I wrote my story collection, Marriages are Made in India, in the years 1999-2001, in the strangest of circumstances. I wanted to write fiction but hadn’t a clue of how to begin. I had been to a temple in Maihar, Madhya Pradesh, India, with some miraculous results in the years before I began writing. The goddess of learning and the arts sits there atop a high hill. Now, before beginning to write, I asked for her blessing and within two years, so very late in life, I had these eight stories ready. They were published once in Calcutta and then in the USA as an e-book. They are now to be published as a paper book by a leading publisher in India. My American literary agent is finalizing things for this publication.

We need divine help in major matters like writing and then publishing successfully. No wonder most poets of olden times who wanted to write successfully first invoked the Muse and then began writing. The goddess for people in our times fulfills a different kind of purpose: she is a symbol of respect for writing. One must consider writing as something precious enough to be taken with a divine seriousness. When one has made the effort to reach out towards help of this nature one takes one’s writing much more seriously. A poet like Milton took the help of the heavenly Muse to write Paradise Lost which is among the highest achievements in English poetry.