Anukrti Upadhyay writes fiction and poetry in both English and Hindi. Her Hindi works include a collection of short stories titled Japani Sarai (2019) and the novel Neena Aunty (2021). Among her English works are the twin novellas, Daura and Bhaunri (2019), and her novel Kintsugi (2020); the latter won her the prestigious Sushila Devi Award 2021 for the best work of fiction written by a woman author.

Her writings have also appeared in numerous literary journals such as The Bombay Review, The Bangalore Review and The Bilingual Window. Anukrti has post-graduate degrees in management and literature, and a graduate degree in law. She has previously worked for the global investment banks, Goldman Sachs and UBS, in Hong Kong and India, and currently works with Wildlife Conservation Trust, a conservation think tank. She divides her time between Mumbai and the rest of the world, and when not counting trees and birds, she can be found ingratiating herself with every cat and dog in the vicinity. 

She has a postgraduate degree in management and literature and a graduate degree in law. She has previously worked for the global investment bank Goldman Sachs and UBS, both in Hong Kong as well as in India. And currently she works with the World Wildlife Conservation Trust, which is a conservation think tank. She divides her time between Mumbai and the rest of the world.

We had an interesting request from some of our participants earlier on. And that request was to know more about how authors started their journeys. For instance, Jerry Pinto has been writing for 30 years. So, he has almost forgotten how it started. But you started writing very recently. I think your first book was published in 2019, wasn’t it?

Anukriti Upadhyay: Thats right.

Team HWR: So, tell us about the struggle, how did that whole thing begin and what was it like?

Anukriti Upadhyay: So, I have been writing poetry from even before I had conscious memory of some reading or writing. I used to write poetry in Hindi, and I grew up in a household full of books. The atmosphere was very academic and intellectual. I had books for toys.

So, writing came naturally to me. But I began writing fiction seriously in 2016, while I was also working full time. I started writing short stories, short stories on the longer end of the spectrum like 10,000 words or so. I then wrote Daura and Bhaunri, the novellas and Kintsugi, which is an even longer work. So, whilst I was writing I was looking for somebody to just read my work, to give me feedback, tell me whether I am headed in the right direction. And because I worked in a corporate role as an inhouse lawyer in international investment banks, that was not the place to seek feedback. So, I knew nobody who was a writer or a publisher or anyone connected with the field at all. I just decided to send the manuscript of Daura to the CEO of Harper Collins because the address was on their website. 

I don’t think that was the right way to go about it because I don’t think manuscripts should be sent to CEOs. There is a submission e-mail on the website. But I think I just got lucky that he sent that manuscript on to my-now editor, Rahul Sony. He is the literary assistant publisher at Harper Collins. And then the manuscript spoke to him because it was his kind of work and that was it. So, I was actually seeking feedback and I thought the best place to seek feedback was from a publishing house because they publish the best of it.

But now, with hindsight and with a little bit more of information about how publishing works, if I were to begin my writer’s journey today, I would probably send my shorter works to journals. I would come to a place like Himalayan Writing Retreat to submit my manuscript, to see what others are doing, how others do it. All my learning about writing has come from reading. I am a voracious reader. I read five books at the same time, and I have been reading all my life.

But it would have been really useful to come to a place where practitioners come. Because writing is a practice, it is a practice like medicine or law or yoga. You know, the more you do it, the better you get at it. The more informed people you do it with, you know, the more informed you become, your form becomes better. So yeah, I think I would have done it a bit differently.

But yeah, that is how I actually did it. My manuscript ended in the slush pile, and I just got lucky that Rahul thought it was worth reading and then acquiring and then publishing. And once that one manuscript went through, you know, they wanted to read my other works. And that’s how it happened.

And I think that Hindi publishing journey is equally interesting. I had written two short stories in Hindi which were published, one in Hans and one in Kathadesh, two well-known Hindi magazines and they were presented on a well-known magazine called Jankipul which brings out new voices and new works. So, both were published on Jankipul as well after they were published in paper form.

And a Hindi publisher, Rajpal’s, you know, proprietor Meera Ji approached me and told me that she wanted to publish a collection of my short stories. I told her that I’ve written those two works only. And then she said that she was sure that I was going to write more. And that’s how Japani Sarai came about.

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Team HWR: Nice. So just to be clear, you had no connection to Harper Collins? You just sent a cold e-mail to the CEO and got published. This is fabulous to hear. Because you know we all want to hear that these things work on merit and on the strength of your writing. And clearly, if your writing was picked up, it was purely on the strength of your own writing, right? It was not anything else, it was just that they liked the manuscript. So, had you sent the whole thing or just the sample? Like 7-8 thousand words?

Anukriti Upadhyay: I was naive enough to send the whole thing. So, I just sent the manuscript of Daura, which is a short novel. I just sent it and thought maybe somebody’s going to take a look and tell me what to do further with it. But I think, and I am not saying it to appear modest or something, I think that certain kind of writing works for certain kind of people. It’s very subjective. It is an entirely subjective field. And it just so happened that my kind of writing worked at that point of time for Rahul. And I mean, I am endlessly grateful for that, not just because I got published, but because Rahul is like my literary touchstone. I have great trust in his taste, in the way he thinks about literature. And I think that is essential, you know, to be able to have trust in your editor. And in my case, I hold him in a great deal of respect. I believe if he thinks something would work, then it works.

Team HWR: You said a very interesting thing. You said that it is like the more you do it, the better you get at it. But there are a lot of people and there is a lot of talk on being on social media. And we hear this all the time that we have to market our books and we have to do this and do that. So, are you on social media a lot? I mean, do you worry a lot about selling your books or do you just focus on the writing?

Anukriti Upadhyay: I just focus on my writing. The reason being that I am very bad at social media. There is a reason why I became an inhouse lawyer in an investment bank. Because I do not have any selling skills. I believe the best persuasion a writer can look for is the quality of their writing. So no, I am not a lot on social media. I do not at all think about how my books are selling. What I do think about is whether anybody who reads my work, feels a spontaneous connection with it, whether they feel that the stories speak to them. And what I also think a lot about is to learn from other practitioners. How are people doing different things, what new writings are coming out, what new experiments are happening? And they constantly try to learn. I am a very slow learner. So, I have to go slow and I also try to focus on my practice, on my writing practice, and I just do the best I can.

Team HWR: Nice. That is also good news for a lot of people because we don’t want to hear about how many followers we need on Instagram and how big an e-mail database we need. A lot of us are just happy writing and not doing anything else, and we would be very happy to leave the marketing to someone else.
So that is reassuring as well. So, you are a multifaceted writer in the sense that you are a poet, you write in Hindi and you also write in English, and you have been published in both. So, tell us about the differences in those two worlds, especially the world of Hindi writing, Hindi publishing, and the world of English publishing. What do you think? How are those experiences different? How are those two worlds different?

Anukriti Upadhyay: So, I think the English publishing world is definitely more organized and professional. There are commissioning editors and copy editors and then proof readers. Sometimes the word goes to more than one senior editor. You get feedback from everybody.
You get a chance to do iterative edits. You know somebody takes a look and comes back with feedback. So, the process of it is collaborative and stimulating because you are constantly thinking of the work that is now in the edit stage and because there is this professional segregated structure. The commissioning editor looks at it from a different set of eyes and the copy editor looks at it from a different perspective and the interplay is very helpful, I believe, in finishing the work. 

Hindi publishing, I think it is a question of resources, is less sort of organized in that sense.
I don’t think there are that many commissioning editors or editors who focus on the work as an entire body. There are proof readers who just sort of look at the spellings and so forth. 

So, I believe that to get a Hindi work to the stage of publishing, I as a writer have to think several times because I know that I would be the main editor of my own work, which is not so great in a way. I would love to have a really informed, good editor who gets their teeth into the book and tells me where it doesn’t work or how to work it or how to make it better. So that, I think, is the main difference. I don’t know how the other Indian languages work. You know how the other vibrant Indian languages like Bangla or Marathi or Gujarati or Malayalam, I don’t know how they work. But yeah, that’s my experience with Hindi and English.

Team HWR: That’s very informative. So, you write about literature even in the Mint newspaper, and we love them right now because they published an article yesterday and on social media. And I read one of your opinions about, you know, about Cuckold and how you were questioning its authenticity given the landscape in which it is set in. But it did win the Sahitya Akademi Award and it didn’t seem to bother those guys. So why does it bother you? What was it specifically that really bugged you about that book?

Anukriti Upadhyay: It is such a good question. It’s actually a great question because people have been reaching out about what I wrote on Cuckold. People have asked me to write a longer piece, but nobody has really asked me what triggered me, you know, that was because I am very reticent critic. I know how difficult it is to write a book. How difficult, wrenching, physically exhausting, and emotionally tiring writing a book is! They are putting a lot of labor in the work that primarily is only for your eyes, only for your own sense of joy or frustration. Because who knows whether it is going to be published unless you have been pre-commissioned. You know, unless somebody has already told you that this book is going to go out in the world. So, I hold myself back from criticizing because it is very subjective. And some pieces work for me, some don’t. What I minded about the Cuckold was that it is purported to be set in the 16th century and purportedly tells the story of Mirabai’s husband, Bhojraj Rana, who was the king of Mewar.
And from that perspective it should be interesting, you know because Mirabai is such a big folk figure for Rajasthan. I come from Rajasthan and grew up hearing Mira’s bhajans and verses that were supposed to be Mira’s bhajan but were clearly, you know, made-up later going by their language. I studied Hindi literature at postgraduate as well as doctoral level and have always been very deeply interested in Mirabai and her world. 

So, when I approached Cuckold, I approached it with a lot of expectation that it would do creative stuff from the other side. And Bhojraj is such a bland, amorphous figure. He’s just there as a foil to Mirabai. Mirabai is supposed to be his rebel.

Who wanted to live in a certain way? And Bhojraj is just this pit symbol of patriarchy. So, I was very eager to see how he has been fleshed out. What irked me was the place. The writing is not rooted in the culture it’s supposed to be representing. It is not rooted in the time it’s supposed to be set in and you know, whilst writers can take a lot of liberties with how they present or how they tell a story, or even how they change a story, how they transform it. To me, if you are setting out to write a novel about a folk icon like Mira, then you ought to know a little bit about Rajasthani culture, the language, the food, the landscape. And I felt that the novel makes such obvious and really big mistakes in that sense. I mean I must admit it did not work for me as contemporizing the subject, you know how a husband and how patriarchy also harms men, right?
This Rana is caught in this role, his role as a male and as the king and as the representative of the of the warrior, the class. And he’s helpless. So conceptually that appeals to me. But the way it fleshed out, it did not appeal to me, seemed very gratuitous. And the various women characters who are brought in to give, I suppose, their mention to Bhojraj’s character, but just they seem manufactured from the male gaze. They had no female vitality. They had no female presence. And then they were literally, you know, pardon me, but, you know, a man fantasizing about how women should be or ought to be. And yeah, so that helped me.

Team HWR: OK, Wow. All right. That’s interesting. It’s interesting to look at it from that perspective because otherwise you read through it and a couple of things jump out at you, but I think because you are from Rajasthan and you are so steeped in that culture, I think they probably bother you a lot more. So, I have read The Blue Women and just for folks who are from Bombay, you should definitely check it out because a lot of it is set in Bombay. There is this one particular story which is the Queen of Mahim, which really brings Bombay to life. It’s like the trains and the office environment and the meaninglessness of whatever they’re doing and even the food which is being mentioned, effectiveness of the people, Bombay sandwich. So, it is a lot of fun. It’s like a heart. I have lived in Bombay for about 5 years so I thought it was fun. But you also talk about this woman that says that she should get married because the fuse keeps going off, and at least if she was married, he will be able to fix the fuse. And then finally she says that she should just learn to do the damn thing herself. It is almost like the only thing that men are good for in that story is to be able to fix electrical fuses. So, I thought that was quite funny actually, although it wasn’t set up as a funny one. But the story also left me with mixed thoughts, like you know it is not a very conclusive thing and how Kalindi judging Vishakha was harsh, how she hadn’t checked the facts. And similarly, when you look at even the women in blue, you know it starts off sounding like a horror movie or a Horror Story but then towards the end it’s, you know, it’s slightly open-ended sort of ending and there is a fair amount that is left to the readers’ imagination. So, there is a bit of a pattern there. I was wondering if you know, obviously that’s intentional, but what are you trying to do with the readers here? Are you trying to provoke them? Are you trying to just raise questions? What is causing you to end them the way you do end them?

Anukriti Upadhyay: So, there is one perspective that I can give you which is from the writing process perspective. How I wrote these stories such that they ended in this way. The other answer is a retrofit. How I think I wrote these stories so that they end this way. And they are two different answers because the writing process is very intuitive. They’re the story genes. The fact is that the stories have their independent existence and I believe we are plucking them from where they exist in the collective subconscious. So, the story exists in the way it does, it progresses and end in the way it does. However, after I have written it and after I have given it a few rounds of scrubs and edits and have frustrated myself with it and, you know, despaired and then just went back and did what writers often do. I think that those endings happen the way they did and they have left things open is because that is how stories always end. None of our lives are neatly tied up. Nothing concludes neatly without any loose ends. That only happens in detective and spy novels, where everything you know fits in. You know, there’s a puzzle and all the pieces come together. But in life, that’s not how it happens. We don’t get satisfactory resolutions. What do we do get are different answers and then they play out in our minds and then we either make ourselves believe that they are satisfactory or we embroider upon them, which is, you know, a lot of our memories are just that. It will be that we’d imagine things and tack them on to memories and make things more bearable or happier or nicer or whatnot. So, that is the truth, that answer the story, the real answers. This is how the story came to me. I don’t tell the stories; the stories just tell themselves. But yeah, on the other hand, it plays out like real life.

Team HWR: Right. There is this old movie called The Summer of 42, but did it come from there? Have you seen that film or was that just completely from an imagination? Because I don’t think they are similar. Just that one thing in common.

Anukriti Upadhyay: OK, no, I haven’t seen the movie. I’m not a big movie watcher. So no, I haven’t seen the movie, but it is also in my Hindi collection Japani Sarai and I received, you know, emails and messages in social media saying that this story is designed to breakdown our culture, our society. And anybody who wrote this has never suffered loss or grief because this is now not how you breathe so. None of which made me unhappy because a story that evokes strong reaction is because it’s touching a nerve. It’s touching the nerve. And I’m sorry that it touched the wrong nerve for them. It made them hurt, though it was not my intention, but it was definitely my intention to touch the nerve. That’s my intention every time, right?

Team HWR: There was a court case against Ismat Chughtai when she wrote Lihaaf. So, I think it’s the times and how they’re changing. So yes, cool. So let us start, we’ll open it up and we’ll look at some of the questions here. The first one is more of a comment. Ratnam is thinking you’re at the Sikkim LitFest, is that where you are?

Anukriti Upadhyay: No, I’m not. But I’m in a very pretty place in the Western Ghats and whilst I look at you, I also see the river in the background and very beautiful mountains.

Team HWR: Oh lovely! Nina says that she has just ordered a copy of Nina Aunty because she wants to learn more about her namesake Aunty. So, Anil has the first serious
Question. He would like to know how to approach Rajpal. He has written a novel and a collection of poems, and I’m assuming these are all in Hindi.

Anukriti Upadhyay: They have their email address on their official website. You can get it from there.

Team HWR: There’s a bunch of comments, but I will read them out nonetheless. It says that it’s interesting how this is quite relatable. You’re dissociating the story character from yourself as the author, so which I think is, I don’t know how much that’s real or not. As a grief expert and as a bereaved mother myself and what I have learned is that grief is as uniquely personal as your fingertips. So yes, I would agree Ismat Chughtai and also Manto were constantly in trouble. Absolutely.

We have another question. How do you decide whether to write in English or Hindi? Is it a commercial decision or is it driven by the target audience? Or is it a creative decision?

Anukriti Upadhyay: So, all my writings are creative decision. I mean if I wanted to make a commercial decision, it could be far better to write for say screen or you know, write genre or fiction or stuff like that. All my writing is literally. It falls in what is called literary writing bracket. And the reason why I write a certain story in Hindi or in English is because that story comes in that language to me. It doesn’t sound very helpful. But the fact is that stories often begin and when I say story, I mean novels and novellas, the whole narrative fiction for me. They often begin with, you know, a phrase or a visual image which I might have seen or I might have imagined, but seems very real to me. And at that stage, usually it’s very clear to me that the language should be one or another.

Team HWR: OK, great. That’s helpful. Ashisha has a question. But first I have a clarification here. You have a Masters in literature, but it’s not an MFA in writing, is it?

Anukriti Upadhyay: No, no. It’s my masters in Hindi literature.

Team HWR: Ashisha is also a published author. She has just got her second book out, and she’s a repeat offender when it comes to FDCs. So, one of these days they’re going to not let you out. So, her question is really about do you have any advice for people to do an MFA or not to do an MFA? I don’t know if you want to take that question nonetheless because she assumed that you had an MFA.

Anukriti Upadhyay: Yeah, I would like to take that question. First of all, congratulations Ashisha on your books, I wish them all success. I wish your writing all success.

So I toyed with the idea of doing an MSA after my first work came out. And the reason I did not go down that route is because several people whose judgment I respect suggested that, probably for me with the writing at that stage, that it was the best ways to go on trying to refine my own style, trying to build on what I have already commenced on. But friends who went to do MFA, I think that what they gained from it is a network and a community of writers. So, majority of MFA is about you know, writing and critiquing others’ writing. So, reading like a writer is actually learning. When you read like a writer, it is different from reading for pleasure or reading as an engaged reader and actually the MFA provides you that space and that focus. You know you read the works of your fellow, of your cohort and you are expected to critique it, to help your cohort revive, define their words and in the process refine your language, your own writing. So that kind of focus for, you know, master’s program costs you a lot of money and you are completely focused on writing and you know, defining your technique. I think that can work really well for some people. But equally I think you know, writing retreats such as Himalayan Writing Retreat or Sangam house or places where you can go and just be immersed in your writing and for shorter durations might work as well for someone who has already published two books.

Team HWR: Cool. Thank you so much for that. The next question is from Neil. He is asking how do you finish your first drafts? I felt pressure to stick the landing for two drafts in a row. Stick the landing as in the you know the ending should live up to the build up like to. So, if you’re nearing the end but feel you’ve run out of gas, do you still keep writing rubbish or do you take a break?

Anukriti Upadhyay: That’s such a good and a fantastic question. This is a question that every writer asks. So, you are clearly a writer because this question has come to you. Every time you’re working on a manuscript, there comes a time or several times actually, where there’s a lot of self-doubt and questioning regarding whether this is going in the right direction or are you writing rubbish. My way to handle it is when I am riddled with self-doubt regarding whether this is the right way to go ahead or not, I actually keep writing. I keep writing but I’m a very detached writer.

There’s nothing that I write that I love or feel possessive or attached to. I’m very happy to discard what I’ve written, and I do it routinely. So, when I’m at a spot where I’m feeling that it’s not working out or I’m writing something that is not unraveling the nerves. I write and discard and I keep doing it till I know that there has been sufficient sort of turmoil, sufficient creative stimulation that I have forced into the process. The other thing that I believe helps as well is, you know, just literally physical activity. You go to the gym, exercise, go for a walk, move. Because sometimes things are stagnating because you are static.

And writing is a process where you have to sit at one place for several hours. So that creates a stagnancy in your creative process as in now whether you should stick to a work just because you began but you also know that it is not going anywhere. So, I would say do not stick to that work. Do not feel attached to what you’ve written, but do not give up either. Do not say that you are throwing it away because it is not working. Do not say that you are not going to write anymore. Do not work on that specific piece, work on something else. So, which is why I never work on one manuscript. I’m always writing three things, one log of work, a couple of short stories, a poem. Because I know there comes a point where I feel this is not working. And before I just toss the notebook aside because I write in hand, man, all my first works are written in a notebook with a pencil.
So I decide to do that. I want to go and write something else and come back with fresh eyes. I don’t know whether this was a helpful answer at all, but this is just what I do.

Team HWR: I think it does. I think what you said about being happy to discard your writing is particularly helpful because it feels like if I write something and it’s not good so removing it feels like wasting all the time. But we probably should have the courage to just throw it in the bin. Yeah. Thank you. That’s part of the process, I guess. 

Anukriti Upadhyay: I just want to say that by discarding I don’t mean literally to discard or delete it. Just put it aside. It might come in handy at some other point of time. Also, no writing that you’ve done is a waste of time. Every writing that you’ve done, consciously or unconsciously, is going to refine and make your future writings better. So that one thought I would strongly urge you to discard completely. There’s no wasted time in writing. Everything you write say a journal, a pitch to an editor, a short story, and aborted work, every writing is useful.

Team HWR: So actually, you have already half answered the next question, but I’ll read it out nonetheless. It says, “Just like how you read five books at one time. I have multiple ideas for writing a book or for the short story collection. I’m curious to know on what basis you decide to work on one or keep the other stories for another day. If it’s a short story, do you finish all the stories before you hit the editing table or do you work on one before you move to the other? I’m more of a short story writer, but also write articles and poems, so therefore I find myself jumping all over.”

Anukriti Upadhyay: Well, you’re asking somebody who also jumps. For me, writing short story is a continuous process. I write short stories all the time. I don’t know how many I sent to Rahul from which ultimately these thirteen were selected for The Blue Women. For every short story there is in The Blue Women, there are probably 10 others that are written. I write short stories all the time because there’s always something that can be captured in the narrative fiction. They may then find a place in a longer world, because sometimes short stories just merge together and then they transmute in a longer world. At least for me, I do not plan an outline or layout a novel before, but start working on it. So, for me short stories have just endless possibilities. They can go anywhere, including become a longer world.

Whether I write one story and edit it, no, I write the first draft. And first draft is usually like a happy process. You are following the story and very curious to see that where it goes. It’s the second draft which is completely right for me because that’s when I actually type it from my notebook. That only happens much later for me. I let the story rest or breathe and then go back to it and see what happened there. And every time I have revisited, I mean, which is why I never read any work of mine that has been published, I never read it after publishing, because I know that I will find flaws, and I know that I would want to work on it again. So, for me, this is how I work. I write, I leave it, move on to something else, then go back to the old work at some point just to see how it looks to me now. And yes, write several, several things at the same time.


Team HWR: Interesting, Cool. So, we have a couple of more questions. So, Lee is asking, “After your first publication, did you seek out a literary agent or are you still working directly with the publisher?”

Anukriti Upadhyay: All my books have been direct contracts with the Harper Collins. That’s because I sent all my manuscripts to Rahul after Daura and Bhaunri. They’ve been very generous. But I do think that a literally agent is very helpful, especially if you find a good one, like Kanishta or Himali. So, I gave Himali one of my works which is very different. It’s a sort of mystery novel and I think that the way Himali and her team reads also opens fresh perspectives for me. So, if you are thinking of presenting a completed manuscript to a publisher, if you can get a literary agent to take a look at it, please do that. It’s always very useful in contract works, and they’re far more experienced, they know how to pitch it.

Team HWR: Was that written into your contracts? Does Harper Collins have the right of first refusal or do you just keep going back?

Anukriti Upadhyay: So, they do have the right of first refusal for the next manuscript according to the contract. But, if I choose to give my next manuscript to a literary agent, they can pitch it simultaneously to others while waiting for Harper Collins to make a decision. And then based on the feedback from other publishers the literary agent can also negotiate a better deal for me.

Team HWR: Yeah, and for folks who don’t know, Himali Sodhi runs a literary agency titled The Suitable Agency. She has had many years of experience in the publishing world. All right, next question is on writing short stories, how do you know when to stop writing and not given to the idea of writing more and end the story on an interesting note?

Anukriti Upadhyay: You know the story sort of ends by itself, but then there are times when it doesn’t. And then, for example, Kintsugi began as a short story. But then I realized that the story hadn’t ended and more was happening with the characters, and that’s how the novel emerged. So don’t force yourself, just follow the story. It’s literally like sometimes you smell something at night but you cannot really look at the direction the smell is coming from, but it’s very enticing. And at night the smells intensify and then you are sort of trying to trace which place the smell is originating from. Stories are like that. You smell the beginnings of a story and then you try to impute your way towards where it’s going, and this is just my personal opinion. It’s when we try to force an ending or force something which we believe is interesting and really worth writing about into the body of a story, that’s when the story just gives up and runs away. And then you are left wondering whether you have written enough or not. So, the best way is to go with the flow of the story.

Team HWR: All right, cool. The next question is about Kintsugi. Tushara says, “I loved reading Kintsugi. How does one write characters like Haruko and Hajini, considering they’re culturally miles away? Did you find it difficult connecting Japan to Jaipur at all?”

Anukriti Upadhyay: You’re right, Haruko or Hajini for that matter, they are culturally miles away from me as somebody who’s born and raised in Jaipur but then I worked in international environment, so it was difficult to write Haruko. I think the most difficult character to write was Yuri, because Yuri is very steeped in to Japanese culture and whilst I call myself a Japanophile, I really love Japan and all its intrigues and alienness and all its complexities. And of course, Japanese writing is just great. I know that I’ve only stretched the surface. I do not know about Japanese culture the way I know about my own.

So I thought Yuri was difficult and I had to be very careful. Haruko was more complex as a person, less culturally sort of embedded anywhere. So, they both were difficult in different ways. Yuri was difficult to write from a cultural perspective. Haruko was this girl with so many traumas in her past and a sense of not belonging anywhere. They just made her so footloose and easy to lose hold off. 

If you want to write a character which is not from your own culture, the only way to approach it and that’s even in India, I mean we’ve got so many cultures and when I started working on Bhaunri which is about a nomadic woman. I’ve only been an observer of nomadic life. Or do I know about the inner constructs of a nomadic woman? So, you approach that culture: one, with respect, two, acknowledging that you know very little about it, and three, you go out and educate yourself about that culture, which means reading books, meeting people, and putting yourself in public places. Over there you observe and set yourself down in places where you will come across people from that other culture, even if you do not get a chance to interact, just to observe how they go about.

So, all those things need to be done in order to make that character sort of authentic and be respectful towards that culture. Because we miss out a lot when we look at the culture from outside. And you know, I freely acknowledge I’m sure I missed out so much. But there are Japanese readers who came back to me after reading Kintsugi and said that it felt very real to them so, maybe I succeeded little.