I challenge everybody to find a bigger loser than me in one's neighbourhood. I will be surprised if you can find one even in your whole city. But well that is the way I am . I dropped out of medial college in 2nd year! Can anyone match that? But I never even once regretted it though a lot of other people outside my family still do!
Perhaps it has to do with my obsession with history and literature. Even at medical college I spent most of my time gobbling up books on history and literature. How all this started, I mean to say this 'streak of madness', it is not just about history and literature it is more about taking up the cause and joining the losing camp. That is how this novel Recalcitrance was born, this tendency of being a loser gave birth to this novel. It runs in the family! As a historian(self proclaimed) I disregard any source material that cannot be verified but very recently I have learnt that even word of mouth has some significance in historical research specially when talking about Indian history, so well when I said it runs in the family, I was being serious. My ancestors supported the so called 'mutineers' in Lucknow in 1857 though how they did it I am not sure , in all probability they just gave money to the 'rebels'. So it started from there!
I remember very few things from my childhood but one image that still haunts me is that of my father taking me for a walk in the ruins of British Residency in Lucknow, I was about 5 then - and that was when my fixation with history started!
By the time I was 20 I had read most of Indian history, European history and even South American history. I had also read most of the classics of English literature that are available commercially or even in a library. I did not set out to do all this as some kind of achievement but it was a burning passion with me. Then there were competitions and medical college and all that, sheer wastage of time!
I dropped out and washed my hands off it all and started freelance research on history of Lucknow. I was like a nuclear submarine when I first started my research on Lucknow. It was with God's grace that on a couple of occassions I and my friend barely escaped being bitten by snakes while looking for historical inscriptions. I enjoyed that period! It was a the happiest period of my life! Studying in Lucknow University having a couple of really good friends and studying in Tagore Library all day and then in British Council Library. Fortunately for me industrialists had still not tightened their grip on print media and leading newspapers in the city like The Pioneer liberally published my articles on history of Lucknow. Then I wrote a bit in Hindi and Swatantra Bharat an old respected newspaper published them as well.
Then there was a lull mainly because newspapers changed overnight, they would henceforth take only stuff related to movies, fashionable celebrities, scandal........... what not! Many people suggested to me to give them what I wanted because by then I was rather well known but, and here comes the loser in me, I did not listen to them and almost made my exit from the world of newspapers (as a journalist).
Then something awful happened the 150th year of 1857 suddenly came upon me. There were good and hard working authors ready with their stuff and with much fanfare they had their books released by celebrities - I was almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This was a historic opportunity passing me by I was on the verge of tears all the time. Then I started my book - I could have written a book on history but I wanted to say some things which can only be said in a novel. I had the material but just this Himalayan lethargy, this laziness stopped me. I wanted to complete the book but .......
I had often criticized authorities for not doing enough to let Indians know about the sacrifice and bravery of people behind the 'mutiny' of 1857 now as I passed by monuments connected to 1857 in Lucknow I felt guilty, I felt as if the martyrs are saying to me 'what have YOU ever done?', that was what broke my lethargy. With barely 11 months for the 150th anniversary year to end I started writing like a maniac, sometimes I wrote for six hours together inspite of being a patient of chronic back pain, but I never felt any pain. Things were a bit more difficult for me since I could only write the novel with a fountain pen and not feed it directly on the computer. It was really problemetic. I paid a fortune to professional data entry people to make a soft copy of the novel and perhaps this was a big mistake because their stupid mistakes somehow found their way in the final print of the novel inspite of all the editing.
With about five months to go I had the novel ready which was edited by my brother who himself is a voracious reader and an authority on German literature with awesome command over English, Hindi, Urdu and German. Inspite of not having any time whatever he tried his best to edit my very mistake prone draft.
Then I started approaching the publishers, now I can only laugh about it, the novel was , as far as mainstream publishers are concerned, doomed from the very beginning. It did not have the neccessary ingredients like sex, scandal, controversy nothing in it. Why did I ever expect them to publish it, more so when people have stopped reading to a great extent due to TV.
I had some very unpleasant encounters with publishers which I do not want to discuss as they are really unpleasant memories. I was getting panicky as most of the mainstream publishers did not respond at all and the 150th anniversary year was due to end in less than 3 months.
My father saw that I was very upset, he did not share my passion for the novel, but he was concerned about me. I was getting more and more panicky since I am not confident that I would be there to see 175th year of 1857 leave alone 200th year and I did not want to let this anniversary year pass by without having a book on the event come out.
My father finally decided to publish my novel himself. He got the best press and the best paper available in the market for the book. Both of us were confident however that the novel was not going to sell even a single copy.
In a week's time the printer delivered the first consignment of copies of the novel. It was a very hurried affair but he had done much better job than I ever dared to hope.
Many people suggested to me to take the novel to a big entrepreneur and he would promote it of course they said he will make use of me but he will supply the money for promotion - what they did not know was that I belonged to a family of losers so I just vetoed their proposal saying that the novel was something straight from the core of my heart something 'pure' and I cannot take it to just anyone. They also suggested that I have it realeased by another businessman and politician in Lucknow, a well known guy, this time my resolve became a bit weak since I had met that person on two ocassions and found him nice but fortunately for me I never got to meet him and submitted my request to his secretary and never got a response, which I regard as a polite refusal to release the book of a rookie author as myself.
Two newspapers interviewed me, big ones, that was it! I had endeavoured to talk about my novel during the interview but the effect was that people forgot the name of the novel and only remembered me, I did not want that. I had written the novel so that I could lament the destruction of the the beautiful, the cultured Lucknow that I only read about. Anyway the newspapers Hindustan Times and Dainik Jagran did their bit and I am eternally indebted to them and specially the two reporters who interviewed me.
Contrary to my and my father's expectations the novel started selling rather well for a really new book by a new author.
Much later I saw a Bollywood director, a famous one, once and rather alone, though quite nervous I gave him a copy of my novel, he seemed very interested but I was so nervous I almost ran away. Later I got a call from him, this was perhaps the most unbelievable words I ever heard in my life, he said ------ "I am seriously thinking of making a movie on this really remarkable novel..........."
