Q1 What inspires you to write? Is writing every day a ritual?
Is being struck by lightning a ritual? Never of course, to practice art is to change the course of the mind and move from heart to head. Letting the lightning strike you, what can be done? Remain in surrender. Dance out of pain, Laugh it out, Enjoy the play! Art, very often like love; is not an action to be performed but a state of being to be lived. One doesn’t ever absolutely do anything to make it, if it happens to you, count yourself strangely fortunate, sink your nails, and watch yourself burn! Witness what comes out of it and it may end up making its way to a shelf or two!
Like suffering, Art is inevitable to all of us. It is only a matter of chance of “what and how it finds us first”. This is precisely what inspires me to write; being grateful for it finding me and not leaving me until it devours me completely. Until I had found myself scratching the walls of my house to recall what my name spelled like. Then in its own time, followed by the ruins it has done it may find its way out and strike someone else. Perhaps itself.
Q 2 Tell us more about the book.
Shakespeare never seemed interested in explaining its work; he left that to others. The job of an artist is to write and not to tell the world of its own meaning, that may be the most shallow way of selling. He would very often say “Here’s the play, read it, perform it, make what you make out of it”
All the books, plays, poetry, and poems have remained only gibberish throughout the history. Humans who have known to find meanings have only found their own reflections in it and never what were “they really about”
Q 3 Do you believe that a writer needs to have strong emotions?
From the perspective of labels, any writer who doesn’t hold strong emotions shouldn’t be labeled as a writer in the first place and only another vendor selling something he never produced. It’s rather absolutely unquestionable.
The ruin of oneself is what puts him at the doors of the divine and not otherwise. Can never be.
Q 4 Tell us about the first book you read that made you cry.
I believe reality has made me cry way more often than books. Even the most scorching books in the world have lasted a wound on my heart yet rather than cry had still produced an unfamiliar contentment of belongingness. On the top of my head for the same are Notes from the underground and A book of disquiet.
Q 5 Describe a lesser-known aspect of Miramoon for us?
I draw more often than I write, and to sketch or paint has brought me in touch with much wider realms which I would have never known otherwise, it’s rather a comprehension of the world without words. Also believing that painting is a lost art or rather an over exploited one, it can produce wonders in terms of therapy or even if reading about the past painters rather than making a trend of their masterpieces.
One can explore unknown depths of the Universe by just sitting beside a work of art and letting it do its magic through the silence.
Q 6 Memorable incident while writing the book.
A certain sense of mystical experience where you realize you are the observer but not the doer or the writer. My master very often spoke of the three parts of knowing. There are three stages of knowing oneself, the “known” aspects of ourselves, the “unknown” aspects of ourselves, and the “unknowable” aspects of ourselves.
I believe certain parts of the book or certain poetical phrases instigate the “unknowable” where in face with the one I sense it’s anything but “me”. By my definition of “me” was of course the aspects that I already know. It’s rather the most innocent of a man committing a crime in the first place and confessing he doesn’t know what made him do it, as he never thought he was ever capable of doing the same. I would believe him.
Q 7 Given the complex publishing process in India, how was your experience with us?
Above all, I have found a familiarity in the team of Bookoholics, considering they already hold a huge reading community. A sense of empathy and a value of one’s work. An aspiration to provide the best of the works to readers and the best of readers to writers. Besides all the emotions that aspire and instigate an author to get from their work not every publisher will hold the same opinion.
I’ve held my own emotions which may range as a roller coaster to their team, but very often everything was handled with great precision, while working with your team, the immeasurable support and zeal to put it out has imprinted me quite deeply.
Love to all.
Q8 Are there specific messages or feelings you hope your readers take away from your story?
There’s only one message as I stated in the very first answer. Like suffering, art is inevitable to us, and art is nothing but a calling, the door of an unknown voice that calls you.
The message remains “never take the calling within as hallucination” it calls you for a reason, do not suppress it, embrace it, welcome it, grace it, and walk with it. You may experience realms that can not be described in words. For one may remain absolutely numbed after that. But, Listen to it!
Q9 Can you share your daily ritual for balancing your life?
Currently, all occupied with work. I like to journalize my cluttered thoughts at times. I read as an escape when I can, Draw the inexplicable when I can, Dance with the clamor of my own voices within when I can, and some days I can’t do anything. I rest.
But for most of my life I have done things without tying them up with the rope of rituals. This way, it’s more fun, it’s more free.
Q 10. If you were to re-create the ending of one book, which book would that be and what would you change?
It will be a sheer blasphemy to try and change anything rather than accepting the way it is. I’d perhaps enjoy it better going against my will over and over again to rather change it for my own satisfaction.
However, the theme of Romanticism has remained home to me. A novel “henry von ofterdingen” by Novalis was followed by a story of a boy who dreamt of an exotic blue flower that absolutely enraptured him with its beauty and took on a journey to find it in his reality.
This novel, and the story has not just brought me close to romanticism but also stirred my emotions upside down and pushed me away from the paltry world that refused to bring me my blue flower (symbolized as something unknown, non existential and also the cause of ones suffering for not having it)
Now the cause of worry remained, Novalis died before he finished this novel. Also, have been the cause of his suffering probably for still not being able to find it? Or could be finding it to only lose it once again? This remaining abrupt, my only hope would be having novalis back again to at least finish the novel and give an ending to it. That may remain my only dire need at the moment.
Buy the book : https://www.amazon.in/Whorehouse-Miramoon/dp/B0CV5RBVWN
