Do I have any literary prizes or accolades?
Not yet…am just waiting for the Booker; nothing less will do.
Did I struggle to write my first book by burning the midnight oil till the break of dawn, like a man possessed? Nope.
Did I juggle the demands of a family, career, and the clock ticking away to somehow put my thoughts on paper? Again….nope. Do I have a PhD or at least an MA in English Lit from a prestigious university, a qualification that would give me the heft and gravitas of being a ‘writer’? At least a course in Creative Writing? Are these essential? Nope, nope, nope.
Then what am I doing here?
Good question. Well, as a writer of 4 published novels (with hopefully several on the way) I think readers may want to know what I did and how I did it.
Just a wild guess.
I was fortunate in my choice of career. There has been no greater catalyst to my creativity than the ocean.
The Merchant Navy, of which I was a part for 45 years, gave me the opportunity, experiences and the perspectives that enabled my literary journey. This is true especially during my later years as a senior captain, when long voyages gave me the time, solitude and peace of mind to organize my thoughts and draw from my experiences (as well as those of others) to form coherent storylines on paper. I did not have to struggle like most writers, who try to manage their day job, personal career growth, bad bosses, family, in-laws, social and professional commitments (the list goes on) and yet find time to follow their passion.
I doff my cap to them. I couldn’t have done it. I was blessed to be a seaman, notwithstanding the hardships one faces at sea.
Let’s go back a little in time, shall we?
I would have to credit my father for inculcating in his 3 sons, Tishya and Upamanyu among them, a love for the English language and a voracious reading habit. We grew up devouring books, speaking in English at home (much to Ma’s dismay!) and developing an urge to write. I recall many, many occasions of the 3 of us sitting at our dad’s feet, while he would read out passages from Capt. James Cook’s travels or excerpts from Charles Dickens’ novels or a poem by Tennyson. My mind would get transported to distant shores where I would meet characters leaping to life from the pages of the book in my dad’s hand.
Circa 1974. Hehe…. this is me a long time ago, when some of the writers in the Readomania family were not yet a twinkle in their fathers’ eyes.
I joined sea life that year as a Deck Cadet in The Shipping Corporation of India’s vast fleet. For the next 10 years, I literally learned the ropes and gave it all. I had to learn all aspects of what turned out to be a demanding job, where one was always required to have situational awareness and be ready for an emergency. I was ambitious, and wanted to rise in my career. I worked my butt off and studied in my spare time. Creative writing took what seemed like a permanent back seat.
But I thank my stars that the aspiring writer in me (who had not abandoned ship!) had the good sense to remind me to keep a journal of sorts. Not a daily ‘Dear Diary’, but irregular jottings of any interesting experience I’d have—and trust me, there were many.
So many of these jottings on places, people, amusing incidents or horrific events have proved invaluable for my stories in Driftwood and Wind Chimes. More about that later.
Ten solid years in the Merchant Navy, and I was promoted to Captain. Master of a ship. I was a little baby faced, I admit. Not exactly a grizzled veteran sea captain that comes to mind, like the captain of the Titanic, right?
Still no creative writing. I’d been too busy with studying for promotional exams one had to undergo to climb the ladder. But fortunately, there had been enough of recreational reading, as all ships had libraries those days.
Thankfully, my reading habit remained.
The years passed quickly. 20 of them flowed past like a river, deepening its path with time. And as I grew older and grayer, I found that the job of being a captain—whether on a supertanker or on a long, sleek container vessel, whether in a raging sea, in the pea soup fog of The English Channel or in the congestion of Singapore Strait—was gradually getting easier, come what may.
Put it down to experience. I found I had time on my hands, and the urge to write returned. All this while, the only ‘creative’ writing I was doing was in my reports to Head Office to keep myself and my crew out of trouble—a little obfuscation here with a few fancy words, a little muddying the waters there—detailed ambiguous reports effectively confusing the Powers That Be, to avoid getting blamed for any f****ups. Hehe….
It finally started with poems. No prizes for guessing the central theme. The sea, of course. The ocean is a beautiful, tempestuous, vast source of inspiration. To see it in all its moods and colours according to the time of the day, season or the state of weather over the last so many decades awakened the poet in me.
I began to write old-school poetry. The kind of poems my father had read out to us. The kind of poems I learnt in school. The kind of poems I have not yet forgotten. The kind with rhyme and meter, that tell a story.
Moving to short stories was a natural transition. The internet had reached ships at sea, to our delight. I joined a Writers group online, ArtoonsInn, in 2015, and met several like-minded people, many of whom are still my virtual friends today. That is where I honed my writing skills.
We all did. We’d have monthly short story competitions based on a ‘prompt.’ After the entries came in, we’d get to see each other’s work and comment on what worked and what didn’t in the stories. Constructive criticism. Prizes were given to the best story of the month. I wrote quite a few prize winners during that period, some of them becoming a part of The People Tree.
It was during this stretch that it struck me. Why were there no modern sea stories available? Not of gigantic whales or one-eyed pirates, but contemporary stories that would appeal to seafarers and landlubbers alike—tales of adventure, love, romance, fun, modern day piracy and intrigue. We seafarers had such unique experiences begging to be shared. Why was nobody writing about us?
Thus, the idea for my first book was born. Stories from the sea that would wash ashore, like driftwood. I’d be the raconteur to bring sea stories to the world.
I got to work. Evenings on long sea passages…bless those days. I pored over my journal, trying to recall vividly what I had jotted down years ago. A chance meeting with a stranger, a new port of call, some amusing incident, some horrible accident…memories floated to the surface like debris from a submerged shipwreck. I put them all down on paper with embellishments, introduced new characters, added a bit of spice and twisted the endings of some. I harassed my shipmates for their own experiences and invited them over for a cup of coffee to my cabin in order to listen to them. I took notes. Slowly but surely, the stories were born. This collection did not entail heavy research. They were full of personal experiences and those of others.
The sea stories were thus completed by 2017. Had I known earlier, that was the easy part. Who would want to publish stories set at sea, though with all the ingredients one looks for in a tale? Which publisher would take that chance?
I reached out on email to various big publishers. There was no response. Not even a curt ’No, thanks.’
I didn’t know how to network or promote myself, a skill so necessary in this field. The Merchant Navy doesn’t teach you this. Almost a year passed while I waited in vain for a response from the biggies. The timid reminders from me did not help. Serendipitously, a website called Keemiya Creatives sent me a list of the smaller publishers who may want to take a look at a debutant author. I decided to take the plunge and shot off emails to a few publishers on the list. Then came an email from Readomania asking me for the entire manuscript.
No one yet had asked me for the entire manuscript before.
Publishing means no news for weeks, till the instant the phone pings with the email that will change your life. The heavens parted to send down a publisher, a man young enough to be my son, to inform me that Readomania would publish my work. The God of Small Things (GOST)…my publisher…made the dreams of an old man come true.
This was 2018.
Driftwood—stories washed ashore was published in 2019. The stories resonated with seafarers and non-seafarers alike, because they covered themes that interest all lovers of fiction. I promoted it at the Pune Litfest that year, which was another new, enjoyable experience. Sitting on a stage and getting interviewed also went off well, thanks to my experience of public speaking in school (and also as a sea captain, where I’d be required to speak to the entire crew regularly at meetings).
I had found my calling.
This is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, after I hung up my boots. My first book came fairly easily, as I have explained earlier. Now, there was a point I had to prove. I wanted to show the world my versatility; that I could write about all kinds of things, not just the sea. I decided to pen a collection of stories with not a whiff of the sea about them, all set on terra firma.
I got to work again, deciding to place each story in the collection at a different place in the country or somewhere abroad. Each story would be different from any other one in the anthology. There were so many anthologies I’d read before, where I’d found a sameness in the stories, that would not let them stay in my memory after I’d finished. I didn’t want that to happen with my book.
I covered a gamut of topics—from the Khalistan insurgency to the Mumbai underworld, from a doomed love affair in Hyderabad to a mature gay relationship in Delhi, from a lifelong friendship formed in unusual circumstances to the pangs of a schoolboy crush, from a 9/11 incident at the NY Twin Towers to robbing an art museum in London. 14 stories in all. I did a lot of research for each to get the details right—time, place, history, dialogue.
The People Tree—stories about us and them was born, published by Readomania in 2021. I am proudest of this work amongst all the others. Writing about the sea was easy; this one took a lot more effort, and I stepped out of my comfort zone to do this.
Enough fiction, GOST decided. He wanted nonfiction from me too! After all, nonfiction sells better, as the majority of readers want to invest their time to learn something new. My son suggested to me, ‘Papa, why don’t you write about famous shipwrecks? You know, like Titanic and stuff?’ The seed was sown.
There is something infinitely sad about shipwrecks. Yet every wreck has a story to tell, as it groans in the darkness and rusts in peace. I decided to tell the stories of 13 of the greatest maritime disasters outside the realms of war.
Mayday!—maritime disasters that shook the world was my foray into nonfiction in 2023. A bit of maritime history and/or maritime adventure—what, how and why these disasters took place. And if they could have been avoided. With the benefit of hindsight, I gave the answers to how these could have been avoided, thus saving thousands of lives and untold damage to property. Simultaneously targeting the non-seafaring readership by keeping it as simple as possible. My daughter did a fine job illustrating each chapter the way I wanted it done. Her attention to detail is one of the highlights of this book.
I was invited to the Nagpur Litfest to promote this book and also to participate in a panel for travel writing . Dipankar interviewed me for this book at the session, and therefore the chat went smoothly, because he does these interviews so well. But wait! Do you know that he made me sing at the end of the discussion?! I was totally caught unawares!
There were so many sea stories remaining in my head following Mayday! (There still are, honestly, even as I write this) that I needed to compile another anthology. GOST relented, his trusted associate Indrani gave her nod of approval, and Wind Chimes by the Sea—stories blown ashore came out in 2024. Sea stories all right, but different from those in Driftwood. Not much of journal gazing this time to dig out personal experiences.
I decided to do research this time to write stories of the past, as well as of life at sea after I had left it (I retired in 2020). In this collection I covered the 1971 Indo-Pak war ( topical now, some would say topical always!), a 16th century tale of tall sailing ships, a sailor trapped in a city of darkness on one fateful night in 1975, a hapless crew in a frozen, hostile country in 1981, a crew battling COVID at sea and many more. All illustrated beautifully by my daughter. And such a beautiful cover.
In between all these books I wrote a regular blog for the Readomania website, which I titled Out of My Mind. These kept me gainfully occupied for a whole year. And more. I covered a wide range of subjects—social, personal and political. More importantly, the blogs got me more exposure. More readers began to be aware of my existence, judging from the feedback. I ended up writing 45 blogs under Out of My Mind.
I have been invited during the past two years to various institutions to talk to the students about a maritime career, how maritime disasters can be prevented by sound management practices, the art of short story writing, stuff like that. Stuff that I have the knowhow to talk about. I have also judged a short story competition at a Gurgaon school. I enjoy all this. It’s nice to talk to youngsters who have not yet developed the cynicism of world-weary adults. The schools pull out all the stops to treat me well, and my grey crowning glory helps, of course.
I also spend my time nowadays leading a Book Club at Museo Camera Centre, Gurgaon, where we meet once a month to dissect a particular famous novel. Sometimes, I interview authors during their book launches. Yes, life is good, though the coolness of autumn is replacing the fierce heat of my life’s midsummer.
Something brewing in 2025? I think so. Let GOST announce it when He thinks the time is right. If not for people like him, eager new voices would find it impossible to find their writer journeys, like the one I am sharing with you now.
Meanwhile, this old sea dog continues to be carried wherever Life and the current take him. Like driftwood.
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