fully answer your question, but I don’t want to risk starting all over again and boring the readers to death!

Does research inspire the stories or is it vice versa for you?
An idea is a question, a proposition, to use a research term. It’s based on some information, but not enough. For me, the whole writing process begins with a scene, a moment in the story around which the whole world converges. I try to begin by putting that down, finding it its place in a large plot by answering the questions that it suggests – who are these people, why are they here…etc. The final story is an answer of sorts, a descriptive world-view that tells us why something may have happened the way it did. Research is what lies in between, what helps me find the answer to the question. So yes, the research does inspire the stories.

We keep hearing interesting tales about debuting authors, their manuscripts and publishers. Tell us yours?
I’m always a bit embarrassed to talk about this, simply because I realize I’ve had a very easy ride as compared to many others out there. The credit for that goes completely to my wonderful agents Jayapriya Vasudevan and Priya Doraswamy of Jacaranda, and they have been a wonderful source of support as I muddled through various stages of the process including the pitching and selling of the manuscript. I’ve also been fortunate to have had a wonderful editor –Poulomi Chatterjee – and a great team at Hachette India, my publishers. Looking back on the journey, it took me about two years to research and write the book, and then it was on the market for about ten months or so, before Hachette India expressed interest. It took us another one year to edit, publish and set it loose on the poor, unsuspecting readers out there 🙂

You live in Singapore, how did it work out to publish with the Indian arm of Hachette?
This was through my agents, who placed the manuscript with Hachette India. I think a book like this, while having a broader appeal also has a natural first home in India. It is an Indian story, and I’m proud of that.

It is said a writer is only an inspired reader. Tell us about your favorites – Book/ Author/ Genre
My reading tends to be quite varied. For example, right now I’m reading Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, as well as Rushdie’s Joseph Anton. In terms of favourites: that would be Herman Hesse, Rudyard Kipling, Isaac Asimov, Kalki Krishnamurthy and J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m also a fan of the Calvin and Hobbes comics by Bill Watterson. In addition to these masters, I grew up reading a lot of the classics – Jules Verne, Alexander Dumas, Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo – as well as a lot of eastern and western philosophy, for example the Upanishads and Plato. I also enjoy poetry a lot.

Govinda was so intriguing and well-developed.  How is the work progressing on the second book Firewright? When is it out?
Thanks for the kind words about Govinda, but I’m going to pretend I didn’t understand the question that followed! (LOL). No, seriously, am working on my last edits to the MS before my editor takes a crack at it. We are targeting April/May 2013, unless I do something silly, like delete the whole thing by mistake. I’m paranoid about that, and I email backups to myself so often that I lose track of the versions!

How does the balance between writing, teaching and family commitments work out? Do you see yourself being a full-time writer?
What balance? I’m a perpetually headless-creature who runs from pillar to post without getting anything useful done. To be fair, it probably is more of a personality thing than being busy, really. (If only I could live without Facebook and Twitter!) As for being a full-time writer – I’d love to have more time to write, yes; but I do like teaching very much and don’t want to give that up completely. In any case, very few people can make a living from their writing alone so it is a rather Utopian plan!

Your words of wisdom for newbie writers.
I’m not qualified in the least to give advice, but I shall do so anyway and feel self-important about it. Seriously, two things:

1. Write. Writing is a discipline, it is a meditation. If you wait for inspiration, then it becomes difficult to grow into the craft of it.

2. Ignore all advice, including this. Writing is one of the most private things we will do. It requires great honesty, so if necessary, ignore everything but the most sincere voice inside you – that’s where our best writing will come from.

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Govinda – Arayavarta Chronicles Book 1: Website | Blog | Goodreads | Pensieve Review

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