This is how my journey into the world of writing began
Marriages are Made in India was my debut in fiction. It was published first in Kolkata in 2001 by Writers Workshop. P. Lal, poet and writer, was the editor of Writers Workshop. Himself a distinguished poet and author, he introduced some the biggest names amongst Indian English writers to the world. Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Shashi Deshpande, Ruskin Bond, Kamla Das, and the very best Indian poets began their careers only after P. Lal published them. When I asked him about whether Marriages are Made in India was good enough, he said the future would tell. If he had published it, it was not for nothing. The book was well received by those who got to know of it then. This publisher made no effort to sell his books. His philosophy was, ‘we do not want too many readers we want the discerning reader’; the reader worthy of the book.
This collection of short stories contains a kind of literary tourism of India. But more than that it is a journey into the Indian psyche vis-à-vis the Western world. It contains several gawky and odd characters that not only provide it with its comedy but also its pathos. No story in the collection is like any other story in it. I can say that this collection represents me well by anticipating the various dimensions of my writing.
In May 2012 Marriages was published as an e-book in the US by Publerati. This is a unique kind of publisher. It is probably the only literary agency of its kind anywhere in the world. It was established in 2012 to publish e-books of literary fiction and then proceed from there. The chief purpose was to build a market for authors and then sell their books to the big wigs of the publishing industry. This book of stories has done superbly and has now helped me to get what was intended. Together with my debut novel, The Tailor’s Needle (published by Penguin India in Dec. 2012), it has built a kind of platform from where I can speak to the world.
I am thrilled as my American literary agent, for this collection, Caleb Mason, of Publerati, sets out to find a publisher for a print version of Marriages are Made in India along with a campus novel that he virtually coaxed me into writing.
