What is the theme of the short story collection?

There are multiple themes in this collection of nine short stories and a play. This is a small collection of nine short stories and a play. The stories deal with love, poverty, crime, passion and various troubling social issues. The characters in the play are powerful non-humans who are familiar to all of us. Let me give you a short teaser about the stories themselves as that could be of interest to your readers.

In ‘The Stars Are My Witness’, an Indian scientist based in Thailand refuses international awards for mysterious reasons. Will he refuse the Nobel Prize too? In ‘The Price of Revolution’, an Indian revolutionary discovers that in his absence his girlfriend has developed other passions. ‘The End of an English Friendship’ touches upon the fragility of human relationships. In ‘The Magnate’s Magnet’, a Chinese billionaire remembers the day his fortunes turned. Other stories explore terrible secrets, such as in ‘Like Two Fingers Entwined’, where an Indian girl loses her virginity with consequences for a close friendship. In ‘Kubla Khan Smoking a Reefer’, an aspiring English poet smokes cannabis in Kathmandu with unexpected results. In ‘The Princess Who Would be King’, a young princess rebels against the norms of her society. In ‘Trading Flesh in Tokyo’, an ageing American-Indian publishing executive falls in love with a young Japanese girl, but there are weighty issues that need to be resolved. In ‘Sex and the Seety’, Raju, a small-town boy, befriends an English girl, and they end up teaching each other different skills. Finally, there is ‘How Madame Corona Was Introduced to the World’, a modern parable written in the form of a play.

How do you create your characters?

They just come to me. It is not a conscious process, or rather I should say that it is not a planned process. But all creative efforts are like that. You have experiences, you meet interesting people, and things happen to you and they all get archived somewhere. The writer of fiction is different from others in that he stores all this information in some kind of secret reservoir and then he pulls out plots, characters, stories like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

What inspired you to dive so deep into such thoughtful issues?

I wanted this collection of stories to reflect both the changing times and our common humanity. You know, for instance, English writers often set their stories in places away from home. Rudyard Kipling set Kim and so many of his stories in India. Graham Greene set The Quiet American, one of his most famous novels that was later made into a movie, in Vietnam. Both Kipling and Greene were familiar with the countries in which they located their fiction. James Hadley Chase, notable for his thrillers, was English but set most of his novels in the United States, a country that he had not even visited. Of course, the English do not have a monopoly on situating their fiction in foreign locales. My own fiction has been located in England (Inglistan), Afghanistan (The Sentimental Terrorist, An Afghan Winter and How I Became a Taliban Assassin) and India (Simran, Guilty of Love, Your Honour). It has even been located underwater (Star-crossed Lovers in the Blue) and in extra-terrestrial locations (How to Kill Everyone on the Planet).

The world has changed. More and more people are travelling to more and more destinations – including, of course, those who have chosen to be writers. This means that more and more writers will be basing their stories at multiple locations. In this small collection of short stories, my purpose was to achieve two personal objectives. The first of these was to publish a collection of short stories. Although I have thirty-seven books to my credit across multiple genres, I have not published a collection of short stories till now. By means of this book, I seek to remedy that gap. The second objective has been to give the book a distinctive flavor by locating the stories in different countries. Most stories are set in India, but there are also stories set in the United Kingdom, in Nepal, in Japan, in Thailand and in China. The characters, too, are multinational. Most, if not all, of the stories have an India connection, despite being situated in different parts of the world. I do have a plan in the not-too-distant future to publish a collection of stories that are unified by a theme – but that is not the case in this book, where the themes vary from passion to crime to friendship to human folly. Most of the stories are of moderate length, but one is only a single page. The last story in this collection is located in a fictional space and is written in the form of a play.

What were the hardest sections of the manuscript to write?

The play at the very end of this book was a real challenge. I have written many plays, almost a dozen I think, but all of them, barring one, are full length plays. This play titled ‘How Madame Corona Was Introduced to the World’ is however a short play which made it all the more challenging. You know that quote attributed to Mark Twain where he says to a friend: I am writing a long letter to you, because I do not have the time to write a short one! It was a bit like that for me with this play. Writing a short play was in some ways more challenging than a full length one.

How do you come up with the titles to your books?

To be honest I spend a lot of time, especially during the night, thinking over a book title. I would suggest to all aspiring writers that they invest some energy in trying to come up with a good title. I discuss prospective choices of a title with friends, colleagues, and fellow writers. For example, Trading Flesh in Tokyo is a much more interesting title than Flesh Trade in Tokyo, don’t you think? One of the biggest mistakes that an author can make is to choose a generic title. Your title must be distinctive so that if anyone searches for it on the Internet it shows up quickly. I have an old friend who spent many years in writing an excellent book and even found a top-level publisher for it but the book did not garner much interest because of a title that did not reflect its contents properly. You spend six years writing a book and cannot spend six days thinking up a good title? Doesn’t make sense, does it? I should add here that the cover of a book is also hugely important. In this regard I was very pleased with the efforts of Niharika Singh who designed the cover. She has confessed to me that it is now one of her own favourites as far as book covers are concerned

What would you want to convey to the people worldwide through your book?

If I had to say it in a few words it would be this: our world is one. So, there are stories in the book that are narrated by an Indian, an Englishman, an American and so on and forth. The locations too range from Tokyo to Kathmandu to London. And yet the stories are universal in a sense. In a sense they appeal to our common humanity.

What is the one thing that makes your writing unique and different from others?

Not for me to say, I’m afraid. I’ve been told from time to time that my writing is unique and different by reviewers of my various books but that is their assessment. An outsider would be better placed to judge if and how my writing is different and unique.

Are you engaged in any other creative or artistic pursuits besides writing? If so, please tell.

I did a short course in Filmmaking from the London Film Academy many years ago, and so together with Ananya Sharma, a bright young collaborator with excellent video editing and technical skills that I myself do not possess, every now and again we bring out a video for my YouTube Channel which I have recently also started posting on my Insta and Facebook page. Amitabh Bachchan once said that every writer of fiction also has an actor in him, and I believe this to be true. Not sure about being an actor but two of my novels are being considered by a Mumbai agency for making into a film or web series. Should that deal fructify I would love to be involved in the film making process to some extent even if it is a peripheral role.

Earlier my channel was confined to a discussion of most of the 37 books I have authored, but recently I have expanded its range. Please check out the link below: www.youtube.com/c/TheRajeshTalwarAuthor

What does success mean to you? What is your definition of success?

That’s an interesting question, especially as I’ve written a book on the subject titled ‘The Mantra and Meaning of Success.’ You might make a great deal of money selling soap, but if your dream was to sing songs, you are objectively successful but subjectively a failure. On the other hand, if you sing songs which you find personally fulfilling, but no one listens to them or likes them, you are possibly a success subjectively speaking but a failure objectively speaking. Success for me is when a merger happens between the objective and the subjective. For more on this, your readers will have to buy the book

How do you handle literary criticism?

Every writer needs to be open to criticism because how else will he improve? Having said that good criticism is hard to come by, especially during the process of writing a book. The criticism you encounter after a book is published will be of help only with your next book! This is why constructive feedback, be it from your editor, your publisher or someone else is so important.

Share something your readers wouldn’t know about you?

Most readers may not be aware that my books were hugely beneficial for me, though not necessarily in a financial sense or in terms of money coming in. For instance, I went on a British Chevening scholarship to do my LL M at the University of Nottingham, and I’m quite sure it was the two books I submitted together with my CV that clinched it for me. When I stepped into the interview room the British Ambassador who was chairing the committee held a copy of my book in his hand. Similarly, a year or so after the Masters from Nottingham I was interviewed by the United Nations at the Palais de Nations in Geneva for a position with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo. There too the books I carried with me to the interview were what clinched that assignment for me. I will write about these two seminal events in my life in greater detail in a book on higher education to be published next year. So, you see, writing books is definitely not only about making money from them. There is a famous quote attributed to Samuel Johnson which says that no one but a blockhead ever wrote but for money. I would say rather to the contrary that only a fool wrote only for money. There can often be other more significant non-monetary rewards quite apart from the tremendous satisfaction an author derives from writing a book.

What is one message you would want to give to your fans?

It would have to be the following quote from Oscar Wilde one of my favorite writers. Be yourself; everyone else is taken.