The Many Shades of Kanak

Black, White and the Grays in Between is now available on Amazon and Flipkart.

Life has an extraordinary ability to leave you unfulfilled. As easy as it is to acknowledge and be thankful for your blessings, it is equally hard to let go of desires; desires that were never fortunate enough to find wings.

I look ahead and all I see

A vast, endless, and lonely sea

Of all the fears that afflict my heart

The scariest is not being able to hold you close to my heart

She had walked along the vast expanse countless times, both in Mumbai and in Houston. The gulf had an uncanny ability to make her feel closer to her roots. The evening sun looked the same no matter where in the world she was. Its dazzle, once bright and resplendent, was now demure and ready to be enveloped by the infiniteness of the enormous bay. Her accomplishments and desires played the exact same hide and seek each day. The morning sun saw her as a skillful, and compassionate doctor, married to an equally successful and kind man. The evening sun saw her as a broken and desolate woman, a woman who had lost the battle against her own faith.

With every step that she took, she saw her life – a life that she had dreamt of - pass her by. She often wondered why life had denied her the love of a mother. The same remorseless life had also given her a nurturing father, and a kind and passionate lover. The men in her life had supported her, applauded her, and held her close through the turns of life. Each morning she felt gratitude for the forces that had helped her become the woman that many looked up to, but the twilight brought out the real fear and the dejection in her eyes. As the sun submerged itself into the unending horizon every evening, the loneliness in her heart took over, leaving her alone and unfulfilled.

Prayer helped, but just enough to get her through the days. It kept her determination and talent shielded from her emotions and helped her achieve the successes that her father had dreamt for her. Her Pa had introduced her to her faith when she was still a young girl who had never known her mother. Gayatri, he had said, was her mother. She had stared in bewilderment at the idol, seeking the love of a mother in the smiling eyes of the deity that sat on a pink lotus in the center of the temple. From that day on, the goddess had a new daughter. Her name was Kanak.

Black, White and the Grays in Between is now available on Amazon and Flipkart.

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What Happens When the Clock Counts Down to Zero?

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06.06.16 - that's the date I picked for the release of my first book, Black, White and the Grays in Between. When I created my website (self-developed and hosted for free with GitHub Pages), I set my fancy countdown timer to 06.06.16. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting would happen when the timer diligently completed its countdown. Would it burst into a joyous hurrah and replace my restrained reaction to the author copies? Would it transform itself into a gazillion Buy Now options, urging everyone and their mother to buy my book? Would it magically be replaced with confetti cannons that would burst with a brilliant eruption of colors and bring hues to my saga of the endless shade of gray?

I wish it would. The vanity of my dreams thinks it should. 

As the developer of the website, I know it can, but it won't.

So, here I am, two days before the release of my book, trying to figure out, what really happens when the clock counts down to zero?

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is no clear answer to that question. In all reality, that is an incredibly hard question to answer. More so, for a first-time author. I've played out the scenarios, repeatedly, in my head. I've thought about the reviews and the judgement and the opinions and the appreciation and the praise. I've also realized that I have thought more about the response to my writing than about my writing. If the real reason for writing was in fact that a few of my favorite words needed expression and a voice, the outcome should hardly matter. If writing is in fact an emotional and visceral experience, its review and appreciation should hardly be of significance.

I woke up thinking about the difference between Goodreads and a good read. I woke up thinking about my Goodreads giveaway that is supposed to open on - surprise, surprise - 06.06.16. I woke up thinking about how many people would want a copy and how many would add it to their to-read shelves. I also woke up amused at myself that I hadn't thought about the ten strangers that may actually read my book and get to know me. I also woke up amused at myself that I hadn't thought about the real reason why I dedicated this book to my parents.

A lot can happen when the clock counts down to zero. A lot can happen when you remember why you set out to do something.

For now, I am going to swap Blogger with Visual Studio for the rest of the day. Back to writing code.

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The Virtue of Satisfaction

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Action alone is thy province, never the fruits thereof;

let not thy motive be the fruit of action,

nor shouldst thou desire to avoid action

~ M.K. Gandhi's translation of Lord Krishna's teachings, narrated to Arjuna and immortalized in the Bhagavad Gita

Intense. More so, for a goal-oriented and success-driven person that I am. The Gita teaches you about the virtue of karma - the intention behind your actions is all that really matters. The motivation behind your efforts should not be the desire for success. The Gita calls on you to denounce the anxiety of success and avoid the pitfalls of success-oriented thinking. Only when you are unmoved by the chaos of ideas and are in harmony with your actions, without the desire of success, do you attain real satisfaction.

Within a few days, my first book, Black, White and the Grays in Between, will become available for sale all over the world. Like most other debut authors, I am incredibly excited. Many years and many thousands of words have gone into this book. Many dreams have tickled my imagination. Many outcomes have played out in my subconscious mind. Like most other debut authors, I also feel anxious. I do worry about the outcome of those many years and those many thousands of words that have gone into this book. I do worry about my dreams for my work and its interpretation by those who will read it. I do worry about the not so favorable outcomes that have also played out in my subconscious mind.

My product manager brain would like to make this an experiment that is designed with a fail fast approach. I could then spin the outcome to my benefit and in the process actually iterate and learn and validate my hypothesis. However, unlike product strategy or product-feature development, the actual book is not a series of ideas that can fail and still work as a pivot for the next version. The left-brained me, who is optimized for success and biased towards action, is eager to see new innovations come to publishing - data-driven progressive disclosure and modulation of ideas that are optimized for the individual reader's perspective and preference. Maybe then, a debut author wouldn't worry as much. Maybe then, the whole process wouldn't seem as daunting.

In many ways, this book has been a vast undertaking. In many ways, this has also been the most humbling and enriching experience of my life. It may never amount to too much or it just might, but this book has already made me realize the infinite limits of my true potential. If I manage to enjoy it for the experience of writing a book and for the joy of becoming a published author, I am already a success. If I manage to inspire someone to write a book someday, I will also be satisfied.

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Not Just an Author, I'm an Authorpreneur

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Writing is the easy part.

You've heard it. I heard it.

You don't believe it. I didn't either.

Writing is the easy part. Truly.

Two and half years ago, I resolved to write my first book. I had the title in my head for eight years - Black, White and the Grays in Between. I knew it was going to be a story about Kanak and Neil. Somewhere along the way, I found Rukhsar and Ashar. The story in my head was soon becoming a Word document on my Mac. I managed to stick to my rhythm - fifteen hundred words every week. A little under nine months and my labor was real. I had a shiny manuscript, ready to be edited. I could have finished it sooner, but I had knowingly built a feedback loop into my writing process.

As a product manager, who builds high-technology products, I am a firm believe in testing your hypothesis, developing a minimum viable product (MVP), and being agile with your product development and feature backlog. You want to develop, test, tune, and repeat. I used the exact same approach with the book. I enlisted my closest friends to be the innovators and tasked them with reading finite sections of the manuscript while I made progress with the plot. Their reactions and feedback went into the subsequent phases of writing and helped flesh out the story before I actually worked on the narrative.

In an ideal world, I would have a team of editors, laboriously poring over my work. They'd look at every comma and at every that. They'd make sense of every independent clause and every subordinating conjunction. However, for a debut author, that is seldom the case. You may get some support, but the quality of your work is largely a function of your own diligence and desire for perfection. Binge-watching on Netflix had to make way for a methodical approach to reading and making edits to what seemed like grammatically accurate sentences.

Finding a publisher is perhaps the toughest task in the whole process. You may have moments of self-doubt, but you truly believe that your work holds real merit. Unlike a linear career choice - where you study hard, go to a good school, make good grades, get a decent job - writing and publishing is a business based on perspective and instinct, which seldom are data-driven. You scout, and you pitch. You hope, and you get rejected. You find someone that wants to invest, and you doubt. The motions that any entrepreneur goes through, an author does. The book is your intellectual property and like most inventors, you don't want it to end up in the wrong hands.

With a publisher selected, you assume that it would be smooth sailing from then on. You assume wrong. The designer will do a great job with the cover, but only you know your vision. You know that Charminar, Gateway of India, and the Houston skyline have a significance. You know exactly why you picked the title, and why you insisted on a bluebonnet to be on the cover. You rely on your instinct, but you seek feedback. You know the release is imminent, but you know that you need to package it right. You write the blurb and your biography for the back cover. You write your elevator pitch and more.

And then comes the release. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat (I am still amazed with this one), Instagram become as frequently used on your iPhone as Outlook. You reply to emails and send tweets. You setup a website. You also know that you're an author doing it on his own, so you use GitHub pages and brush up your coding skills so that you don't have to pay a hosting provider or a developer. Just as you did with the manuscript, you get your innovators to try out the website on devices with different form factors. You contemplate an app-only approach, but you dismiss it. The world is still not there. You design a theme for your social media posts with a 30-day free trial of Photoshop. You monitor your social media diligently - Bitly usage patterns, Facebook post reach and engagement statistics, favorable hashtags and Twitter handles.

You are not just an author when you write your first book. You are a writer, an editor, the cover designer, the web developer, the social media marketing manager, the public relations manager, the data scientist, and a lot more. You are a dreamer. You are an Authorpreneur.

Unfortunately, you are not the reviewer.

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Never Write a Book

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You may have thought about it, multiple times, but you must not pay much attention to it. You may have imagined your name in print, multiple times, but you must resist the urge to make it a reality. You may have a story to tell, multiple even, but you must keep them just for your dreams. You may have picked up the Mac to write, a PC even, but you must stop yourself before you open the text editor.

Never write a book, because writing is the easy part. If you love what you do and believe in what you want to say, the words will come. They will flow like an abundant river, when you are wide awake at one in the morning, writing. They will flow like the tears in your eyes, when you compose a beautiful sentence that leaves you in awe of your own ability to feel emotion. However, it is what comes after the writing that makes me assert, once again - never write a book.

Never write a book, because unlike a story, which gives the book its soul, publishing takes the life out of it. If your words are your precious pearls, the silent rejections will only impale your heart - one unacknowledged response a time. The silence of the powers that control the fate of your words will leave you confused, hurt, and it may even make you question the foundation upon which you may have built your dreams. If unacknowledged rejection may hurt your pride, never write a book.

Never write a book because its merit will be judged by Facebook Likes and Twitter Retweets. Never write a book if you don't know that Snapchat is the medium that you will need to promote it - thousands and thousands of poetic words, "Trump"-ed by monosyllabic projectiles of creativity that will determine if you and your baby will go viral. If reminding people, repeatedly, to spread the word is not how you imagined it, never write a book.

And then, the author copy arrives. The cover, just as you once thought it would be, makes you want to dance with joy. It is glossy, just as you always thought it will be. Elements and themes from the narrative - Charminar, Gateway of India, the Houston skyline, and your favorite Bluebonnets - all blended beautifully against the central theme. The title you wrote on a yellow post-it, eight years ago, looks exactly as you always wanted it to. There is a copyright and it is attributed to you. You are now the rightful owner of an ISBN. It is your legacy and you are still the rightful heir to all the effort and the heartache. Soon there will be reviews, and once again you dream that they will be generous. The words will weave magic, touching hearts, bringing smiles to many faces, leaving many eyes moist.

Pray, do write a book. Pray, do write a book.

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