Another Milestone

I am calling it the Quarter-Final draft because the manuscript of my first novel needs at least two more revisions before it can be anything complete. So it will be a while before anyone at Penguin/Harper Collins/Rupa & Co can lay their eyes on it and immediately begin losing their minds. It appears to be too long in the making but since I have anyway spent four years on it another couple of weeks won’t make any difference. Finishing the current round of revision put me in a rather good mood especially after taking a print of the draft. I realized that there is no point on keeping on revising it endlessly and hence decided to let some more people read it and tell me what is wrong with it.

I have even more reason to be happy about it because two of the three people who read the latest draft have said some rather good things about it. Of the two one was a friend and the other was my own brother. It doesn’t mean that their feedback is to be taken lightly. The friend, Hari happens to be an author who has written not one but two books and the brother happens to be the sort who reads authors like Nassim Nikolas Taleb. In fact, he is the inspiration behind my reading habit. I took up reading after watching him read books by the dozen even when he had just joined college. Anyway, I was on Cloud Nine after hearing Hari’s feedback and also after reading what he wrote on his blog. It’s all here-www.harimohanparuvu.blogspot.com/2010/03/ram-gets-nandi-award.html

After reading it I felt very confident, almost to the extent of feeling like a published writer of a book selling in the millions. The other reader, my globe trotting brother too gave me some very good feedback that brought me down to earth. One of the important things he told me was that the story lacks a time frame to peg it on, that is, it is difficult to say when the story takes place. He happens to be right so I have to work on it in the next revision that I have already begun.

In case anyone is wondering how many more months I’m going to work on my revisions, and how many more years it will be before the book will see the light of the day all I can say is that I don’t know. As of now I haven’t really thought of what to do next apart from revising it a couple of times. I hope to finish it sometime in May which is my final deadline. I don’t intend to work on any more revisions after May since I am already up to my ears with the story. After May, I plan to send the book into the publishing world. Until then, keep the fingers crossed. Of course, there’s always June.

Right now, however, I am feeling rather sheepish because I’ve completely forgotten to write here about the launch of Hari’s second book- If You Love Someone, that took place a couple of weeks back. One reason it escaped my mind is probably that, thanks to Hyderabad traffic, I was late for the launch that was at the Banjara Hills branch of Landmark. By the time I made my way through the dense crowd on the second floor of the bookstore the stage was already aglow and glittering with Tollywood luminaries. There was the hero Sumanth, Swati, Gunnam Gangaraju, Indraganti Mohana Krishna, Tanikella Bharani apart from Ram, Hari’s brother and the man behind Art Beat Capital, the production house that brought out the super hit movie, Ashta Chemma. Incidentally, it was also announced that Hari’s first book ‘The Men Within’ was being made into a movie with Sumanth in the lead with Swati opposite him. The film is slated to be released on September 5th. That was all I got to know at the launch and missed whatever happened before that. Since I did not get to hear what everyone said about Hari’s latest book, here’s what I have to say about it.

When I was given one of the early drafts of Hari’s second book to read, the title was ‘The Tryst.’ The different title ‘If You Love Someone’ is one of the better changes in the book. IYLS, as the title suggests, is a love story, not the syrupy kind but one involving two very strong personalities as the couple in love with each other. Interestingly, after a short initial confrontation the two (Aditya and Meghna) meet again at Goa at an inter-collegiate festival after which they spend a couple of days together. Needless to say they fall in love but don’t express it. Aditya is a rebellious artist with some pretty strong convictions and Meghna is an equally headstrong and independent minded girl with lot of ambition. They don’t promise eternal love but promise to meet again when Meghna turns firty, at the same beach in Goa. The rest of the story takes along until Meghna reaches fifty. The story is from the point of view of Meghna, who marries a rather wimpy scion of a traditional business family. Physically she is in the life of her husband but in her thoughts it is Aditya who rules. The story ends on a dramatic note. You’ll love the book if you are a girl/woman but if you are a guy like me, you will have some trouble accepting the almost too perfect Aditya.