If Shashi Tharoor had Indian books like The Summer of Cool and The Good News Reporter to read when he was growing up, they would have featured in his book “Bookless in Baghdad”, Chapter 1, Growing Up with Books in India.

Congratulations on filling a very important void! If I had to compile a list of most influential Indians, you would be among the top! Not only did you write for children, you wrote a completely desi book, which like most Indian urban things and people, reflects the global nature of today’s kids with their Indian cultural sensibilities.

There is no ‘Indian children’s book’ that I could relate to while growing up. Thanks for changing all that. My older daughter thoroughly enjoyed the book and so did my younger one and I just could not put the two books down. I read them one after another. The thrill of reading an Indian English book was magical. Then I went into ‘withdrawal’ and couldn’t bring myself to read anything else!

Last but not the least, the desi consideration aside, you wrote two very good books for children. I am thrilled about the fact that these have Indian characters, themes, plots and ‘Indian English’. But they are good books first because they are simply good stories. The plots are good and the story keeps moving so that you want to keep turning the page.

I am also glad to see the larger trend of desi literature emerging, which you are a part of:
http://khabar.com/jsp/article.jsp?sessionid=00p0-IVDEYkoqAyDtnPeTpCVtmI&tempid=6390540636112119442&_articleid=2688
The commercial success of books also helps encourage new authors that India needs. About time India!

I would change two things about the book. One, I would edit it ever so slightly to make the book have a broader appeal to include an even younger age group. Two, I would approach Penguin to get a better bound book. Our copy of TGNR already has pages that are coming loose at one end.

Suchitra, I hope Devi Saraswati blesses your pen so you can keep more books coming. We would be thrilled to hear back from you!

Keep writing!
Chandra

Thank you Chandra for the above kind words. Its one of the reasons i chose this genre-the fact that there is no indigenous indian literature for the young mind. Nothing that told us about our own lives, the way we celebrate it.
 

Your  words seem to make all the  effort and sleepless months that go into writing a book worth it )

I invariably write through the night-when my daughter is asleep and i can be freed from the disturbance of mundane domesticity. My urge to write is so strong and uncontrollable that i just do it but i sometimes wonder…

Writing in India is an unrewarding job, in terms of money and recognition. I mean my maid earns more! An item girl shaking her touche on stage in a back of the beyond small town earns many many times more.

While i can afford to laugh it off  because my livelihood or lifestyle does not depend on it I often wonder how other writers sustain themselves.

I hope this changes soon…because there is an ocean of talent and a wealth of stories we can tap into-totally uniquely Indian. They need to be encouraged and suitably rewarded

Then maybe the new writers (unlike most of the current crop) wont feel the need to peddle our poverty and our feudal past to the west- because thats where the big bucks and the fame comes from.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around how the publishing business works…its all a bit weird.
Will go to my studio and paint now. So much easier i tell you…no executives and no politics to deal with. Its just me and my canvas…

Bella ciao my dears
Until my next

‘Hi, I am Sonal Wadalkar, the good news reporter, reporting live from Swapnalok Society–the most happening society in all Mumbai.’

Pretty, dainty Sonal, Chitrangana’s best friend, knows what she wants to do for the rest of her life. She’s going to be a television journalist. And not just any old reporter, but a good news reporter. After all, the media influences the way everyone thinks and behaves, so the more good people see happening around them, the happier and better people they are going to be.

 When her father’s boss, the owner of Spark news channel, commissions her to produce five-minute children’s specials for the channel, she straps Funky, the cool monkey with a hidden camera around her waist, and plunges into the mad, bad world of television reporting.

There she finds herself battling Vimal, a nasty ambitious executive, out to hook her talons into her father, plunging TRPs, and disgruntled neighbours over the way they are being portrayed on TV.

Then one day, she stumbles on the story of Raju and his friends from the Gareeb Nagar slum. Can she use her position as a journalist to change their lives? Can she take on the city’s powerful builder lobby and the villainous Sandy Khan and stop them from demolishing the children’s home? And will Swapnalok Society bury its differences and stand with her in her hour of need?

The second novel in the much acclaimed Swapnalok Society series, The Good News Reporter comes with strong doses of humour and a cast of wacky characters that first appeared in The Summer of Cool. Battling cynicism and corruption with spunk and bravado, the Swapnalok Society gang prove once again that when united, there’s nothing that can stop them from changing the world.

http://books.rediff.com/bookshop/bkproductdisplay.jsp?Swapnalok-Society:-The-Good-News-Reporter-Books&prrfnbr=82833310&multiple=&frompg=_

http://landmark.rediff.com/bookshop/bkproductdisplay.jsp?pvvrnbr=4261&prrfnbr=82833310&multiple=&pvrfnbr=84019530&prform=Book&source=browse&fromurl=_

On the 21st  of January 2007, i wrote a blog on www.intentblog.com called “art in a body part”  On the 27th of february 2007, based on what i had written in that blog  the following article appeared in the Bombay Times.

The consequences of that cheap  article by Gayatri Jayaraman i am still bearing today…with guys like Nikhil still asking me on my blog two and a half years later if i want them to pose nude for me…I still get several emails/calls etc etc about it.From models. model co-ordinators and every wannabe desperate to grab attention any which way.

 Here goes the two artcles…let me know what you make of it

 ART IN A BODY PART
Suchitra Krishnamoorthi – February 21, 2007
Yesterday I was invited on a chat on CNN-IBN to discuss the Lolita Syndrome in our society. The other distinguished guests on the panel were Amitabh Bachan, Ram Gopal Verma and Alyque Padamsee.
Mr Bachan and Mr. Verma for a large part stuck to talking only about the content of their film Nishabd which opens in the theatres next week sometime. It is the relationship that develops between an 18 year old girl and a 60 year old man. A very interesting story -history and life itself is full of such instances.They stuck entirely to promoting their film only & could not be drawn or provoked into anything further. Fair Enough.
What ensued from the chat though was very interesting, the questions that were thrown up, fascinating. One cannot make a moral judgement on any of it but here are some of the points to ponder that are still swishing about in my head
1. An 18 year year old girl may have the body of a woman but how much of the relationship that she gets into a conscious choice of a mature mind and how much of it is exploitation on the part of the male? Is it natural for her to feel this attraction towards an aging male and what is the socio enonomic psychological condition that brings it about?
2. If she is throwing herself at him –is it his moral responsibility to call up her mother and tell her to take her home? Or should he feel flattered and enjoy the attention? Legally she is a consenting adult after all…
3. The male female dynamic of predator and prey is obviously not an outdated concept, going by the magnitude of how often it happens all around us. The point is, is our assumption that the predator is male, and prey female outdated?
4. How come a relationship dictated by tradition and culture and religion gets sanction in society but one that emerges from supposedly free choice,( as in the case of an 18 year old girl falling for a 60 year old man) invites the wrath of the elders and the moral police?
5.How much of consciousness is really conscious? Are we really ever free of our conditiong and upbringing?
Etc etc
Then the discussion took a very interesting turn. The point came up of men being inspired by beautiful young women and how every man needed a muse…with the sterling example of a distinguished brilliant 93 year old Indian artist being inspired by the beauty of women…MF Husain. his name came up prominently in the discussion
So I am asking the following ….
Why is it always an extremely young woman… so is it all about sex then? If it is all about sex then what is the shame in admitting it? We are human beings after all… why be ashamed of something that is so intrinsic to our nature

Understood that we are genetically programmed for it –given that a young woman through centuries has been a symbol of fertility & so the man is automatically drawn towards the female that will bear him the healthiest children & so continuity of the species is ensured blah blah….

 The most beautiful woman will choose the strongest male and vice versa.But hasn’t medical science and technology changed all that? More and more women are having children in their forties and even fifties…the very definition of strenght and power has turned upside down…or has it? how long before our minds and our conditioning catch up with changes in our immediate physical environment?

I am a huge admirer of the expertise of the 93 year old artist who has the gall to admit that he is inspired by the beauty of women and is constantly looking for a new muse.

Women are clamouring to be his new muse-it gets front page headline attention in every newspaper and magazine in India. They are given the title of “true Indian beauty” :and “spirit of the Indian woman”
Everybody around is getting very happy, rich, and euphoric, having cracked the code to the beauty of the Indian woman

Being an artist myself I am all for artistic freedom and expression.
Anyone who has the courage to be true to his/her heart in my opinion is an artist of the highest form. I bow my head down and salute this honesty.
But as a woman and very Indian at that please don’t tell me that the pictures he paints are something I should be flattered by or aspire to.

An image of a female form that has scratch lines for features, no face, no expression at all. All that leaps out of the canvas with extraordinary vitality are the strong curve lines of breasts and well rounded seductive backsides. Sometimes there is the sari –the pleats often tucked deeply and strategically in warm cacooning crevices.

Therefore coming back to the discussion of the Lolita syndrome-I’m inclined to agree. Nothing has changed for centuries and it’s scary to think that it never might.

So I’m going to do something I’ve never done before.
Regardless of whether or not i really want to, or how i really feel about it, because the outcome may be worth it.

I’m going pick a male muse to paint –aged between 18 and 25 -someone young , beautiful, strong, muscular full of yearning, hope, ambition intelligence and faith.

I’m sure I’ll find many volunteers-after all if we are both lucky, with blessings from the cosmos,we could make headline news in India and laugh our way to the banks for a long time . He could also win the auspicious title of “Spirit of Indian Male hood” or “Masculine Beauty of India”etc

Then I’m going to proceed to obliterate his face, his expressions his soul his heart and brain with smugdelines on canvas. I learnt this very effective smudge technique in an art class in New York. Everything will be a blur-like coming from far away.
The only thing I will highlight in bold are the strong V lines of his taut torso and his private parts. These private parts will leap out of the canvas and smack you in the face like a loud clanging bell. Oooh La la…

Flattered Dude? You could be a star!

Based on the above blog the following article appeared on the 27th of February 2007 in the Bombay times. It was subequently picked up by almost every other publication in and outside of India

DUDE, WANNA POSE NUDE?

Gayatri Jayaraman, TNN 27 February 2007, 08:19pm IST

WANTED – HOT MEN! Suchitra Krishnamoorthi is calling for hot-bodied young men to pose nude for her at her studio in Juhu (TOI Photo)

Suchitra Krishnamoorthi is looking for hot-bodied, young men to pose nude for her canvas.

Suchitra Krishnamoorthi is calling for hot-bodied young men to pose nude for her at her studio in Juhu: “I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. The outcome may be worth it. I’m going to pick a male muse to paint — someone between 18 and 25 — who is young, beautiful, strong, muscular, full of yearning, hope, ambition, intelligence and faith.

I’m sure I’ll find many volunteers. And if we are both lucky, with blessings from the cosmos, we could make headlines and laugh our way to the bank! I intend to obliterate his face, his expressions, his soul, his heart and brain, with smudge lines on canvas. The only thing I will highlight in bold are the strong ‘V’ lines of his taut torso and private parts. These will leap out of the canvas and smack you in the face like a loud clanging bell. Oooh la la…”

Life, among other things, has lent Suchitra a sense of humour, and her tongue is firmly in her cheek on this one. Why is she doing this? “Well,” said Suchitra, “It started when someone I knew casually called me up and asked if they can stop by my studio to be painted in the nude. I was shocked and felt very betrayed — if they were strangers, it wouldn’t feel like ‘Is this how you have perceived me all this while?’ Disgusting!”

But as she pondered it, Suchitra said, the artist in her took over. “I asked myself why is it that when women get treated as sex objects, there’s always a reasoning and logical dimension given to it. So as an artist, I decided to reverse the roles and asked how men would feel if I made them sex kittens?”

Have perceptions of her changed after her divorce? “Yes, a little bit. Today, if an Alyque Padamsee can ask me: ‘So, do many men hit on you?’ — which he wouldn’t have dared do when I was married. But I don’t believe the world is full of such men. On the whole it’s a nice place, and I’m pretty insulated — I go to my studio and paint. I have my daughter. I live a full life. So no, I’m not at all fearful of it at all.”

Thirteen years after Suchitra played the coquettish Anna opposite Shah Rukh Khan in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na, the actor who had put her career on hold to become director Shekhar Kapur’s wife, has post-divorce taken on the role of Amitabh Bachchan’s wife in Ram Gopal Varma’s remake of the classic Sholay. “My character is not evil. I play a pretty much spaced-out housewife in the film. It’s quite interesting actually,” she said.

I never issued a clarification to that article. Even though the paper did have the goodness to ask me to  if i wanted to. But i didnt…Because it was so cheap- it was hilarious…Not worth my time. I found it below my dignity to respond and so validate that piece of junk in any way

Because I understood the intentions of that particular journalist and ignored it. She was looking for a headline making story at any cost, for which she blatantly ignored the overall picture or the context  in which I had written that article “art in a body part” in the first place. It was a misrepresentation of facts for her journalistic greed for which i was merely a bakra…a scapegoat…a guinea pig

And so  the first seeds of what would eventually turn into a book called “The Good News Reporter” were sown.

A lot of people have asked me about the inspiration of the story and the idea behind the title. Well, it comes from my own understanding (I’m not saying that its right or wrong-except that it is my individual take on it)  about the way things work in media.

To me media constitues  any information or knowledge  that is shared on a public forum, be it television, print, internet, or other avenues.So it is not just one person or paper or channel or website. Media is the collective. Due to the fact that i blog on a very public platform and give my views on whatever strikes my fancy i consider myself a part of this collective too.

Media is also known as the 6th sense and for a good reason. Because our take on the world, how we perceive the world outside of our immediate five senses  is only through the media. From what we read what we see, what we hear and what is debated.

News-is anything thats new. Which is why journalists are always clamouring for new stories, breaking stories, information that they access before their competitors.

In the last few years I also realized that this 6th sense we talk about, the media. that is so controlled by the things we see and read, is so controlled by the INTENTION of the person who is bringing the news to us.

 This intention in turn  is controlled by various factors such as their own thinking, greed, ambition, financials, the larger editorial interest of the paper or channel they represent blah blah

SO very often what we know about an issue is the take a particular reporter has on the issue- very few take this responsibilty with the gravity it merits.
Since we all all human we all have our individual points of view. We see things in a positive or negative way, things can be good or bad.

All this works at a very subconscious level…most of us are not even aware of this impact. But it exists. So media affects collective thinking

 It takes a God to be completely objective and none of us are that i guess.

No news is good news? Ahn ahn…Sonal Wadalkar the main protagonist in my new book dosent agree with that age old premise. She wants to talk about all the nice and happy things happening in the world… but has few takers for it.

The good news reporter is her story…

I’ll illustrate this further with a few examples from my own experience in my next blog Right now i gotta run…

The good news is that it is now available on amazon.com and they ship to anywhere in the world.

Please click on the link below

http://www.amazon.com/Summer-Cool-Suchitra-Krishnamoorthi/dp/0143330713/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248681747&sr=1-7

Enjoy

The bad part is that I have been inundated with phone calls emails and sms’s from people complaining that they have been unable to acquire a copy of the book.

My publishers (Penguin India)are working hard at restocking the stores with the novel, but in the meantime, for those of you who would like to buy the book,  i would recommend that you order it online. Its quick easy and there are even sites that do cash on delivery.

Here are the links to a few online stores that you could purchase “The Summer of Cool” from

First and Second.com

http://www.firstandsecond.com/store/books/info/bookinfo.asp?txtSearch=4625283

Rediff books

http://books.rediff.com/bookshop/buyersearch.jsp?lookfor=Suchitra%20Krishnamoorthi&search=1

http://books.rediff.com/bookshop/bkproductdisplay.jsp?pvvrnbr=4261&prrfnbr=82601628&multiple=&pvrfnbr=83491676&source=browse&frompg=_

Web Mall India

http://www.webmallindia.com/books/booksearch.php?boo_id=5068

India Plaza

http://www.indiaplaza.in/books/all/9780143330714/all/summer-of-cool-the.htm

Dial A Book – 011 64656565

(Dial a book delivers across all the metros, with same day delivery within Delhi)

EBay India

http://books.shop.ebay.in/items/Books-Magazines__W0QQ_nkwZsummerQ20ofQ20coolQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZR40QQ_sacatZ267

(Thank you Umesh for this link.) Ebay delivers outside of India for those living abroad

Please let me know of any instance where you may have visited a store and found the book out of stock. With the name of store and location. We will try our best to replenish the stocks asap.

Cheers and lots of love

Suchitra

Underwear Uncle and Aunty are on their way out. Sita Maami has developed a cola water that the cola company wants to buy from her. There’s a dog kidnapper on the loose. Varun Vadola, a charming young bachelor, has moved in next door. When Ammama, the batty grandmother lands up from the village, life becomes even more exciting . 
 
Chitrangana Varma with her innocent eyes and precocious lies is the despair of her gang of friends. Like most other kids,she wants to grow her hair long, have her mother bake her an angel cake, and become a bathroom decorator of repute.

But above all that, what she really really wants is to find her father.

Then, on her tenth birthday her sister gifts her Sapna, a doll that looks just like her and speaks words only she can hear.

Armed with Sapna, Chitrangana sets off on a roller coaster adventure that takes her through the dregs of Mumbai’s gutters to its glittering peaks.
Does Chitrangana finally find her father? And does she find the answers she is looking for?
 
 
 The book is being officially launched on the 31st of Janurary 2009 in Mumbai.

 To order your copies on line, please log on to

http://www.firstandsecond.com/store/books/info/bookinfo.asp?txtSearch=4625283

http://books.rediff.com/bookshop/buyersearch.jsp?lookfor=Suchitra%20Krishnamoorthi&search=1

http://books.rediff.com/bookshop/bkproductdisplay.jsp?pvvrnbr=4261&prrfnbr=82601628&multiple=&pvrfnbr=83491676&source=browse&frompg=_

http://www.webmallindia.com/books/booksearch.php?boo_id=5068

Insecurity is a great motivator-’I dont know’ sometimes the most important and powerful words we can tell ourselves.

So i decided to  do nothing for a few months, except read gossip magazines (anything more serious seemed too daunting) exercise, have massages at the spa blah blah. I was thrilled. For somebody as high energy as me the plan to do nothing was a serious plan.

A week into my ‘plan to do nothing plan’ i started to get restless. Bored. Hyper. Mental. Attended a candle making class. Took a course on mediitation. Reiki even. Still restless, wondered about learning a foreign language-theres a spanish class near my place…Cleaned out every nook and crevice in my home and studio again and again. Scrubbing rubbing and polishing. I still stayed away from my easel and brushes waiting for inspiration for my new theme of paintings to strike  like a bolt of lightning from the sky.

On one such” I dont know what next and so I’m ‘cleaning out my closet yet again day”  i found a thin file of papers at the bottom of a box in my storage cupboard- stuff i had written ages ago (in my ‘I’m a bored London housewife’ phase) and forgotten all about.

It was a synopsis. A story of a young girl Chitrangana Varma desperately looking for her father. Set in a co-operative housing society in downtown Mumbai called Swapnalok Co-operative housing Society.

I decided to revisit the story and started to write. Flesh out people from my own past, some real some imagined. I still didnt know what exactly i was doing but then something took over and i found myself being plunged into this magical make beleive world inside my head called Swapnalok Society.With all the chaos ,the scizophrenia, the love, the  eccentricities , the highs and lows of the people that lived there. I couldnt stop. I worked into the nights sleeping an average of two to three hours. The charactors started talking to me, telling me their secrets, their stories, their loves ,their longings.  I tapped into the rich reservoir of my own growing up years and soon the line between the real and the fiction started to blend.

6 weeks later i had a book-or rather the first draft of a book. I dashed it off to a friend of a friend who was the commisioning editor at Penguin books India. She emailed me back saying she loved it and would i be interested in developing it into a series. Was she kidding?  I said yes. And thats how it happened.

My first novel. The first book in the Swapnalok Society series is called “The Summer of Cool’ Its being officially launched on the 31st of janurary 2009 at the Crossword Book Store in Kemps Corner.

Wish me luck guys. Am i nervous? You bet! More than i’ve ever been for anything else in my life & i’ve done a LOT of things and have maintained a fair degree of detachment from it all 

But now suddenly, I’m oscillating between euphoria (the Oh my God i cant belive i have a book coming out kind of excitement) 

and despair (the Oh my god! will they even understand what I’m trying to say,and the oh my god will they laugh at me kind of anxiety)

I’m so spaced  i’ve shifted into a gear beyond thought… have i lost it? or have i finally found it? Why has all my confidence suddenly flown out of the window? Why cant i treat this like many of the other things i have done?  Hmnnn…its that phrase again. I dont know…