First impressions

I was told as a teenager that first impressions count. Though my wise and giggly friend was talking about romantic love, however, I do believe first impressions count when it comes to business as well; especially when you meet an author-cumhistorian some hours before the launch of his much-awaited book (it took him six years to complete), take his audience (eminent critics, journalists and historians in their own right) through chapters of the tome, all on the eve of his book tour (of five cities of India), and then finish all “bookish duties” to co-ordinate and manage one of the most prominent literature festivals of India. As far as schedules go, William Dalrymple’s calendar was water-tight the day we met him. So, it was no surprise that the man who sat rather uncomfortably in a wooden chair, was looking rather harried. His clothes were crumpled (he had forborne several question-answer sessions with attention) and was parched. The sound checks in British Council yard where the launch was to happen, and people asking (pretty much) the same questions may have added to that overall discomfort. However, coming back to the bit about first impressions—the author’s patience was striking and impressive. He bore it all with a distracted but smiling countenance. That a historian has to be patient to do his work, is no epiphany. But the infinite amount that Dalrymple seemed to possess on that particular day was impressive. Dalrymple’s latest book—Return of a King, an in-depth analysis of the First Afghan War, told through the lives of both British and Afghan characters, using Afghan accounts of the conflict—was a difficult project from the word go. It is a retelling of what Dalrymple states to be, “Britain’s greatest imperial disaster”, a still-pertinent book about colonial ambition and cultural collision which is as relevant as a case study today as it was then. As Dalrymple points out to the oft-repeated line, “People who forget history are bound to repeat it.” And Return of the King stands as a testimony to that. “I don’t know why this particular book had such a difficult birth. Perhaps, because it was a more complex story that we had to pull together, information from all sorts of sources. The book involved Iran, Afghanistan, Russia and India, especially history of the Sikhs. When a historian writes about Stalingrad or the Second World War, everyone knows who Stalin was or who Hitler was. But no one has an effing clue about who Shah Shuja was. So, there was this awful lot of explaining to do, and an awful lot of scene-setting without losing the audience’s interest especially in the crucial first 20 to 30 pages of a book when you have to grip the audience’s attention and drag them into the story. However, the story had such a wonderful narrative arc that once I got going, and by the time we got the troops moving into Afghanistan, it kind of wrote itself,” says Dalrymple. As an after thought he adds, “There was a lot of heartburn and Olivia sort of made that simpler.” Olivia Fraser is Dalrymple’s spouse and mother to their three “wonderfully different” children. Fraser, we were told, was expected in half-an-hour’s time with Dalrymple’s wardrobe. “Nothing fancy, just a coat,” he said. The coat turned out to be a dashing black Achkan. Fraser is an established artist who has been specialising in Indian miniature art (a legacy she inherited from a distant relative James Baillie Fraser of Moniack who started a group comprising miniature artists called Company Painting) and has done occasional illustrations for the Dalrymple’s books. However, Fraser is more than a mere illustrator. “She is my primary editor, a rigorous and ruthless one. I know that almost always she is right. Having said that I really don’t like it when she says page two’s boring or the third paragraph has to go. I wouldn’t know how to write without her,” that is quite a compliment coming from one of the most-recognised authors in India, and indeed in the world. Because, we met him at such a crucial hour, the day he was to present the Return of the King to the world, the conversation rarely veered from writing.

The Shed in the Garden

I am a hugely indisciplined human being in general, in a whole variety of ways. I eat too much. I like chocolates. However, I am greatly disciplined as far as my writing is concerned. Those disciplined bits of my life occur in cycles, every five to six years. The final bit (of a “cycle”) is like the final semester in a varsity—you get up early, drink less, and party no more. When I am writing I am up by six in the morning. I take copies of previous night’s chapters before I go off to bed. In that lovely hour before everyone’s up, I am busy correcting yesterday’s work.” Less of a routine and more of a regimen. Most of the magic happens outside the comfortable confines of home, in a small garden shed where Dalrymple locks himself without Wi-Fi. Not that technology is necessarily bad, but because it is evilly distracting. “Wi-Fi gives me Facebook and Twitter. I can lose hours if I am not careful. You can start searching for Voltaire and five hours later, end up reading about the upper Volga,” he breaks off into peals of laughter. So, most of the writing (of new material) happens in that happy hour between 9am and 11am. “I don’t always manage to write something substantial. Mostly though, the work gets done by lunch. The rest of the day is free for sending out emails and correction,” he adds. But before the writing bit, there is a small, mind-boggling bit called research. It can be exciting, exhausting and exhilarating process. In some cases (especially, in his), it is equally serendipitous. Dalrymple has been an object of envy of other writers we hear, as he has had the fortune of writing in some of the most exotic Indian locations—former palaces and forts now converted into Tory homes for the posh or boutique hotels. The Return of the King, however, took him down a different path altogether. When during the conversation, the author-cum-historian seems deaf to all questions and gets busy with his mobile, we get to just how different it had been. Dalrymple gleefully shows a picture of an SUV with a bullet hole in one of its windows. “This was on the day we landed at the Kandahar airport. There were skirmishes and this was a result of one such,” he says. Not that he has a death wish, but it is hard for him to write without a “context”. “I did this dangerous journey along the route of the British Retreat of 1842, deep inside the Taliban territory, not because I enjoyed putting myself in danger, but because I could not have written truthfully without it.” And he had some serendipitous meetings. One such was with “a giant of a man”, called Anwar Khan, a former Taliban operative and an expert on the tribal geopolitics of Afghanistan. The research also included hair-raising escapes. An overindulgent lunch prevented Dalrymple, to take a trip from Jalalabad to a nearby town. On that very day, the local government decided to burn down poppy crops in that town, a move which resulted in a terrible gun-battle, hostage crisis and deaths. And the next day, when elders from the town came down to Jalalabad for parlay, Dalrymple was the only nonlocal allowed to witness the sessions thanks to Khan again—and Dalrymple received nuggets of information that writers usually kill for. And he has been quite lucky rather persistently. Years ago, Tatler wrote a piece about another such marvellous piece of luck; four years into his research for White Mughals, Dalrymple was on a final visit to Hyderabad. He decided to visit a local bazaar to buy metalwork boxes as presents. In that sleepy bazaar he met a stranger who ended up selling Dalrymple not just boxes but manuscripts bought by the shop owner in the sixties, containing a 650-page autobiography of Khair un-Nissa’s first cousin. With that manuscript and some more files, Dalrymple pieced together the book, originally planned as a general study of late eighteenthcentury British officials who had gone native.

The One Big Festival

The expression of going native is a peculiar one—it could be said (just a little bit) about Dalrymple himself. He has made India one of his home. His three children partly grew up here. He has closely collaborated with Indian (and global) writers and experts for his books, and he has been one of the three founders of the Jaipur Literature Festival, one of the most prominent literature festivals in India. In the past few years, the festival has grown manifold, and it has been exploring bolder, different themes and styles of writing—for example a session on prison diaries which was in spotlight the previous year. The focus has been increasingly on Indian writers from the margins, especially Dalit authors. Dalrymple is honest enough to pile praise on the lady who he believes has more to do with the change than he. “Between Namita and I we cut the world. She gets South East Asia, and I get the rest. She gets to invite 180 people and I get to invite around a 70; rather tragic. Between the two of us, Namita is the one who is interested in suppressed literature, whether you are talking of Dalits or anyone else from the margins. I on the other hand, am more into inviting writers who I admire. Personally, I would turn the focus on writers from China and South East Asia, Palestine. I would like to see more biographies. Cutting-edge novels. We make a huge effort to avoid publicity of the frivolous and put focus on books. This year, too, we have Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, really solid thinkers. Hardcore.” For the person who has been giving the microphone to Indian writers, we had to ask; does he believe that non-resident Indian writers can lend an authenticity to the ‘Indian voice’? “The authentic Indian voice is one of those chimeras like the concept of ‘real’ India which is always somewhere else. There are a billions of different Indias and a thousand more varieties thereof. I wouldn’t discount any literature on the account of a writer’s address. Then you lose Jhumpa Lahiri, who I believe to be a strong writer. Her Unaccustomed Earth made me weep me with pleasure, By that same token, Joyce wouldn’t be an Irishman and Ulysses, written during Joyce’s selfimposed exile, should not be considered an Irish novel. So, I believe the entire concept of authentic Indian voice is problematic.” D a l r y m p l e a l s o acknowledges that it is a tricky proposition pleasing all at the same time. His book, The Age of Kali ran into controversy over the interpretation of the word meenakshi. The word allegedly became ‘fish-eye’ rather than ‘eyes shaped like a fish’. “Inevitably you make errors and there are interpretations which people don’t like. I believe that if you are courteous to your critics, the task gets easier. What I believe to be important, and what I do, is send off the script to experts. For this book, it was Russian and Afghan specialists, East India Company experts and people who knew the geopolitical history of Afghanistan. If you can do that, you can pick up an awful lot of errors and controversies before it gets published. Having said that, there will always be some (errors) which will get through. I have a list on my Blackberry of six errors that have already been spotted. You have to be prepared to make errors and be held accountable for them.” What he would vouch for is his style—he acknowledges that it is what he loves and continued to carry throughout his career as a historian-author. “The White Mughal, The Last Mughal and Return of the King, are narratives in the classical historical sense. It is a style in which very few are writing (in India) nowadays with the exception of Ram Guha (Ramachandra), who has been writing on 20th Century political events with rigorous research and turning it palatable for a general audience. At the end of the day, it is lovely that there are so few who are writing like us, because it gives me my little USP,” he chuckles. Mentions of his work is always peppered with mentions of colleagues, peers and collaborators. He speaks highly of historian and journal ist Rudranshu Mukherjee: “a friend who is very, very helpful and extremely generous with his advice.” And Mahmood Farooqui: “Persian and Urdu are the keys to my research and the person who has been closely collaborating with me on the projects has been Mahmood Farooqui.” And then there is the indispensable Bruce Wannel: “He sort of moves into a tent in our garden for six months. In the morning we meet up and work on texts together. We jot down names. Often, names are made more ‘familiar’ in the native tongue, and thus gets a bit garbled. Say, Colonel Hop-a-kins for Colonel Hopkins. We have to pay attention.” In good humour, Dalrymple admits that without translators he would have a tough time. “I am not a linguist. I used to speak Hindi better than what I speak now, after living here for so many years. I do know some European languages. But yes, I wouldn’t trust my grasp over Urdu and Persian with the kind of technical texts that we are dealing over here.”

The Treasure Hunt

For a man who was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth, he seems surprisingly at home in India. Maybe it is time that people stopped writing or commenting on just how comfortable he is. It was in his gap year that Dalrymple first visited the Subcontinent, teaching at a school and working for Mother Teresa. He found it, “a complete shock” but after the first month he “fell in love with the place.” By the time he went up to Cambridge, his future path was set: he was going to be a writer. What fascinated him were the trappings history, and that not knowing it or complete denial of it was dangerous. “There are so many parallels between then and now. The West has installed on the throne in Kabul a man from the same tiny sub-tribe. Shah Shuja (ruler between 1839 and 1842) and President Hamid Karzai are both Popalzai, while the tribe which brought down Shah Shuja was the Ghilzais, who now make up the foot-soldiers of the Taliban. So you have this extraordinary feeling of history just repeating itself. The political geography remains the same, and as you travel around the country you feel the parallels grow rather than diminish.” It is history repeating itself that finds centrality in his books, the rest is made easy because he likes his work. “The methodology starts with the simple act of reading. Then you move to more detailed research; and then to finding the resource which is the maximum struggle. It takes long time. Yet, if you really like what you do it never feels like work. It is like a treasure hunt.” By now contently sipping on his wine and superbly excited as people start streaming in, he leaves with a final word. “With the Return of the King, I received the holy grail for a historian. First, the new material, second a great story with a tight narrative arc and great characters, and third a story with a global and contemporary appeal. I was lucky enough to have all three.” With that, and a nod, he goes on to present one of the best lectures by an author, in a long time.

IT IS A WONDERFUL time to be in Delhi, the winter. A time to be outdoors; picnicking, visiting tombs and sarais, attending plays, exhibitions, reading a book in a sunlit park or watching a late night film. With the Oscar nominations announced, expect a few of the nominees in the best film category to hit the Indian theatres. In such a beautiful, calm time, does fear have to be our companion? The young woman who lost her life to a singularly brutal act of violence left the earth for a better place (I sincerely hope). With her demise all our false notions of being safe in the city were torn away. If the incident showed the heinous side of our city, reactions to it kindled hope. When I saw young and old, men and women, take to the streets demanding a right to safety, a right to walk where and when they please, freedom from platitudes, and sought better governance—I believed there was hope yet. This messy city of mine is all encompassing and all caring; it accepts the human and the inhuman. My city of contradictions is beautiful and terrible and naturally, some people are taking pleasure in vilifying it. But there is a heart—ancient and strong—that beats within Delhi. If you talk to historian-cum-author William Dalrymple, you would know just how soon it got to be the “home away from home”. The author who launched his latest book recently is on our cover in February. Effervescent and precise, we caught him in a rather tight time. Yet he was generous with his time, thought and ideas. DW was a part of the Jaipur Literature Festival, which concluded some days ago, and our team was genuinely impressed by Dalrymple’s energy and focus. Read about what keeps him ticking on Page 12. Another treat in waiting is the in-depth chat we had with veteran actor, playwright and dramatist M.K. Raina. We talked to the thespian about stage, scripts, work and life around a time when the NSD Drama Festival was on. It was heartening that we actually managed to catch him in an especially busy hour. As usual, we have strived to get you a mix-and-match of fact and fun. There is the Social Agenda section with the brilliant Tushar Kanwar writing on “how to make office stuff go viral”. Our columnists this month are Ashok Malik and Jai Arjun Singh. Their analysis of the recent crime is thoughtful. Do read and let us know how we can make our issues better. In the meantime, be the best that you can be.

One of the bloodiest attacks yet

BLASTS \\ The death toll from a series of deadly bombings across Pakistan in the second week of January 2013 rose to 120, Pakistan police reported, making it one of the deadliest month the country has seen in years. Five people who were wounded in twin bombings on a billiards hall died of their wounds around January 10, 2013, said senior police officer Hamid Shakeel from the southern city of Quetta, putting the death toll from that attack at 86. The strike was the worst of three deadly bombings targeting Shiites and soldiers in Quetta, capital of the volatile Baluchistan province, and worshippers at a Sunni mosque in the northwest. The billiards hall bombing, in a Shiite area of the city, started with a suicide attack but was followed by a car bomb minutes later in the same area. Militants often use such staggered bombings as a way to maximise the body count by targeting rescuers.

Two soldiers lose their lives in an attack by Pakistan Army

BATTLE \\ The distraught father of Lance Naik Sudhakar Singh, who was one of the soldiers killed in an attack by Pakistan Army across the LoC, wants the leaders of his country to give a “befitting reply” to the neighbouring nation for the “dastardly act”. Lance Naiks Sudhakar Singh and Hemraj were killed in a raid conducted by the 29 Baloch Regiment troops of Pakistan who had intruded into the Indian territory at the Poonch sector on January 8, 2013. The bodies of the soldiers were mutilated. “The government should respond to the dastardly act by the enemy (Pakistan Army) in a fitting manner. That will be the real tribute to my martyred son,” said Lance Naik Sudharkar Singh’s father, Sachchidanand Singh, after the cremation of his son. “Hamari iccha hai ki dushman ka datkar muqabla karke usko usi ki bhasha mein jawab dena chahiye (We want that the enemy should be dealt with in a befitting manner),” said he. Singh hails from Dadia village in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh. “Sudhakar was our strength and was supposed to come to the village between February 15 and 16, but now everything is lost,” Singh said. The 30-year-old deceased soldier, the youngest of four siblings, had joined the Indian Army on April 7, 2002. He is survived by his wife and four-month-old son Bhaskar. When asked whether he was satisfied with the Government of India’s response on the issue, Singh said the government has its own responsibilities, but this situation “demanded an equally befitting action.” The martyred soldier’s cousin, Prem Singh, said Sudhakar’s father-in-law was also a retired army man and despite losing his son-in-law, he wants his grandson to join the Indian Army. Fully supporting the views of the grief-stricken father, Professor Kailash Tyagi, from government-run MVM College in Bhopal, who is also the PhD guide of former Army chief, General V.K. Singh, said, “It is not advisable to remain defensive beyond a point, as it leads to cowardliness.” “After all, for how long? Defensive responses on serious issues like this result in demoralisation of forces,” said Tyagi, who teaches Defence and Strategic Studies. He said the issue was being debated by his students (under-graduate and post-graduate), who were “angry over the brutal killing of the soldiers”. A retired Lieutenant-General based in Mhow, on condition of anonymity, said, “You cannot expect anything from the government. The Indian Army should deal with the situation," he added. Cross border trade along the Line of Control was halted after some 25 fully-loaded Indian trucks were not allowed to unload at the Chakan Da Bagh crossing at Poonch. Later, more instances of firing were reported along the border.

In January the Indian film fraternity celebrated the selection of Chennaibased Carnatic music vocalist Bombay Jayashri’s Oscar nomination for Pi’s Lullaby from the Life of Pi for the 85th Academy Awards, terming it an “amazing honour” for a great artist.

Om Prakash Chautala and his son arrested in the teacher recruitment scam

ARREST \\ Former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala, and his legislator son, Ajay Chautala, were arrested in January along with 53 others on the orders of a Special Court in New Delhi for the illegal recruitment of teachers in the state. The accused have been sent to Tihar Jail. The Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) chief and his son were accused of illegally recruiting over 3,200 junior basic trained (JBT) teachers in Haryana when he headed the government in the state during 1999-2000. The arrest comes as a major blow to the party which is the major opposition party in Haryana as Assembly elections are due in 2014 in the state. The other 53 convicts include senior IAS officers Vidya Dhar and Sanjiv Kumar. Around 62 people were originally accused in the case. While six died during the trial, one was let go during the framing of charges.

LOSS \\ The recently-concluded India-Pakistan oneday series, hosted by India, was the first cricket series played between the two sides in more than four years. The series came with its expected hype, as it resumed cricket ties between the two nations after the infamous Mumbai Terror Attacks of 2008. The threematch ODI series ended with Pakistan winning it 2-1. The visitors exhibited their dominance from the very beginning, sweeping the series 2-0 before a victory in the last match in New Delhi helped salvage some pride for the host nation. In one-sided contests, Pakistan earned victories by six wickets and 85 runs in Chennai and Kolkata, respectively. Pakistan’s leftarm fast bowler Junaid Khan emerged as a crucial performer with eight wickets, while opener Nasir Jamshed added to his fine record against India with a 241 runs in three inning, thus earning the man-ofthe- series. For India, the only silver lining was debutant pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar’s bowling, which impressed fans and pundits alike.

As Delhi rape victim battled death before giving in, the city raised its voice

PROTEST \\ On December 16, 2012, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student was beaten up and raped in a moving bus by six men. The woman who was accompanied by a male companion had boarded the bus at 9.30pm after watching a film. The woman succumbed to her injuries within two weeks of the assault. She was beaten up by an iron rod, which damaged 95 per cent of her intestines. The 23-year-old breathed her last on 29 December, 2012, in Singapore, where she was undergoing emergency treatment. The assaulters also beat up her friend and threw the two out of the bus. Police found and arrested some of the perpetrators within 24 hours of the incident. Out of the six accused, one is a juvenile, also allegedly the most brutal attacker. While the six will be tried for murder, the juvenile accused could walk free after three years of imprisonment. Meanwhile, protests broke out in Delhi, and the rest of the country, over government apathy and lack of safety for women. Protestors also took to streets demanding capital punishment and stricter laws for crime against women. In one rally, protestors allegedly clashed with the police, who then lathi-charged and shot them with water cannons and tear gas.

I GREW UP IN “Bombay” not Mumbai obviously. It was an interesting place to be a child—we, (my father, mother and I) lived in a single-room set in a rented apartment. We shared a bathroom and a kitchen on a rather Tony area called Nepean Sea Road. We were paying guests. Rest of the tenants were Muslims, while we were the sole Hindu family in that building. That was an interesting point, I grew up thinking the reverse proportion was how things were in the country. I went to Campion School in South Mumbai. Campion students usually came from wealthy backgrounds. We lived in a single room, so I ended up never inviting my posh friends over to the fishing bowl I called home. As a child, I was mostly by myself and ended up painting, writing and studying a lot. The loneliness worked out for me. An added advantage; my mother was an avid reader. She had a big trunk filled trash and classics—Harold Robbins, James Irwin, Shakespeare and Irwin Stone, all of them jostled for a place in her magic book trunk. She would also visit the local library and let me borrow books as well. My mother was an English and history teacher, but her specialisation during Master’s was psychology and sociology. She started her career as a social worker, and also, for a year she worked under the then Prime Minister of the country, Indira Gandhi. She had a whole bunch of things working for her and I grew up having a strong female presence in my life. My mother was also a very open and liberal woman, especially around me, her only child. When at the age of 13 years, I declared I wanted to read Harold Robbins she accompanied me to the Warden Book House. I asked for The Adventurers, which, I think I received because my mother was there beside me, and because the librarian was a man who knew his business. India in the 1960s and 1970s was a vibrant, bit confused and an inherently chaotic time. Arts were not encouraged, especially Indian arts. I hardly read any Indian writers in school. But thanks to my mother, I was a “reader” by the time I was in high school. I believe that my parents were responsible for my life's perspective. My father was an assistant to Madan Mohan and then to Laxmikant-Pyarelal; three, famous Bollywood music directors. He had travelled to Mumbai to become a singer. He never quite made it as a singer and instead got shunted into the secondary profession of being a music director. I was listening to a lot of Bollywood music while growing up, probably because that was the most-frequently played music on the radio. We had an old gramophone that played 78 RPM records. We never actually had a “modern” record player, and so I could never actually buy “new” music. For a long time I never heard any “English music”. My tryst with Bollywood goes on strong even today. When I visited Mumbai recently, I bought remix tapes, all complete with 20 awful songs. One of them is a song on an antennae, if I am not mistaken. Terrible and terribly good at the same time; that’s Bollywood for me. My life and the times then were deeply entrenched in the Hindi film industry. When I started writing some familiar names slowly crept onto the pages. I borrowed Asrani (a character in my first book), who was an actor and a friend of my mother. Remember, Mrs Jaiswal who cheated in cards? That’s a cousin from New Delhi. Only, unlike the Mrs Jaiswal in my book, she is an honest player. During a book launch in London, I remember her standing up and addressing the audience with, “My name is Mrs Jaiswal and I play cards. But I never cheat!” Fortunately, I simply borrow the names and not the characters. Friends, family, acquaintances, Hindi film industry, its players—at least some of them—occasionally find a place on my pages. Is it a conscious choice? Not really. The India of my youth— was a time when a student who showed any aptitude for studies, was pushed towards sciences and mathematics. If you failed those, you might try something else. Perhaps arts? We were a middle-class family which meant that science was taken very seriously. My grandparents were refugees from Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Like most good parents, mine too, wished to see me do something ‘respectable’; become a doctor. Though I was good in science subjects medicine never interested me. In college, I almost ran into chemistry, then went into physics, and finally settled with mathematics after taking a class in abstract algebra. What I love about mathematics is that one can find definitive answers in it. It takes an amount of discipline; one needs to spend time in it. Sit down and comprehend it. When you do a problem and it works out, it is a great feeling. A professor suggested that I try to find a fellowship in America. At that time I was pessimistic about my future in India. Once I got the ball rolling for studies in America, the idea excited me. I was around 20 when I obtained a fellowship to Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh. The year that I passed out, I obtained a teaching position at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where I have been working ever since. Currently, I am a full-time professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. My area of specialisation includes numerical analysis of partial differential equations. In today’s world there is a whole bunch of people who have merged mathematics and arts. I do not see myself as doing something different. Mathematics has not managed to exploit auditory, visual mediums too well. By playing around video and words, I believe I can make math accessible to more people. I believe that arts and mathematics need each other. My first observation in the US was that there was no hierarchy of science. Most people I met, seemed to dislike mathematics, rather vehemently. Which was the only shock. Having said that, it was easy to set down roots in America. As far as culture shock is concerned, when I came to the US there was none. But every year, I need my dose of—what I label as—the Indian chaos, especially to write. I began writing fiction in 1980. It was not a smooth sailing process, I received numerous rejection slips. Until the publication of the Death of Vishnu, I kept my writing stint hidden from the rest of the faculty as a senior member had told me, that mathematicians who pursued other interests were not taken seriously. Despite me trying really hard, I cannot place my stories in the US. Its streets, alleys and walkways seem too clean and too devoid of the chaos—my fodder. This is a vibrant chaos that I miss sometimes, the one that is rooted in India. I have tried, several times, to place stories in my now-familiar home. But I have failed. Therefore, the compulsory trips that I make to India—thrice every year or more—are when I recharge my writing batteries. Then I expend that energy at my leisure. In August 1994, a man named Vishnu died in the stairway landing in my parents’ apartment. To mark his death because he was a nobody, I started to write about him. The Death of Vishnu, as a short story started there. I hopelessly abandoned the story almost two years later after suffering a rather severe bout of writer’s block. I was stuck in the third chapter. I enrolled into a five-day workshop at the Fine Arts Work Centre in Provincetown, Massachussetts, under Michael Cunninham. Though we dealt with another short story as a writing exercise (a story that I was actually interested in), Cunningham was more focused on the short story that I was stuck on. He egged me on to finish it and when it was complete, its excerpt was published in the New Yorker, entitled The Seven Circles. That led to W.W. Norton getting to see it and ultimately agreeing to publish it. Each time when I have released a book, there has been gap of two to three years when I could not write at all. I seem drained and exhausted by the effort. This time I am hoping to break my threeyear- jinx as my next project, a math e-novel, is something I wish to create for everyone. I understand that everyone is a problematic target audience. Do I want laypersons to read it? Or, people with a minimum interest and understanding of maths. I have no clue as yet. I am hoping that once this madness of launches subsides and I am back in my quieter writing zone, I would know.

There is no formula to going viral, but there are wise steps that can make you stand out

“I need you to make this go viral now!” Words that can make any honest marketer roll their eyes and sigh. Unfortunately, thanks to the mind numbing success of Kolaveri di and Gangnam Style, every business owner, small or big, aspires for their content to go viral on social media, to have content which so overwhelmingly resonates with the audience that they feel the intense urge to share it with all their contacts immediately. So much so, it’s practically the Holy Grail of most social media and marketing campaigns. Think of the traffic, the audience growth, and the brand awareness! The fact of the matter is that you just cannot guarantee anything—neither your insanely cute puppy video nor your business’ new product campaign—will go viral. There is no formula that can, with any certainty, predict whether or not your content will go viral. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you blindly go out and produce just about any content and then pray to the Twitter and Facebook deities to make the magic happen. Having followed truly viral successes online for many years, here are some tips, broad guidelines rather, to ensure your video, blog post, marketing campaign or Facebook post has what it takes to go viral. Be creative: While that may seem to be a no-brainer, bear in mind that most viral content that you end up sharing and remembering has that extra special something done creatively—something that sets it apart from all the cruft. When you are sitting down and planning for your content, do not be afraid to be a little absurd and think outside the box. It’s usually the stuff regular folks find too unusual to attempt that catches on. Ask yourself this, “If I saw this in my newsfeed, would I share it?” If the answer is “no”, think about why and keep improving the content until you would be proud to share it yourself. If you would not share something, why should anyone else? Be engaging: Gone are the days of fireand- forget one-way messaging. Increasingly, brands are engaging fans through interactive content and user generated content contests. Be engaging—talk to your fans via Facebook, conduct fun quizzes and run buzz-friendly contests—you will find that the more interactive your content is, the more it gets shared. Be current: While your content should without doubt be original, bringing in a current popular trend and putting your own spin on it can be really effective to make that connect with the audience. Capture the moment, and keep it relevant— engage with your audience to find out what they’re talking about and roll those themes into your messaging. Be connected: You could, if your budget allows for it, pitch your brand to big-name social influencers on Twitter and Facebook. I mean, one tweet from them can potentially send your campaign into the viral content hall of fame! But this approach has its downsides as well, since these internet celebrities are hounded day and night for their marketing value and often come across and being “paid sellouts”. What probably has longer-term value is to create content targeted towards smaller connected influencers who share content within their own tribes. Research shows that the million likes often come from thousands of smaller networks internally propagating your content virally. Be genuine: If your content is promotional in intent, do not mask it under the garb of creativity. Be straightforward in your communication with your viewers, and do not try to deceive the consumer about who’s running the campaign. It’s perfectly possible for branded content to go viral—remember the 2010 Old Spice made-for-Youtube commercials? Be shareable: Your content isn’t going to be anywhere even in the same pin code as viral if it is difficult to share, and people have to jump through hoops to share it. Make sharing your content easy-allow video to be embedded in other blogs, put share buttons on your web or blog page, and push the content out on Facebook and twitter where sharing it is just one easy click away. Also, incentivise sharing—if you are running a social media contest, you can reward participants with an extra entry for retweeting the contest message. Be mobile aware: Phones, not PCs, are where your audience consumes little tidbits of information all through the day, so if your content does not work on mobile phones, it can not go viral. Plain and simple. Make sure you have a mobile web version for your site which places the content front and centre, making it easy to consume and share. Be humorous: Take a look at your Facebook news feed, or your email inbox. Do you not notice a lot of funny stuff getting shared? Laughing together brings millions of people closer each day, and if you can tap into that emotion with your content, go for it! Be positive: If you want to see your content getting some share-love, focus on the positive. Studies show that content that evokes high-arousal emotions (i.e., awe, anger, and anxiety) is more viral, with awe-inspiring (positive emotion) stuff edging out sadness-inducing (negative emotion) stuff in terms of virality. Be list-friendly: Would this column have grabbed your attention faster if we’d called it “The 10 Best Ways for your Content to Go Viral”? It’s a proven fact that headlines with numbers drive greater response than those without. Keep that in mind.