You write stories that have either families as a base or are concerned with relationships per se. Being a practicing family counsellor, how thin do you feel is the boundary between it becoming a sermon as opposed to the story you wish to tell?
As I do not believe in the sermon-form of counselling in the first place, I have no fear of falling into the sermonizing-editorializing trap in any of my writing, fiction or non-fiction. Even my column with Mint (which is in Q&A mode) avoids top-to-down lectures and engages with the issue in an empathetic, discussion-led way. In my fiction too, the protagonist may be the main character, but is never an infallible high-moral-ground kind of person… you’ll see how all of them, in all of my novels, kind of blunder along in life, and make the best of it, like most of us do in real life, whether counsellor or counselee!
Has there ever been a morning when you have woken up to write and by lunch, you have edited it to quite some extent that you need a new story idea? Basically, how has your journey as an editor/ publisher deterred your writing?
Yes, in the early days, when I began to write (while I had already edited over 100 books)…I did feel that I was totally cramping my own hand by wanting it all to come out perfect right away…and did not want anything to sound flabby or sloppy or random! Then I learnt to let go, and simply write, and revisit the writing later, instead of jumping between being writer and editor at the very same time. It is very freeing in a way, to tell yourself (as I tell people in all my writing workshops) – just write, get the essence out – worry about the nitty-gritty elements later, which can be fixed.
You have created quite a special universe within The Counsel of Strangers for the reader. But one would think you don’t like the concept of big fat Indian weddings. Have you had any trouble with weddings as such?
No trouble with weddings as such… I just urban Indian weddings becoming increasingly de-personalized and all about the spending, the splendour, the stress! Everyone seems to be in a movie, rather in their own wedding! And the wedding in The Counsel of Strangers served as the perfect noisy and pointless (and noise-polluting!) counter-background to the quiet internal struggles of all six protagonists.
What’s next for you? A set of poems perhaps would be the most interesting from you.
Ah, next…not poems; that is not a genre I work much in. I’m writing a sequel to Three-Dog Night, and have just signed up with Fingerprint Publishing for a non-fiction work on managing relationships between grown-children and parents…a relationship that does not end when we turn 18 or 21! It is one of our longest on-going relationships and can be a source of great frustration and can equally be turned into one of great mutual love and meaning.
Born in Bombay and brought up in Mumbai, Ushnav has written for Phenomenal Literature, The Free Press Journal, The Hindu, among others. He works full-time with a renowned literary centre in Pune, while self-studying literature on a master’s level and writing short stories in his free time. He is currently working on his first novella.