We're in crazy Chennai to meet the author of forty books, Vibha Batra.
CHENNAI | INDIA
Forty books. Our brains cannot fully comprehend that stat.
This lady has won all the awards there are to win. Had bestsellers for fun. She still works in adland as a consultant, and is a playwright, a graphic novelist, a travel writer, a poet, and a lyricist.
We imagine she has very little time left to herself so we're eternally grateful she's agreed to meet FAMA and share her story with us.
We ask her what's a good place to take some pics and have a chat, and she says the Beach. Having never been to Chennai beach, we're excited.
Our transport there is your classic Chennai rickshaw driver, styled like a movie star and full of jibber jabber. He's soon playing us his favourite Tamil hits. And if you think this is via the music system, you're mistaken.
No, our man is playing us tunes from his phone, while leaning back and stretching his arm so we can hear over Chennai's traffic bleats and honks.
For a bit, we're worried we'll end up in a ditch, but he seems to have done this before many times. Even manages to point out historical and tourist sites along the way.
All in a day's work for this talented fella.
In his enthusiasm, though, he drops us off at some godforsaken end of the beach with hardly anything around but garbage.
Unless Vibha was planning some sort of contrasty shoot, the fair damsel amongst the ruins kinda thing, we're in the wrong place.
Our rickshaw guy says he'll drive us back once we're done. The man's okay with waiting, and he doesn't have any change for the first fare, so we're stuck with him. We trade numbers and tell him we'll see him shortly.
Vibha's running a bit late, and gives us a name of a place to wait for her. We walk up and down, left and right, ask around, a photographer and his mate even ride us to where they think this place might be, but alas, we can't find it.
Vibha calls and we tell her we're lost. She finds us.
It transpires that Vibha used to hang out at this joint in her youth. It shut down yonks ago.
She apologises, but we tell her we wouldn't have met that awesome photographer from Pondicherry that we're planning a fun shoot with if not for this wild goose chase.
Vibha's more worried about the light than us. So we decide to take some shots first and chat later. In a moment of inspiration, more like desperation, we borrow a plastic chair from a stall, plonk it in the sand, and ask Vibha to have a seat.
Now most people would have told us to go take a hike at this point. But Vibha's too nice for that. She sits down like that plastic chair is a throne, and rocks it.
We get our pics and retire to a juice bar to have a chat.
Vibha blames her author journey on her genes. Her maternal grandpa was a prolific writer. After he passed away, she decided to translate his work and began with her favourite: a book that combined philosophy, mysticism and spirituality.
It took her over a year and a half to translate his revered interpretation of the Ishaavaasya Upanishad. She was terrified she wouldn't be able to pull it off. The wonderful day job of copywriter, with its crazy hours and insane deadlines, didn't really care much for her aspirations to be an author.
She was paranoid about not doing justice to her grandfather's work, or worse, abandoning it halfway. So she did what all those self help books advise: announced her goal to the whole wide world.
It worked a treat.
Every time she stalled, someone or the other - friends, family, colleagues - would come to the rescue, with a simple question, "What happened to that book you were going to translate?"
Of the forty books Vibha has written since that first one, thirty-six are for kids and young adults. We ask her how she got into writing for a younger audience.
"Eons ago, I'd moved from Kolkata to Chennai," Vibha tells us, " I always thought there was a story there. It was playing in my head for quite a while. So, one fine day, I just decided to sit down and write and write and write some more."
She envisioned it as a five-book series. It ended up as a Young Adult trilogy published by Penguin. And the screen rights were optioned by a leading production house.
"My editor loved my voice, and asked me to write for children as well. And that's how it all started. So, yeah, I blame my editor."
Thank you editor is all we can think, because Vibha's books are amazing. She's got a unique voice that stands out in this cluttered world of children's and young adult's books.
We ask her what influences her writing.
"That's the problem, EVERYTHING influences me," she says, "I believe that being alive is the best inspiration you can hope for."
"I can't not write," she says, and we totally understand the compulsion, "Sometimes I write furiously. But only in my head. And then wait to transfer the MS (manuscript) from my brain to MS (Microsoft Word)."
We've met a few like Vibha, obsessed with their passions to the point that they can't imagine life without it.
We ask her if she has a muse.
"Cannot wait for it to roll around," she tells us.
"What's it like getting freshly printed copies of your new book? Still as exciting as the first time?" we ask her.
"I feel like an eager enthu newbie each time I have a book out," she says, beaming, "That feeling, it never gets old!"
Our rickshaw driver, having patiently waited for an hour and a bit, is now calling away.
Thanks Vibha, that was super inspiring, and a wild adventure to boot.
Here's to another forty books at least.
We ask her one last question and take our leave.
Does your work as a copywriter influence or help your fiction writing in any way?
"I remember watching Anuja Chauhan’s interview on CNBC, she said ‘Advertising’s a great
first career’. I absolutely second that. It’s just that I didn’t want it to be my only career.
Writing advertising copy helped a great deal. On several levels too:
It disciplined me. (Deadlines were not just things that made whooshing sounds above my
head, much as I would have liked them to be!)
It taught me how to write for the target audience.
It prepared me for criticism, constructive and otherwise. And, of course, rejection. Every
single day. Even on Sundays.
And finally, a confession: I was, am and always will be a copywriter (and will go to the great
copydesk in the sky). Amen!"
