Featured post

View video: Why I Wrote "Mr. Bandookwala, M.B.A., Harvard"

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Kiran Desai winning the Booker is good news. Here's the New York Times article that praises her cross cultural saga. I have no issues with that. But what had rankled me once was her mother Anita Desai deriding the lot of struggling Indian authors.

True, we Indian authors aren't up to the mark, we aren't that publishing savvy, our manuscripts return with editorial comments like "what crap" scrawled in the margin, and editors write, "If it was somebody I could have helped, I would definitely meet," and crap like that to struggling authors.

To published authors who hold their noses in the air and look down upon struggling authors, I have one thing to say: "There is a lot of talent out there, but it's only that in the daily struggle of making a living we don't have the time to focus on our writing. So we would be content, for the time being, shall we say, with writer's networks like Caferati and Shakespeare & Co.

No comments: