BRBG the book

10K and counting....!

2008-11-05T20:06:00.002+05:30

Its true... three months, twelve weeks... and BRBG has reached the 10,000 copies mark! It is now in it's third reprint!!!

I'm so excited and thankful for all the support that people have shown. I cannot get over the fact that something so close to my heart - now in the public domain - has had the same effect on so many that it had on me.

So once again, thanks to all those who read it, enjoyed it, spread the word about it and made it successful beyond what I could ever have imagined.

Strangers no more

2008-09-15T16:35:00.006+05:30

Part of the excitement of being a first time author is the thrill of hearing from complete strangers. Someone text-messaged me about their impressions of the book while quite a few have taken the trouble to email me their opinions as well as suggestions.
Let me tell all of you that it feels wonderful to hear from all of you. I suppose it is the one great satisfaction of being in the public domain where people from all over, known and unknown, young and old, men and women write simply because they feel a connection.
That in itself is a lot of fun and a joy that I hadn't realized existed earlier. So thanks to everyone who took the trouble to write to me and give me some of of their time.

Its a Bestseller!!!

2008-08-20T17:20:00.003+05:30

Got the fantastic news that BRBG is a Bestseller... within ONE month of its launch... and now is going into a second print run...!!! (BTW before you get too excited... bestseller, in India, means 5000 copies sold. I know the benchmark is a trifle low, but, believe me, that is an issue I'm not complaining about :-))

Needless to say, I'm thrilled. This has exceeded our expectations by far... expectations that have been tempered by the fact that BRBG is a so called "campus" novel by an unpublished author. So to all the folks out there involved in any way in the process - from the buyers to the distributors, the publishers, the bookstores, the printers, the designers and reviewers, a heartfelt thanks from me.

The Hyderabad Launch

2008-07-09T20:51:00.005+05:30

The Hyderabad launch turned out much better than I had expected. Predictably (and understandably) I was nervous and was struggling to keep it from showing on my face. The beginning was rather embarrassing with only ONE chair occupied while I sat on the dias looking around circumspectly, pleading with my eyes for those sitting at the cafe to munch on the brownies and sip on their lattes a few feet closer to me.

Nevertheless the Crosswords crew was professional enough to go through their routine without much ado and soon I found myself with a mike in my hand and a throat that was drying up like it was on fire. Later, towards the end of the program people said that I didn't look nervous at all, which only goes on to prove that I have an unexplored talent for acting (my next career move??).

The audience was lively and interactive and asked me a surprising number of questions with good humour and cheer. I constantly got the feeling that they were trying to encourage a young author, and for this I'm doubly grateful to them. I am so surprised that anyone (other than my friends and contacts) actually showed up at the event and it makes me feel humbled that there is still so much goodness in this world... that people would expend their time and energy and effort for an unknown's sake!!!

Nevertheless, thanks to my school buddies (Rishi and Shankar) and their friends and family, it turned out to be a lively experience. Some people even showed up to have me sign their book... and I was at a loss for words. My hands shook for the first couple of signatures (my apologies to the recipients of such "nervous" John Hancocks) but hopefully now you know why the 'b' in Bose looks like an 'L' and why I didn't have anything intelligent to say.

The event even got covered on the next day's Times of India, page 3 (man, are they short of news in Hyderabad or what...:-D )I'll put up a link/photo as soon as I manage to get a hold of the appropriate file.

Meanwhile, today is the Mumbai launch....

Exact launch dates, timings and locations

2008-06-27T18:07:00.003+05:30

Here are the EXACT timings and locations of the launch dates

On Saturday, 5 July 2008 at 6.30 p.m.
at Crossword Bookstore
City Center , 1st Floor, Shop No. 101-108,
Junction of Road No: 1 & 10,
Banjara Hills,
Hyderabad – 500034

On Thursday, 10 July 2008 at 7p.m.
at Crossword Kemps Corner,
09/11 Mohammedbhai Mansion , N.S.Patkar Marg,
Below Kemps Corner Bridge , Kemps Corner,
Mumbai - 400026

On Friday, 11 July 2008 at 6.30 p.m.
at Crossword Bookstore,
ICC Trade Towers ,
Senapati Bapat Road ,
Pune-411016

Of course all are welcome. And if you can get someone to fill up the seats, even better!!!

Anirban

Even more updates on the Launch plans

2008-06-23T18:16:00.002+05:30

Okay, here goes. Pune has been "preponed" to 11th of July.

This is it! No more changes, I promise... I know all the terrible implications of my inability to fix launch dates... price of oil is $135 a barrell, inflation is hitting 11% and BSE has hit 14K... Oh the ramifications of greatness! :-/

No seriously, hopefully these dates will be final and I'll see atleast someone else other than my editor at the gathering!

Anirban

Update on the launch plans

2008-06-21T16:35:00.002+05:30

Okay, small change in the launch schedule

Mumbai launch will now be on July 10th. As I would have said before I learned that this word doesn't exist in the English language and is purely an Indian invention, the launch date in Mumbai has been "preponed" by a day. My apologies to the thousands whose schedules will have been turned upside down because of this inconvenience. I know, I know you'll have to book new flights and make additional hotel reservations all because this red letter day has moved up on the calendar.... What can I say other than bear with me and my apologies once again.

Okay, enough time spent being facetious. ;-D But i sure do hope someone will turn up at these launches other than me and the copies of my book. So far I haven't been able to rope in a celebrity or even a non celebrity to "host" the event. Oh well, back to trying.

Wish me luck!

The launch plans

2008-06-13T22:20:00.002+05:30

All right, for all those lost souls trawling the WWW for meaningless posts like mine... :-)

Here are the launch plans so far.
July 5th Hyderbad Crosswords
July 11th Mumbai Crosswords
July 12th Pune Crosswords (I think!!)

Meanwhile, my editor, Saugata, had his hands on the first copy today. Man, I'm thrilled and jealous at the same time... feels like my baby has been born but the doctor is getting to look at her first. :-) (Oh, he is a good doctor, all right!)

Wish me luck!!!

The cover

2008-05-28T05:43:00.009+05:30

This is what the full cover looks like. The book is rather thick with 460 pages (thirty chapters!). But that, my editor reassures me, is a consequence of the typesetting being in the "A" format (Publisher speak.... I have no idea what it means!). The price is Rs. 195.

It's getting closer!!

2008-05-21T17:33:00.004+05:30

Haven't written for almost 2 months now, but i doubt anyone has noticed or missed my lonely presence on the WWW. :-)
Nevertheless, if you've accidentally stumbled on to this site, just to let you know, I'm very close to being published. Published in the sense the book has been edited to its final version, its cover designed, ISBN number allotted and typesetting done. Today I learned that it has gone to press!! To press... to press!!!
I'm nervous and excited. I'll know what it feels like in my hands in a matter of 2 weeks. Suddenly I'm a little nervous about letting my private thoughts out into the big bad world. What if people don't like it? Are the sentences well framed, the spellings all correct? I'm afraid. I'm actually afraid and a hollow feeling inside my stomach reminds me of the first time I watched my daughter climb into a swimming pool. There was an able instructor and a vigilant lifeguard. But that was little consolation. My wife says my grip on the spectator railing was so tight she was afraid I'd break it!
Needless to say, everything was fine and my daughter is a fine swimmer now, even more confident than me when gliding though deep water. I just hope my new baby learns to float fast! Wish me luck!!!

Writing the book.

2008-02-28T18:19:00.000+05:30

It took me a long time to write the book. I began in 2000 and by the time I had the first draft ready, it was 2003. Of course it wasn’t like I was writing daily and events in my life (job changes, childbirth, unemployment) gave my writing an “episodic-ness” similar to the stutter and sputter of an old motorcycle. I remember writing the first four chapters and then having to discard my old computer because it kept crashing on me. With my usual carelessness I hadn’t saved the latest version of the chapters on any storage device and so I performed emergency surgery on the old computer and lobotomized the hard drive with plans to anastomose it to the next computer we had bought. This surgery wasn’t without its share of anguish. The newer operating system was having trouble recognizing the file, and I was close to pulling my hair out. I almost had to junk a computer before finally being able to dig into that block of bytes and retrieve my precious thoughts.

When I began writing, I had no idea how the story would end. I neither had a plot laid out nor did the words just fall into place. It took time, effort, some moments of pure inspiration and a lot of desk-warming and daydreaming to conjure up all that I wanted to put down on paper. Slowly but surely sentences began to string together, describing events that began to flow into each other. A bout of inspiration here, an interesting news clip there — all began to fit… often like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, often like a mismatched couple. The one thing that surely helped in this process was re-writing the writing. When I look at my earlier drafts I am shocked at the terrible quality of my work. I am amazed that I thought someone would publish such tripe. If I were a publisher I would have rejected my own writing. It is only through the process of doing the words and the sentences over and over again that I’ve put together something that I’m at least not ashamed of. Which is what brings me to the realization that for people like me with marginal talent it takes a lot of effort to rise to the standards of “publication worthiness”. Unless you are extraordinarily gifted (like Jhumpa Lahiri) or extraordinarily lucky (like … oh well, we won’t name names) the path to publication is potholed with failure, rejection, dejection, remorse, regret and a boat load of angst. I don’t mean to sound negative… I’m just describing my experiences. Maybe you’ll be luckier. But the bottom line is that if you have a tiny bit of luck on your side, persistence pays. Someone, somewhere, sometime, somehow may like something in your story or notice something in your sentences or draw visions of greenbacks from the way you use the English language and presto… you are in business!

The beginning

2008-01-27T12:27:00.001+05:30

Hello,

This is a Blog created in conjunction with my website www.bombayrainsbombaygirls.com. The blog posts over there can't handle comments and so I set up this one to make it possible for people to leave comments about my site, the book or my posts and for me to get back to them. So if you have stumbled onto this site first, please check out the original website too.