Mimi Mondal

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Passionate people are also boring people. Those with no specific interest or opinion are boring as well, so I suppose the only fun people are the ones with a healthy interest in a number of things, those who can switch effortlessly from one interest to the other. I am not one of them. I am the unhealthily passionate sort. I am writing a series of short stories, and if you try to have a conversation with me, all I do is talk about them, or try to make you read one. Or I talk about the books I am reading, or the publishing industry in general, or… *horror* *horror* of my notion of politics. Evidently, that makes me quite a droll conversationalist for most people.

In Calcutta, I had gone to university with a large number of people. Well, every university has a large number of people, but at mine the social scene was particularly active, so a large number of people knew other large numbers of people. Now I no longer keep track of most people I superficially knew, or the ones whose interests I did not share, which creates a particular impediment to gossip. Besides, new people are growing up into the social scene all the time, so my reactions to new gossip keep moving from ‘Oh, I see – they did that?’ to ‘Who?’. There are so many people in the world, every one of them of mild interest. I find it more profitable to know a few people to great depth than everyone just a little. I am more interested in minds than the surface repercussion of actions.

Above all, more than anything, I am trying to avoid any knowledge of that inhuman conglomerate called ‘society’. I have always been terrified by inhuman conglomerates – ‘school’, ‘college’, ‘office’ and so on. What ‘the school’ thinks is not what any individual in it thinks, and it’s meaner, more judgemental, more forbidding, reducing every individual that participates in it to their basest instincts. I don’t want to have anything to do with any of these. Much better this room, these books, these tireless hours of pondering and working upon a craft. They are so much more benevolent with their rewards.

And maybe the occasional coffee with someone who doesn’t gossip.

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Books I have read of late:

Aimee Bender, The Color Master
George Saunders, The Tenth of December
Sofia Samatar, A Stranger in Olondria
Junot Diáz, This is How You Lose Her
Isabel Allende, The Island beneath the Sea
Ranjit Lal, The Battle for No. 19
Kuzhali Manickavel, Things We Found During the Autopsy
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

You will notice a newly discovered interest in contemporary American authors, which was the shade of my reading in September. I am still on the outlook for others to read, although I’ve returned somewhat to the eclectic behaviour of my reading. You will also notice lots and lots of short stories. I also re-read most of Borges and Angela Carter’s short stories, and too many new standalone stories to name.

A story, a poem

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A poem I wrote in 2011 was recently published, in an online magazine called The Missing Slate. Here is a link. And here‘s a link to the original, which is one (punch)line longer than the version that was published. It is ever interesting to discover how people read your writing. I’d have thought that last line essential, but the editors of the magazine found it redundant to the poem.

Sometimes, these are lessons.

Of course, I no longer feel the bruise under which that poem was written. (Other scars have covered it.) Distancing is so often a blessing.

The other, the story, is one I originally called ‘Interview with a Bollywood Screen Goddess’, which was published in the November 2014 issue of eFiction India. I have not seen this one yet, since the magazine can be purchased either as a digital or a print edition, and I am waiting for my print copy to arrive.

‘Interview’ (which the magazine no longer calls ‘Interview’) was a great story to write; it cheered me up during a period of otherwise intense depression. The story starts out as a magazine interview with a famous Bollywood actress, which is something I always find fun to fictionalize. I think anyone who’s ever been an entertainment journalist has had that thought running through their head – what if you could make up all of this, rather than, let’s say, about 60% of it? What if the person you’re interviewing literally represented those adjectives like enchanting, mesmerising, unearthly… and then, in ‘Interview’, it turns out that they do! A very generic, easygoing fantasy story, set in Delhi (the Other City of this blog, whose habits and memories are still fresh in my mind) that made me very happy.

There is something to be said for this sudden surge of publications. It is that I have finally (I think) overcome my reluctance to publish. Of course, the transformation is less sudden than it seems. I had started writing ‘Death of a Widower’ in 2011, abandoned it, picked it up again in the summer of 2013, finished and send it in to Rupa, and An Atlas of Love was published in early 2014. That’s not quite sudden. I write maybe a poem or two a year. It’s hardly enough for a sustained publishing record, and as for fiction, for most of my life I have not been able to think in short stories. Any idea I had was always the length of a novel, and I’d start writing it, and of course, I am yet to complete a novel. I wish I was prolific, but I’m not. And while I never retouch my poems after I’ve written them, I find myself rewriting my stories most of the time, hopefully making them stronger and better with each version. It is a craft I am still learning. I hope one day I will be good.

First look, happiness.

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An Atlas of Love: The Rupa Romance Anthology came out earlier this year. It contains my short story ‘Death of a Widower’. Ridiculous how seeing one’s story on paper is still a different feeling from online publications, of which I am such a great fan.

The anthology was put together by Anuja Chauhan, one of the best romance authors in India at this time (and the only one I read). Unfortunately, the book was launched back when I was still in Stirling and I never got to meet her.

And now I have returned to comfortable old Calcutta, where few celebrities ever come but where it’s quiet and undisturbing, and there’s mum and home-cooked food and a room redolent with the fragrance of chhatim flowers.