it’s been a year since the publication of Arya, the Anthology of Vedic women. My story, the Way of the Warrior was one of the ten stories about strong women from ancient India. In case you are wondering there are enough strong women in the epics to keep me busy for a lifetime. You might have heard a load of rubbish – that ancient India exploited women and they were helpless victims. It only shows ignorance – that whoever says that has not read the original texts. There has been too much misrepresation from secondary texts.
It’s been an interesting journey and I loved meeting the other authors and exchanging experiences. A writer’s life tends to be too isolated so meeting other authors is always such a pleasure.
Indica did some interviews recently and here is mine, where I talk of my story and my character, Chitrangada, a warrior princess from the Mahabharat.
I really enjoyed writing the story. Finished a novel as well for which I am seeking a publisher. Its been quite a journey. I took time off this blog so that I could finish my book. Now that it’s done I am going to write a series on what I learned from writing a novel and all the interesting details I found in my extensive research.
A writer’s perspective is different. When I research I am looking for little details which might seem irrelevant to others. Those small pieces build up the story. I will be writing more about that now that I am back to blogging.
Aryaa, the anthology published by Indica, is available on Amazon.
Aryaa, the stories of ten strong women was launched in Bangalore last month in a quiet launch with the editor, Shivkumar G V and all ten authirs who travelled there for the day. The setting was lovely, far from town amid the banana orchards and fields as far as the eye could see.
The book is now available on Amazon. To buy it from Amazon India, click HERE
For the Amazon of any other country copy this code into your Amazon page – B0BSHYLRVV
When I submitted a story, back in January 2021, I had no idea it would be such an intensive and interactive journey. I have been writing stories for many years but I don’t often get the chance to submit my Indian epic tales. I have several ideas in my diaries so when I read this submission call, I polished up the Way of the Warrior and sent it in. Here it is now.
If you want to hear about how I wrote it, here is an interview – Gaurav Tiwari chats with me on his YouTube channel, mysutradhar, HERE
Where Rivers Meet, my book of haiku poems and drawings, is now available on Amazon.
To find the book click this Amazon India link or copy this ISBN number – 9392494122 into the Amazon of your country.
This book is special to me. About 15 years of published haiku and haibun and in addition, around 30 of my illustrations – pencil drawings and watercolours.
Its not the usual haiku book. I put it together differently. Many of the haiku have notes describing how I wrote them and I wrote about what is haiku, haibun and renku too. The haibun came mostly from my travels. Every trip has moments deep or humorous, such as the map confusion in Japan, the traffic light espressos of Rome and night on a volcano in Hawaii. Of course, the covid lockdown comes in too. A lot of the book was written during those difficult days.
Some asked me, what kind of book is this? Its not the familiar slim volume of verse – it has notes on how the haiku were written. Its not a sketchbook either. What is it? Well, I don’t know if there is a name for it. I started to put together a simple collection of my published haiku and haibun but writers love to write and there I was adding notes and drawings and the book turned into something else. My publisher was good enough not to ask me, what is this mess? He suggested a better order and somehow it came together. I don’t know how to describe it so I will let my friend and mentor, Susumu Takiguchi do it for me.
It is by no means an ordinary haiku anthology, nor is it a textbook, and not even a travelogue. What it is is an intriguing and personal notebook…
Susumu Takiguchi
The full text is here –
“There unfolds before our eyes a quiet but powerful drama of an Indian poet’s chance encounter with haiku and a totally different kind of journey it has ushered her into for the last 15 years. Tired of conventional poetry writing or meaningless vacations, Rohini Gupta ventures out on new trips without a map, planning or even destinations but led only by this newly-discovered form of poetry which is also a new way of looking at things. They take her to various unknown and unknowable roads and places, ranging from somewhere deep in the Himalayan mountains and valleys, through ruins of an ancient temple in Kumbhalgarh, to Japan, Ireland, USA and countries in Europe, and even to non-physical journeys in her expanded sensibility and in cyberspace.
She also ‘travels’ through our daily lives from feeding stray cats to the lockdowns of COVID-19. It is by no means an ordinary haiku anthology, nor is it a textbook, and not even a travelogue. What it is is an intriguing and personal notebook, recording what haiku has done to her sensibility as a poet, to her life as a city dweller and to her whole universe where haiku has given her a new eye to see thing differently. Driven by the incredible power of haiku, she voraciously delves into other areas of haiku literature as well such as renku and haibun.
Hers is an exciting story about getting a grip on and gaining mastery of all these areas. It is told in her concise language as a wordsmith and flows swiftly in short-sentence prose with pleasant rhythm, which is by itself a pleasure to read. At its heart lies her unblinking eyes to see truth, deep appreciation of beauty and a warm sense of humour. Her haiku wells up from somewhere deep. It is born, not contrived. The book provides self-satisfied haiku poets, especially seasoned ones, with refreshing stimulus, new insights and style, and those still to come with one of the right ways of starting haiku.”
Susumu Takiguchi, Editor in Chief, World Haiku Review.
The drawings are mostly graphite pencil sketches and one or two watercolours. They come from my pile of sketchbooks and from a span of years as I was struggling to draw correctly the twist of a fallen leaf, the curve of a petal, a woman in a coffeeshop or the intricacy of a bougainvilla. Here are a few of the pages.
Come and join me in this long journey into the always fascinating and surprising world.
Book no 21, of course. I reached 21 so long ago I barely remember it.
This 21st book is even more of a milestone because it is special. I dabble a little in art and it has been my dream to illustrate a book of my own poetry. You don’t need to be a professional artist to do that. Now it is no longer a dream. The book will be out soon with a print edition on Amazon.
I have been keeping a daily drawing practice for years, mostly pencil sketches. It relaxes me to untangle the complexity of a simple leaf or flower using a pencil. Out of the pile of sketchbooks, I selected around 30 pencil sketches and a few watercolours and sent them in to my publisher, Dibya Jyoti of Red River. He approved and created a beautiful design for my book, drawings to accompany the haiku poetry. I loved the cover on sight and most people I showed it too also liked it. Do you like it?
Where Rivers Meet
When covid brought a lockdown in 2020, we were completely unprepared. Life came to such a sudden halt that people were discussing their travel plans – the long commute from bedroom to dining table and back. The highlight of the day was standing at the window.
My long commute was in drawing. In pencil miles I have probably circumambulated the earth.
Mornings, of course, are for writing the next book, a schedule I rarely change. During the lockdown afternoons, after lunch had been cleared and the sun was still bright, I sat at the dining table with my pencils and sketchbook. I painted bright flowers to keep me going like the sketchy little watercolour poppies on the cover.
I do not remember how long it took me to get the bouganvilla below – possibly days.
The intricacies of a flower
Where Rivers Meet is a collection of my work over the last fifteen years or so. My published haiku, haibun travel tales, lockdown woes and the delights of nature. Looking back, its been a long journey and much labour has gone into the 21 books. Even more effort is going into book no 22 which is a novel. The mere size of a novel which can top one lakh (one hundred thousand) words can seem overwhelming. You have to take it one step at a time, one small section at a time, not in chronological order. Mine is going well, still a bit recalcitrant, but sliding slowly into shape.
So, with book no 21, Where Rivers Meet (the title is always taken from one of the haiku in the book) two journeys come together – 15 or so years of haiku poetry and many, many years of playful fiddling with art supplies. Its not the beginning and nowhere near the end. I know that as long as I write and draw for the sheer delight of doing it, my life will continue to be an adventure – what is around the next corner, where will that story or graphite line take me, into which new world?
I can’t wait to find out. See you there, in the always unexpected future which is never what you expect and that is the beauty of it. Though I know one thing which my immediate future holds – my book in my hands. Coming soon.
A week ago I published my 20th ebook, and now my 21st book – this time with a publisher – is coming out very soon and this one is special.
Both books have taken all of this year and some of the last. Writing, editing and all the work of self publishing takes time. Book no 20 was Cafe Haiku’s 5th yearly anthology – about relationships. Coming out of two long and very difficult years and teetering at the edge of normality never quite sure when another wave will push us backwards – its perhaps never been so important to write about relationships and poets from all over the world took up the challenge.
sharing my solitude is available as an ebook on Amazon.
This was a book which should have come out in 2020 but that was the year we got slammed against the wall. It wasn’t much better in 2021. Editors were sick, delays piled up and it was 2022 before we could get going. Of all my Kindle ebooks, this one gave me the most trouble. The file just would not upload. I spent a week trying and hunting on the web for solutions. None worked. Finally I stripped the file and reformatted the whole thing. To my relief that worked, whichever little book virus was hiding in there got scrubbed out and the file uploaded. Surprisingly the book went live in just about 2 hours. It can take a day or more sometimes.
So, book no 20 was published. Book no 21 is on the way, the work completed, final layout approved. Waiting only for the print run.
Doesn’t every author love to see this? Your book in someone’s handbag.
The picture above – it wont happen soon. That is my first book Mantramala which has just come out in second edition – but in print since its too big a book for ebook. And my only print book is the only book no longer available because – here we go again.
The covid virus lockdown has shaken up the book trade. Bookshops have sadly pulled down their shutters. Books are considered non essentials and so you can’t just order the latest one from your favourite author right now. Well, actually you can – let me explain that.
The book world has split into two and strangely enough the sides seem to diverge even further. I am watching both because I have one foot in either camp.
It happened with the advent of ebooks. Until then the writers path was very clear – you wrote your book and then you wrote those endless query letters trying not to sound like begging, to agents and publishers. It took me five years to get a publisher for my first book. In those days there was no option but to find a publisher.
Then came the whispers – something was happening which might upend the whole time tested business method. The whisper was about ebooks – and they were unstoppable.
Ebooks hit the book world hard. At first it was nothing but scorn for these impudent intruders. They were regarded rather like mice – a necessary evil you had to live with because there were just too many to exterminate.
There were many and getting to be more and more – and more. I dont know the number but you couldnt stock so many books on shelves even if you turned whole cities into libraries. And they were selling in quantities many did not want to admit.
Many in the old trade pretended they didnt exist. Many readers still dont even know they are an option. The book trade continued. People still bought print books – publishers still printed them.
Until covid brought everything to a dead stop. Bang. That business has run into a wall. There has been nothing like this before – this complete lockdown, the closure of bookstores, the impossibility of delivering print books since the online stores only deliver non essentials. Nothing like this has ever hit the book trade.
Everyone is in the same place, all around the world. Bookshops have closed – some may not open again. Many publishers are closed too – how to print, where to sell from with neither bookshops nor online deliveries functioning. If anything could bring the print book industry to its knees – that was the covid virus. I wonder who will survive – it does seem to me that many won’t.
Okay, let’s be clear – I am talking only about the print book trade. The publishers who did only print may or may not recover.
I am not talking of books because books are doing better than ever. There is another kind of book out there which floats unaffected. Ebooks sales are surging. Even publishers are looking at ebooks now.
Still, even with this standstill there are those who still don’t notice the world of ebooks. To them books are the ones made out of dead trees and glued together with dead animals. Thats a book.
Some readers are complaining, how can they stop delivering books? Even the bookshops are closed. What will we read?
Well, you know that Amazon and others have ebooks right? Do you know that it’s the same book, instantly delivered? The whole same book, in your hands in about a minute?
In the last month I have been asked this multiple times – is it difficult to download an ebook?
I realise the right answer to that is – it’s very difficult. The process itself is simple and anyone can do it. The mindset which allows you to do it is a mountain and going by the way people keep asking that same question year after year – it may well be insurmountable. The ‘I can’t’ barrier is the hardest to overcome.
As a writer I am hardly affected by this lockdown. My ebooks are available at a click as always. And as a reader, the biggest store in the world is right there and yes, I have bought and borrowed plenty of ebooks to read in this lockdown.
The best decision I took – five years ago – was to figure out how to publish an ebook on my own, writing, editing, proofing, cover art and uploading. Was it only five years? It seems a lifetime. The learning curve was very steep but very satisfying.
Today, I have 17 ebooks which continue to sell even when the print business has gone to almost zero. All it cost was the effort to write and publish them and, more important, the decision to take the path less trodden which has, yes it has, made all the difference.
Putting this wonderful anthology of outstanding haiku has been a delight. I will blog later about what it was like and some pictures from the book release in Pune.
The title, Fuga No Makoto means “truth, sincerity and honesty which a haikai poet needs to aim at when writing poems.”
Traditionally, Japanese haiku had three lines with 5-7-5
syllables and 17 syllables altogether. However, in contemporary English haiku,
the 5-7-5 is no longer observed and any syllable count is acceptable so long as
it does not exceed 17. This anthology has a select collection with some of the
best of modern haiku.
The World Haiku Review is an online magazine which was a
pioneer in the field of haiku – one of the first and most prominent magazines
to take the Japanese poetic form and put it online for a wider audience. WHR
set the stage for the worldwide expansion of the three-line, highly imagistic verse form.
This is the Tenth Anniversary Anthology collecting only the
top ten haiku from twenty-five issues of the World Haiku Review from 2008 to
2017. Here are some of the best haiku by some of the biggest names in the
field, from countries all over the world. The poems are collected by subject,
such as Morning Frost, A Cloud’s Drift, the Flower Moon, the Dream of You and
so on. Also included are the Editor’s Choice haiku from each issue, complete
with the notes of the editor-in-chief, Susumu Takiguchi, explaining why that
verse was chosen.
A fascinating journey into a beautiful form of poetry with several hundred of the best international haiku for your reading delight.
Our third anthology is up, pins on a map, from our very prolific Mumbai group which is just celebrating five years of banter, jokes, coffee, discussions, learning, three anthologies and a blog.
A few hiccups for this antho, but it sorted out in the end. Some great writers sent in poems and pieces about travel, covering most of this wonderful globe. Great reading.
Do take a look. It is available on Amazon as an ebook.
Word Skies 