Ghost-Writing & Impact of AI

A couple of years ago, in the second half of 2024, I had interviewed my niece Srishti, who was a ghost-writer. At that time, I was very curious about the ghost-writing work. I spoke to her recently and found out that Artificial Intelligence (AI) had a big impact on her ghost-writing work.

Let me start with my recent experience with AI.

My Recent Experience with AI on Reddit

Earlier this year, I had written a fantasy-fiction novella in Hindi, which is now being serialised on my Hindi blog. I was looking for a cover for my book. I spoke about it to my son and explained to him about the main characters  of the book. With the help of AI, my son prepared a couple of book covers.

However, I felt that those covers looked very clearly "AI-made", so I tried to modify them by using some image programmes and tried painting over them. One of these modified cover was finally used for my book.

Fantasy-fiction is not a common genre in Hindi and I wanted to connect with people who was interested in it. So I joined a fantasy-fiction group on Reddit and wrote a post about my book. The moment the persons in the group found out that my cover was originally AI generated, there was a huge backlash and my post was removed from the group.

This experience gave me an idea about the strong impact AI is having on the work and livelihoods of artists and book-cover designers.

In this article, I am going to present excerpts of Srishti's interview in 2024 and then her recent interview, to understand the impact of AI on her ghost-writing. You can also read her complete interview on my website Kalpana. 

Excerpts from Srishti's 2024 Interview About Ghost-Writing

Being a ghostwriter is an unusual profession. Most of my relatives had not even heard of it. I, myself, had no clue about anything called ghostwriting. Interestingly, I recently found out that one of my uncles (he is no more) used to ghostwrite a weekly newspaper column about a policeman’s encounters and investigations in 1960s' Allahabad. He did it for fun and never got credited or paid for it. The series was later compiled into a book.

I am, too, not credited for my time, worth, talent, energy, research, or honesty. I never Google the books I write because it’s like being in a toxic relationship with your ex. But I do love it when I have repeat clients. The fact that people want to work with me again makes me happy.

I don’t really see my work as unconventional because ghostwriting is more common than most people know. Most autobiographies are ghostwritten.

I keep getting orders so I am actively ghostwriting as of now. However, I have started working on my two fiction books and I intend to publish them in the next ten years (the thought gives me jitters).

In 2022, I came across an advertisement by the platform that I currently work with. It’s a Canadian company and they work with and for people from everywhere. They were hiring ghostwriters through a series of tests. I took the tests for fun and got selected.

The pay was better than what writers are paid in India. I have ghostwritten 24 books. Initially, I was a little sceptical about writing books on real estate, finance, religion, and technology because those were not my areas of expertise, and I adhered to subjects on women, interrelationships, parenting, health, diet, lifestyle, humour, self-help, politics, economy, and diseases and disorders. Now, I take up all the orders that come my way. I am proud of the fact that I can dissociate personal preferences and beliefs from my profession.

I do interact with my clients before I sign the contract. I have the liberty to work at my pace and schedule my orders. When I began in 2022, I used to take up an insane amount of work every month (beginner’s enthusiasm) and the burnout was real in 2023. I have taken things more slowly in 2024.

I love that I get to work with people from different parts of the world. I have worked with competent editors who taught me about book writing and formatting. I have had my share of tough clients as well, very demanding and rude, but the overall experience has been good and I get to read a lot. For example, I had to refer to the Torah for a few segments of a book I wrote this year and that was a great learning experience.

You can read her full interview on Kalpana. 

Impact of AI on Ghost-Writing

Srishti said: In 2024, while I was ghostwriting at Dibbly, we had an opportunity to train their AI tool called KIP.

It was a great learning experience, although back then, we had absolutely no idea that we were axing our own source of income. Kind of makes me laugh right now. Because AI orders got so cheap gradually, the writing packages declined in number.

We had a true dry spell at the company after that because other AI companies were already giving nascent manuscripts/stories a full outline/writing/publishing structure for free and people didn't need ghostwriters or even paid AI writing packages any more.

But I did get some opportunities to work on AI orders too. That was a good learning experience.

I am now working for a company where I will be editing/reviewing academic papers and research articles in the humanities stream. This company helps research papers get published. Most of our clients are from Japan. China, and South Korea. They are very professional and their papers are very good.

I am only learning right now but I think I will also be working on AI manuscripts since people are using it in research too.

I was inherently very anti-AI. This April, I went to Bangalore for a short trip and met a few German civil engineering students there and with one of them kept in touch later. He really changed my perception on AI. I realized millennials like me are more apprehensive about it, of course we think about the larger picture and its effects on the environment and everything else.

But Gen-Zs just don't care. They are unafraid of the change. While we are scared of being dependent on AI or even addicted to it, he told me how Claude is his work assistant and buddy. That really fascinated me. How we use AI is really going to be a game-changer.

I think AI invasion into our lives is inevitable, the world leaders are pushing it with data centres and the biggest tech-tycoons are adamant on making this world AI-driven. But people like me need to make our way through life by using AI, and also correcting AI because it will need constant direction, command, and correction. Until it becomes smarter than me, I got to keep upskilling to not get replaced, I guess.

Conclusions

Srishti's views about AI can make us understand some of the challenges people are expected to face in their personal and professional lives over the coming years and decades. Some of those changes will enhance our quality of life, while the others would make it more difficult, and then, hopefully a new equilibrium would emerge out of chaos.

*****

Life's Purpose and Seth's Mantra

Some decades ago, I was very interested in exploring ideas about death, afterlife, souls, etc. At that time, I had read a large number of books on this theme. Among those books, there were some by an American writer called Jane Roberts, which had a lasting impact on me.

Recently, by chance I found some of those old Jane Roberts books that I had bought during a stay in the USA in the early 1990s. They reminded me about that period of my life when I was utterly taken up by their ideas.

I also discovered that Jane had died in 1984 and they have an online Seth Centre, where you can learn about those books and they have a podcast on YouTube.

This post is about the Jane Roberts' books and about some of its enduring learnings for my life.

Finding the Old Books   

My wife said that the attic is full of useless stuff, and that I should go up and take a good look at it and decide if there is anything worth keeping, otherwise one day she will throw away everything. I know my wife, she does not make empty threats. She did throw away things from my cupboard, after telling me a couple of times to clean it.

So yesterday, I went to the attic. Our attic is underneath sloping roofs, so it is difficult to reach the stuff along the walls (roof is so low at the sides that I need to almost crawl to reach there). It was along one of the walls that I found a plastic bag full of old books, that some ten years ago, I had told myself that I will sort them and decide which ones to keep.

In that bag, I found some Jane Roberts' books, that brought back so many memories. One of the memory was of a cryptic motto, "Why did I Ask for This?", that I had as screensaver on my old computer and which was my mantra for dealing with any challenge.

Jane Roberts' Books About Seth

Jane Roberts and her husband Robert F. Butts had written 8 books in the 1980s - Seth Speaks, The Nature of Personal Reality, Adventures in Consciousness, The Nature of the Psyche, The Seth Material, and 3 volumes of The Unknown reality.

Jane was a medium-writer, writing in a state of trance. She used to channel an "essence or a personality" called Seth, who was defined as "an intelligence no longer focused in physical reality, who has communicated with our world through writer Jane Roberts. During Roberts' trance-like states, Seth has revealed to her startling secrets about life, death, the universe beyond the five senses, and an amazing potential within us that is just waiting to be tapped."

My Ideas About Soul, Life and Afterlife

Like everyone, I had also wondered occasionally about the purpose of our lives - why do we have an conscience and how are we supposed to live our lives. I had lost my father when I was 21 and though I was not new to the idea of death, his sudden death had raised many questions in my mind about souls, what happens to it at death, and what, if anything, is afterlife.

When I was 16, I had once taken part in a seance at a neighbour's house. There were six of us. We had put our fingers on an upside-down empty glass on a chart on which boxes were drawn, with an alphabet in those boxes. We had held hands and invoked a spirit, asking it to come and help us find answers to our questions. I was very surprised when after each question, the glass had moved on the chart, pointing to a "yes" or a "no". I think that it was some kind of self-hypnotism that had made our fingers subtly move that glass, and it was not a real spirit inside it!

I had also tried looking at some of the religious books and their ideas about death. The biblical ideas of heaven and hell, followed by resurrection and restoration of the dead did not convince me. Similar Islamic ideas about angels of death judging my beliefs, etc. seemed equally unconvincing to me. I like some of the Hindu ideas in the Upanishads about our souls being a fragment of God and that after death, that soul reunites with the whole essence of god, but have many doubts about some other beliefs such as those of individual souls that keep their individual essence and may even take rebirth. 

Seth's Views About Purpose of Life

The Jane Roberts' books, touch on a wide variety of subjects such as - ways of looking at past lives, out of body experiences, astral projections, how probable realities combine to create our waking lives, how to explore our own unknown reality, and so on.

Reading these books, provoked a lot of reflections in me about souls and afterlives. Almost thirty years later, I can still recall my fascination with some of those ideas. However, I continue to be sceptical about survival of individual souls and their afterlife. I would rather think of a Seth as an expression of the life energy as a whole.

Seth's Mantra for Me 

Yet, there is one idea from these books that had a huge impact on me and in some ways continues to influence me even today. In one of the books, Seth talked about the purpose of life as the soul taking a life-form so that it could experience certain aspects of material life. It said that before taking birth, the soul decides what kinds of challenges it would like to face in that life. Thus, people being born with challenges or facing specific challenging events in their lives, are souls that need to experience those challenges in order to learn facing and overcoming them.

For me this idea means that everything that happens to me, good or bad, happens because I chose that as a challenge for my life. So every time, I face a challenge, I ask myself: Why did I choose this? What am I going to learn from it? What can I do to overcome it?

In Conclusion 

I tried to share this idea with my friends but it did not always work. For example, when a close friend broke his leg in an accident, and I went to see him at the hospital, I suggested that it might have been a challenge he had chosen for himself. He became very upset saying that it didn't make sense to him that he had chosen all that pain and suffering. 

However, I think that it is good way to face life. Giving up on a challenge and accepting defeat means that we did not give our soul a chance to learn from that experience.

For about 3 decades, I worked in international development programmes with marginalised communities in different countries of Asia, Africa and S. America. One of the approaches which I liked using in my work was called "emancipatory research", where the focus was on helping persons to look at their challenges as barriers and to facilitate them to collectively think of ways to emancipate themselves. I feel that in a way, the "emancipatory research" approach reflected the same basic idea of Seth.

*** 

History Seen Through Trees & Gardens

History is usually seen through big events like the lives of kings & queens, wars, building castles & forts. The lives of ordinary people are usually missing from the history books, though sometimes we can get glimpses of that, like the recent discovery of graffiti in some Egyptian monuments.

However, we can also look at the history through its trees and gardens. Recently I had such an experience when the Cooperativa TRAMA (Traditions, Resources, Ambience, Museums & Art) organised a special city-walk in Schio (VI) focusing on its trees, forests and gardens. 

 

Origins of Schio & an Historical Overview

Our city walk started in Piazza Rossi, in front of the Duomo church in the city-centre.

The Duomo church is located on a hillock known as "colle del Garzone". First mention of Schio in the documents is from around 990 CE, when the bishop of Vicenza allotted some land for agriculture. Around 1000, there was already a small chapel to San Petri at the top of this hill, surrounded by the oak trees. 

 

Around the first millennium, the area around Schio was subdivided between a noble family and the church, and there were rivalries between the two.

The noble family was called Malatraversi, who were faithful to the emperor, and they were prominent for about 300 years, from around 1000 CE to 1300 CE. They controlled the area on the north-east side of Leogra torrent - Schio, Piane, Sant'Orso. They had built a defensive fort (il Castello) on the Castello hill, not far from the Garzone hillock, which included two concentric walls, as shown in the famous painting by Francesco Verla in the St Francis church in Schio, a couple of centuries later.

The church responded to the Pope and controlled the area on the south-west of the Leogra torrent - Pieve, Magre, Malo. The first mother church, where the bishop stayed, was built in Pieve. However the floods of the Leogra torrent created problems and the Bishop had to take refuge on the Garzone hillock. To control the floods, the Roggia Maestra water-canal was built, which took and diverted the excess water to the farm-houses around the area. This canal passes next to the old mother church in Pieve. The building of this canal also stimulated the development of different economic activities, such as carpenters, saw-mills, flour-mills, etc. 

In 1300s, as the Malatraversi family declined, first the Nogarola family from Verona, and then the Visconti of Milano became more influential in Schio. Around the end of 1300s, Schio became a part of the Republic of Venice, also known as La Serenissima. Venice placed Schio under the jurisdiction of Vicenza.

Schio was unhappy to be under Vicenza, because the two had competing interests.  In 1412, Vicenza dismantled the castello-fort of Schio and its stones were used for other houses and buildings. A competing interest between the was the weaving of refined clothe (panni alti), as both cities wanted to produce it and Vicenza did not give permission to Schio for it (only in 1701, Schio was allowed to make "panni alti" clothes).

In 1797, the republic of Venice was defeated by Napoleon Bonaparte. Under Napoleon, the monasteries and churches were closed, some of their artworks and valuables were hidden, the others were taken away his troops. In 1814, the area of Schio became a part of Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1866, a treaty between Veneto and Austria, finally brought the whole region under the Italian kingdom.

Schio Seen Through the Histories of its Trees and Gardens  

The Oak Forest: Before the city of Schio became an urban centre, there was an oak forest in the Duomo area, which gave the city its name, as such forests were called "schleda" in the local language. That led to its Latin name "Scledum" in the Roman period. Archaeological remains of a Roman garrison have been found near the area which now hosts the Campo Romano mall.

No traces remain today of that oak forest and the constructions of Duomo church completely cover the Garzone hill. However, from the Garzone road, which passes along Duomo, little bits of the grassy hill are still visible.

The Lime Trees of Castello: The hill which hosted the castello-fort of Schio is much bigger, extending back to the Capuchin monastery. The part of the hill where the remains of the old fort are still visible, was known as "Tajara" in the local dialect because it hosted two huge and old Tiglio trees (Lime or Linden tree). These were removed in early 1900s because they were in danger of falling down. The area also included a hundred years old Platano (Plane tree), which was planted in 1912.

To remember them, rows of Lime trees were planted in that area. 

 

Horse-Chestnut trees on the Castello Hill: A row of Ippocastano (Horse-Chestnut trees) was planted along the side of the Castello Hill in 1850. These trees were brought to Italy from Turkey in the 1500s. Their chestnuts are used for making a medicine used in the horses, which gave these trees their name. The popular belief says that keeping a couple of these chestnuts in your pocket will prevent catching common cold.

Exotic Trees of Jaquard gardens: These gardens were built in 1859 opposite the Rossi Wool mills near Schio's centre, by the industrialist Alessandro Rossi. At a time when mill-workers were mostly illiterate, included many children and international travel was restricted to a few persons, these gardens brought the world to Schio. They include a theatre with busts of famous persons of Schio, caves, sculptures of wild animals like crocodilian and panther, and a hanging garden.

The garden was designed by Antonio Caregaro Negrin and included a sun-room for orchids and different tropical trees such as palm and banana trees. Among the trees of this garden, there are - a Mexican Cypress (also called Portuguese Cypress), 3 giant sequioia and a Yew tree to celebrate Italy's flag (it has green leaves, white flowers and red berries - the colours of the Italian flag). It also has many Japanese plants.

 

Personal & Family Memories of Trees

So many of our memories and personal histories are linked with plants and trees. For example, in our old style double-storey house in New Rajendra Nagar in Delhi, we had an oleander tree which used to be full of pink flowers. Two years ago, when I went to visit that house with my sister, and found that a new and bigger house had been built there. I felt sad because I could not see the old oleander tree. 

In our home in Schio, we have a couple of Laurel trees. I can see that same tree in some of the old family pictures, as my wife's family has been living in this house for more than 125 years. About 15 years ago, we had tried cutting them down but were unable to remove the vast network of their roots, and from those roots, two new plants came out (in the image below).

At the corner of the street, where we live, there was a huge old tree. I remember my mother-in-law telling me about it more than forty years ago - she had said that her husband was a child when that tree had been planted. Last year, when that tree was cut down because it was in danger of falling, I felt that a part of our family history had gone with it.

My wife often talks of the Ficus tree in our backyard, where she used to climb as a child. At that time, there were no walls between the backyards of the houses and families could see and talk with neighbours, while sitting in their backyard gardens. Today most of these backyards have concrete floors and high walls.

An old picture from 1950s, of a friend's house in our street, shows a tree, an old washing place and a car. When I shared this picture on Instagram, a man wrote to say that it was his father's car.

Conclusions

Once I started thinking about my memories related to plants and trees, there were so many of them that I was surprised. For example, I have many memories about my grandfather's farmhouse, parts of which lies underneath the "Dwarka Mod" metro station in Delhi. Another memory was of the different Tulsi plants that we had in different homes where we lived. For every city where I have lived, I can remember those days through some trees and plants.

To my readers, trying remembering your own memories about plants and trees - I think that you will find it a rewarding exercise.

*** 

Writing About Heartbreak

Chinese-American author Yiyun Li has written a new book, "Things in Nature Merely Grow", about the suicide of her younger son, James. This post is about this book. 

Yiyun Li

About twenty years ago I had encountered Yiyun Li, through her first book, "A Thusand Years of Prayers". That book had immediately captured me. It has her stories about Chinese lives, both in China, as well as in the diaspora, especially in the USA.

Yiyun Li had arrived in the USA as a science student in 1996. While doing a PhD in immunology, she decided that she was actually interested in writing. In 2005, she completed a masters in fine arts and in that same year, her first book, "A Thousand Years of Prayers" came out.

When I had read her first book, it was the time when I used to dream of giving up my job and to dedicate the remaining years of my life to writing. When I had read about her, I was really envious. She had chosen the path that she really wanted. She also had a talent for entering people's minds and to make them come alive through her words, and, her writing voice was distinctive, different from other American and European writers.

I think that many years ago, I had already written about her in one my blogs. Over the past twenty years, I have read some of her other books.

Things in Nature Merely Grow

However, it is her latest book, "Things in Nature Merely Grow", which has prompted this post. In this book, she writes about the deaths of her two sons, both by suicide.

This is how she tells about it in the first chapter of her book: "There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged before I go on with this book. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home; James near Princeton Station, Vincent near Princeton Junction." 

For her first son, she had already written a fiction-memoir, "Where Reasons End". It is composed of 16 chapters, one for each year of his life, and is about the dialogue between a mother and her dead son.

Her latest book, "Things in Nature Merely Grow", is both heart-breaking and exquisitely written. In an interview for The Guardian about this book, it says, "For months after his death, Li worried that she lacked the vocabulary to write about James, but then she began writing and realised “of course I could do this, this is what I do”. Things in Nature Merely Grow, her memoir of losing her sons, is resolutely unsentimental, and yet it might wind you with its emotional force. She wrote it in less than two months. Often people ask her if writing the book was cathartic. “No, never!” she replies. If it offered solace, “it was the solace of thinking”. “When I was writing the book it felt like I was at the centre of a hurricane. The eye of the hurricane is the stillest place. It’s very quiet and clear,” she says. And then she finished writing, and she stepped back into the hurricane. “My life goes on as a very strange woman,” she tells me, strange because her losses are so extreme: “Going out, people will always look at me and say, ‘Poor woman’." 

I can vouch for the emotional force of her writing, for I cried many times while reading it. In the interview, she says, “My children were not my burden. My sadness is not my burden.”

I wonder what kind of mental detachment would be needed to continue to be a writer, and to talk about it in interviews, so soon after a tragedy? As a parent, to be able to do it, perhaps it would need a kind of dissociation, a kind of schizophrenia, to be able to go on?

For example, in the following paragraph, she writes about personal objects of her sons - "Objects don’t die. Their journeys in this physical world, up to a certain point, are parallel to the trajectories of the humans to whom the objects belong. Then comes the moment when the separation happens. Vincent’s phone became a phone, James’s backpack, a backpack. They became objective objects, left behind in strangers’ hands."

To Conclude

Let me conclude this post with another paragraph from her book: "Learning a new alphabet—for weeks and months I’ve held on to that notion. James was a different child than Vincent, and James’s death left us in a different place than Vincent’s death. And yet a new alphabet can only be symbolic, as I have but this old language to work with. Words tend to take on a flabbiness or a staleness after a catastrophe, but if one has to live with the extremity of losing two children, an imperfect and ineffective language is but a minor misfortune.

There is no good way to say this: words fall short." 

While I read her book, I feel as if her writing is like a pencil-sharpner, which she runs around herself, cuts her own surface and core, and then wields herself like a knife to carve the words covered with blood.  

***

Searching For Lila

I came across the story of Lila Lakshmanan Biro by chance. Half-Indian and half French, she has worked as a film-editor with many of the famous French film-directors like Godard and Truffaut in the 1960s.

Born in 1935, Lila will be ninety years old this year. She lives in an old age home in a suburb near Paris. My artist friend Samit Das, whom I have found on the journey to find Lila, has confirmed to me that she is fine and keeping well.

I first met Lila in a book when she was called Lila Herman. Finding her reincarnations into other names was an exciting search. This is the story of that journey.

 My First Encounter With Lila

I came across her first when she was known as Lila Herman, while doing research about the Roberto Rossellini - Sonali Dasgupta story.

In December 1956, Roberto, well-known Italian director, famous for his neo-realistic films like Rome, Open City and Paisà, came to India to shoot a film. Sonali Dasgupta, wife of Indian producer-director Harisadhan Dasgupta, was supposed to collaborate with Roberto. The two fell in love and this created a huge scandal in India. Hounded by journalists and an upset family, Sonali looked for support. She found some support in Lila Herman.

At that time, Lila was married to Jean Herman, an aspiring film-director. Jean was teaching French in Bombay in those days, was one of Rossellini's assistants for his film. They had a son in Paris in 1955 and then come to Bombay, where they had stayed for 2 years.

That is how I started my search to learn more about Lila Herman, but I found very little. She edited some films in early 1960s and then disappeared. 

Lila Herman to Lila Lakshmanan

The search for Lila Herman was a little complicated because her husband film-director Jean Herman had also disappeared and had become famous as Jean Veutrin, a well-known French mystery-writer. 

She had disappeared because she and Jean had divorced. After the divorce, she had become Lila Lakshmanan and had continued to work as film-editor. However, after a few years, even the trail of Lila Lakshmanan also turned cold.

Lila & Atila Biro

Searching for Lila Lakshmanan brought me to her second marriage to the well-known French architect and artist of Hungarian origins, Atila Biro. She had become Lila Biro.

Her husband Atila was born as Attila in Hungary in 1931, studied in Germany and settled in Paris. As a painter, he chose to write his name as Atila. Many of his works are part of different European art museums.

Atila and Lila married in 1963. Together, Atila and Lila, travelled to Italy, Marocco and many times to India. Atila had a large number of exhibitions in different European countries and the two often travelled together for those events. I don't know if Atila and Lila had any children. Atila Biro died in 1987. You can check some of his works on the Facebook page of Atila Biro foundation.

Lila Biro's Book

In 2012, Lila Atila Biro wrote a book called "Atila, Le soleil des métamorphoses" (Atila, the Sun of Metamorphosis).

The preface of this book was written by Lila's first husband Jean Vautrin (Herman), who wrote about his admiration for Atila's paintings.

I think that Jean and Lila had separated because she was in love in Atila. She married Atila, soon after her divorce while Jean had his second marriage a few years later. However, the three of them, Jean, Lila and Atila, probably continued to be good friends. 

Lila Biro Interview in 2017

In 2017, an event was organised in Paris on visual mapping of modernism in Indian art. In that connection, some art exhibitions and talks were organised, in which clips from some of Lila's films were also included. On that occasion, in an interview to Bombay Mirror by Sumesh Sharma, Lila had shared some information about her life:

"Lila was born in Jabalpur in 1935, where her father Lakshmanan was the director of All India Radio, while her mother was French. As a child, she had lived in Delhi, Lucknow and Bombay. Then her parents separated and 12 years old Lila arrived in a boarding school in England.

She went to Sorbonne to study English Literature when she was 17. Lila successfully graduated and went to study at the French film school ID’HEC, where she met her first husband, Jean Herman, now better known as the French writer Jean Vautrin. She was studying editing as she didn’t think she was creative enough to be a director.

During her last year at the film school in Paris in 1955, she gave birth to her son. Lila’s mother, found a job for Jean Herman teaching French Literature at the Wilson College in Bombay, thus, they lived there for 2 years until the end of 1957.

Regarding the Roberto-Sonali story she said: “I was with Rossellini, when he met Sonali Das Gupta. He was a man who had the accomplishment of perusal; he would be convincing and would get his way with people. When Sonali’s affair became public, she came and lived with me on Carmichael Road."

In the End

In late 1960s, Lila Biro continued to work as editor for different well-known French film directors. Thus, in the films she edited, her name appears as 3 different persons - Lila Herman, Lila Lakshmanan and Lila Biro. I think that she stopped working as film-editor in early 1970s.

About the impact of her work, in 2023, film producer Daniel Bird said: "Lila Biro is a remarkable character who witnessed Rossellini in India, played a key role in the cutting of key titles of the French New Wave, and was a close collaborator of the Hungarian émigré painter, Atila Biro. For me, however, she’s also the star witness in a crime against film grammar: the jump cut. The editing style of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless is now legendary, but I’ve always wondered what it must have been like in the cutting room when that revolutionary editorial decision was made. Thanks to Lila, that moment is vividly brought to life."

There was another Indo-French woman connected to the films - Leela Naidu. Leela was 5 years younger to Lila. In 1955, when Lila and Jean had come to Bombay, Leela was crowned Miss Femina. I wonder if the two had met and had been in contact in India or in France.

I am also curious about Lila and Jean Herman's connections with the films in Bombay, as the two had just come out of the cinema institute in Paris and must have been very interested to collaborate with Indian film-makers. It was the time when films like Mughle Azam and Devdas were being made.

To conclude this article, here is a romantic picture of a dedication of a painting by Atila to his "ma Lila cherie" (my dear Lila) from 1969 (click on the picture for a bigger view).

I wish I could talk to her and do a long oral-history chat to explore her memories.

***** 

Note: The first image of Lila presented above has been made from 2 images I found on internet. However, I could not find any picture of Lila and Atila together. The second image of Atila's dedication of a painting is taken from the facebook page of Atila Biro foundation.

Writing Choices (1)

I am writing my second novel - it is in Hindi, because after trying for about 20 years, I found that I was more comfortable writing my books in Hindi. I still do not have a publishing house for my first book but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

It took me almost two and a half years to write that first book, and during that period, I rewrote it 3 times before finding a structure that I liked. It is about a young man who discovers that the woman he had thought of as his mother was not his birth-mother and then for the rest of the book he tries to find more about and locate his birth-mother.

I had a basic idea but once I started writing, new ideas came all the time, some of which I tried. The final structure of book and many of its characters and scenes, which came out in the final version, were very different from my initial ideas.

However, when I think back about the writing of my first book, I can hardly remember all those changes and the experimenting with different ideas. (Click on the images for a bigger view)

It is the same with my second book. I am doing the second rewriting. It covers a long time period, more than a hundred years, and is spread across different countries. I think that I might need to do at least 2 more rewritings before I will have a proper draft. While I work on it, there are so many ideas which come to my mind and I try to incorporate some of them in my writing. 

So I have thought of occasionally noting down in this blog about my writing process. This book revolves around 4 generations of a family involved in a tea garden.

The first version of this book had alternating chapters focusing on different characters from different countries and time-periods. I wrote around 80% of it but felt that its basic premise of the story focusing on a woman of the 3rd generation was not working, it seemed kind of flat and not very exciting.

In the second version, I have grouped together the chapters according to the time-periods, to make it easier to follow. Now, its focus has shifted to 2 characters from the second and fourth generations.

I had started writing it with longer chapters and fewer voices telling the story. After writing about 70% of this version in this way, one day I changed my strategy - now the chapters are shorter and the story is told by a larger number of voices. I still have about 10% of the book to complete but I like this second approach more, though it probably has too many events all reaching their culminations in the last few chapters, so it is kind of chaotic.

My plan is to finish this version, read it and then decide if I prefer it with longer chapters and fewer voices or shorter chapters with more voices.

While writing, sometimes some characters suddenly take form, come alive and become more complex, sometimes asking for greater space in the story. For example, some old photographs taken in 1930-1940s played a key role in the story in the first version. In this second version, I have a French guy as the photographer and a few scenes with him. Then, a few days ago, while going for a walk, I thought about that French guy and I felt that he is an interesting character and thus, it is possible that he will have a bigger role in the third version.

I love writing my book. For a few hours every day I get lost in the worlds of my characters and their stories. It is an amazing feeling.

*****

#authorsunil #sunildeepak #sunil_book #writingprocess

Remembering Dr Usha Nayar

My dear friend Usha died last year in February 2021. I heard about it only today, when I saw a message from her daughter Priya. A very nice website has been created for remembering Usha, her life and her work, where you can find many of her writings. While I process that she is no more, through this post I want to share some of my memories of her.

I had met Usha through an Italian friend, Dr Enrico Pupulin in 1996. At that time, Enrico was the head of the Disability and Rehabilitation (DAR) team at the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva. He was keen to conduct a multi-country research on implementing community-based rehabilitation (CBR) programmes in some urban slum communities. In CBR programmes, disabled persons themselves, family members, and local community persons are trained in providing support to children and adults with disabilities. Enrico wanted to see if this approach would work in the poor communities living in the slums.

Enrico had gathered some really committed persons from seven countries for this research, including Fr Alex Zanotelli from Nairobi, Kenya and Dr Eduardo Scannavino from Santarem, Brazil. Usha was also one of them. In those days days she was the professor of child and adolescent health at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai, and together with her husband Chandran, she was also the founder of a voluntary organisation called Smarth, which was active in some slum areas such as Bhiwandi and Dharavi areas in Mumbai. I was asked to coordinate that research project.

Over the next 10-12 years we met many times. In 1999, we were together in Brazil. In 2001, we all converged in Mumbai, when we visited the Bhiwandi and Dharawi areas. Not long after that visit to Mumbai, Usha told me that Chandran had been diagnosed with a cancer. In spite of all their efforts, he died some time later. That was a difficult period for their family.

In the following years, we kept on meeting on and off. Usha came to Italy for a couple of workshops. Then we were both involved in the organisation of an international workshop in Helsinki, Finland. Usha also did the compiling of responses for an international survey on disability and rehabilitation for the WHO. Her warmth, humility and humane approach made her an ideal colleague, who was appreciated and loved by everyone.

Some more years later, another difficult period for Usha came when some persons from their voluntary organisation accused her of improper use of the donors' funds. Though all the financial controls showed that the funds had been used properly and no evidence of any wrong-doing was found, it took a toll on her. Even more unfortunately, it led to a decline and then closure of that organisation which she had started with Chandran.

In August 2012, as she reached 65 years, she retired from TISS as a senior professor. Few days later, in September, she left India and came to the USA, where she started a new phase of life as a professor in the New York State University. It also meant that she could be closer to her daughter. (In the image below, from left - Usha Nayar, I and Pam Zinkin from UK)

Once we were sitting together and talking, I don't remember in which country it was, when I had told her about some personal set-back which was worrying me at that time. Usha had told me, "Have faith in God, sometimes what you see as a set-back, can become an opportunity for a new direction in life."

Then she had told me about an episode from her own life. She had completed her graduation, post-graduation and PhD from Allahabad university and she was very keen to have a job in that university. "The job that I had wanted so much, it was not given to me, it was given to someone who had family ties to some big-wigs", she had said, "I was so disappointed, I felt that my life was over and I will not achieve anything in life. Some time later, there was an opportunity in TISS, I applied and was successful. If I had not had that set-back in Allahabad, I would not have had the good fortune to work in TISS. Only afterwards I understood that God works in different ways."

I still remember those words.

Over the last couple of years, Usha had also become more active with Yoga and the teachings of Upanishads, which had long been my area of interest as well. We had sometimes exchanged messages through Facebook and I had told her that I looked forward to an opportunity for talking about spirituality with her.

Instead, destiny had other plans. In February 2021, she died a couple of days after receiving a Covid vaccine, but I never heard about it. A few months later, after the second dose of a Covid vaccine, even I had developed a cardiac arrhythmia, which took a few months to improve. My doctor in Italy said that it was probably a coincidence and not due to the vaccine. Ever since the pandemic started, health services have worsened and there is no way to know for sure. However, no one can deny that so many of our lives have been changed by that pandemic.

Dear Usha, perhaps one day we shall meet and have our discussion about spirituality on the other side and laugh about it. Goodbye my friend, I am glad that our paths crossed.

***** 

    

Searching for the past in Chennai

During a recent visit to Chennai, a walk along the Marina beach took me to the ancient Parthasarthy temple and to a search for a long-lost childhood friend. This post is about that walk and my search.

My childhood friend

Nani (Narayan), my childhood friend, used to live in a multi-story building inside the area known as NPL, while we were living in Double Storey flats in New Rajendra Nagar in Delhi. His family home was in Chennai, which I had visited a few times.

The last time I had met him was in Delhi, probably around 2001-02, when I had come to India. He had just shifted back to Delhi from Chennai. Since then we had lost contact. Partly it was my fault - I had not looked for him during my visits to India. I had lost his old telephone number and I didn't have his email. I looked for him on facebook but didn't find him. Every now and then I wondered about him.

A memory from the past

Few weeks ago, I was back in Chennai after more than 20 years. One afternoon I was looking at the Google Map when I noticed "Parthasarathy temple" that was not very far from my hotel. The last time I had visited Nani's house in Chennai must have been about 30 years ago, but I was sure that it was right in front of the Parthasarathy temple. I remembered the name of the temple because it was also his father's name.

Parthasarthi temple is the oldest temple of Chennai, built around 8th century CE. Nani's family house in front of it, had also looked very old. Once I had stayed in that house for a few days and remembered its intricately carved wooden doors and a wooden balcony around the central courtyard.

As I remembered my old visit to that house, I decided that I will go to that temple and see if I could find his old house. Perhaps some neighbours will be able to give me news about him, I thought.

The walk at Marina Beach

I took an auto to the Gandhi statue on Marina beach. It was sunset time and the beach was crowded with people.

I started my walk towards the Parthasarathy temple with the help of Google Map on my cellphone. I passed in front of the Vivekanand house, the house where Swami Vivekanand ji had stayed for some time after his return from the US.

I am an admirer of Vivekanand and would have liked to explore that place and its museum but it was becoming dark, so I decided to continue my walk.

A short walk brought me to the Anne Besant street with her statue in a small park at the street corner. Parthasarathy temple was nearby according to the Google Maps.

Reaching the Parthasarathy temple

A small side street brought me to the temple pond. Though I had visited that place and even stayed there right next to that pond, I had no memory of it. I even had difficulty in recognising the temple. The Gopuram of the temple seemed much taller compared to how I remembered it. All the area in front of it, including an long entrance with a row of pillars was surrounded by an iron grill, looked completely different. There were small shops all around and it was full of devotees and visitors.

In my memory it was a quiet street, there was no long covered entrance in front of the temple, there was just an old broken wall. At that time, there were no shops on that street, but just old houses on the two sides. I went all around the temple a couple of times, but could not recognise anything. I tried asking to some older looking shopkeepers, but no one could tell me anything.

After about 15 minutes of looking around, I was almost ready to give up. So I went inside the temple and even inside it seemed different from how I had remembered it. They used to have a rath-yatra with hundreds of devotees filling that street, I remembered.

While coming out of the temple, I had a flash of memory about the address of the old house. It was hiding somewhere there in my head. I checked the numbers on the houses. Number 25, my friend's house, was there but now it was a marriage hall. It looked completely different from the house of my memories.

Outside the marriage hall, I saw a board on the side, with a telephone number. I thought that I will talk to the hall owner and ask him, perhaps he would know about the previous owners of this house. However, my call went unanswered. Dejected, I thought that it was time to go back to my hotel.

Call from the marriage hall owner

I was near the temple pond, looking for an auto, when my telephone rang. It was the hall owner calling me back.

"When did you buy that house?" I asked him.

"Who are you? Why do you want to know?" He asked me suspiciously.

So I explained that it was the house of an old friend and that I was looking for him.

"I have Nani's telephone number, he lives in Delhi", the hall owner told me.

"Wow!" I had found my friend, I was overjoyed, "Can you please SMS me his mobile number?"

The man promised to send me the number and then while closing the phone casually mentioned, "Nani's father still lives in that house, there is a small residential part on the side of the marriage hall, he has a room there."

"What? Uncle is still alive?" I was flabbergasted. Uncle had retired in the 1980s, so he must be more than 90 years old, probably closer to 100 years.

Meeting Nani's father

The hall owner had explained and this time I had no difficulty in finding the small grilled door on the side, leading to a corridor and to a few rooms. My heart thumping with excitement, I went to uncle's room. His door was open and he was sitting near the TV, busy watching it. I knocked on the door, went inside and touched his feet. "Uncle, you remember me? I am Sunil, Nani's friend."

He looked at me and smiled, "Yes, I remember you. Come sit here."

He remembered me! Suddenly I was laughing and crying at the same time, feeling like a child once again.

We talked about old times. Nani has a son and a daughter. I had seen his son Ravi as a baby, but I had never seen his daughter. My friend's elder brother, Cheenu, was no more, he had died six years ago. Cheenu's wife and daughter now live in Hyderabad.

Uncle called Nani on his mobile and we spoke. He lives in NOIDA. When I go back to Delhi, I am going to see him.

Finally

Some times crazy ideas lead to good things. I am so glad that on that day when I saw Parthasarathi temple on the Google Map, I decided to go and search for my friend's old house.

***

The year that was - 2017 in 10 pictures

For the new year, I want to remember through pictures my most beautiful moments of 2017. So join me in discovering my most exciting and unforgettable memories of the year gone by.

Actually the first and most important memory of 2017 is the birth of my grand daughter in June 2017. However, I am a little superstitious that way and I don't want to put her picture here. I am sharing my memories regarding the places I visited during the year.

Moments from my Japan trip

Finally in 2017 I visited Japan for the first time. I had had opportunities for visiting Japan in the past, but I had to decline them, so I am glad that this year I could visit it. I didn't go to the well known cities like Tokyo or Kyoto, instead my visit was in the south-west part of the country.

The first image is of the atomic dome from Hiroshima, memory of the atom bomb explosion that had devastated this city during the second world war. I remember standing near this building, feeling my heart palpitate with emotions.

The second image is from the Shinto temple of Ako, remembering the legend of the 47 samurais who became ronin to avenge the honour of their lord. Keanu Reeves had made the film 47 Ronin on this legend.

The third and last image of my Japan visit is of a traditional drum dance in Osafune. I can say that the Japan visit gave me an opportunity to admire nature, a journey in history and legends, and a glimpse of art and culture in Japan.

Moments from my India visit

In 2017 I also visited Kerala as a tourist for the first time. I had been to Kochi in the past, but it was always for work and without any possibility of going around and visiting places.

This time, I was able to spend some days in Fort Kochi and even visit the Kochi Biennale.

I was also able to visit Munnar and Thrissur and could go for a small backwaters tour. I wanted to go to Kannur but could not manage it this time.

Passing the days of Holi in Gurgaon with my sister's family was a joy. It was also an opportunity to enjoy the rich winter calendar of events in Delhi including some talks organised by Sahapedia and a Holi Kathak dance programme by students of Shovana Narayan.

Moments from my life in Italy

I live in Schio in the north-east of Italy. Venice is just one hour train journey away from my home. This year I was able to go back to the carnival in Venice. I chose a day when they didn't have any famous events in the carnival so I could avoid the big crowds, which make me feel sick. The picture from Venice carnival is at the top of this post.

I was back in Venice for visiting the Venice Biennale. It was huge and I visited only the Biennale buildings in the garden, thinking that I will go back to look at the Arsenal part of the exhibits on another day. Unfortunately I could not manage to go back and thus missed out on the Arsenal part, still I am glad that I could see works of so many different artists that I liked.

The next image is of Thai dancers from the Orient Festival in Padua. It was an exiciting visit, an opportunity to see dances, art, theatre and taste food from different Asian countries.

The last image of this post is from a motorcycle rally in Schio. It was my first time in a motorcycle rally and though I was only a spectator, I found it very exciting.

Conclusions

I hope that you have enjoyed some of the highlights from my memories of the year gone by. I know that I have not managed to put all the significant things in the ten images presented above. Like the birth of my grand daughter and the visit of an old friend from Assam.

2017 was also a good year for my blog writings. In the past, I was dividing my blog-writing time between 4 blogs including 1 in Hindi and 2 in Italian. Now I am focusing only on this English blog, also because it has most readers.  Started 12 years ago, hopefully next year it will reach a total of 1 million readers. This year I wrote 60 posts, mostly about travels and arts. Thanks to all those who come here to read my posts.

2017 has been a good year to me and to my family. I hope that 2018 will also be a good year. I am keeping my fingers crossed. Best wishes for the new year 2018 to all of you.

***

Gods, lords and great persons

In today's Hindustan Times, there is an article by Amish in which he writes about his feelings for "Lord Ram" and his answer to a woman about use of the title "Lord":

A lady friend spoke with me after the event. I know her well and can certify that she is not a secular-extremist (the kind who have a distaste for every religion, especially their own). She is religious and liberal. She asked why I used the honorific ‘Lord’ for Lord Ram. I said I respect him. I worship him. I will call him Lord. She said that she sees me as a liberal who respects the women in his family; then how can I respect Lord Ram, who treated his wife unfairly? She then went on to make some very harsh comments about Lord Ram.

In his answer to this accusation, Amish goes on to look at the lives of three great men - Ram, Mahatma Gandhi and Buddha - and concludes that great men often think of greater good of human beings and in the process are not always fair to their wives and their families, "We have every reason to love them, because they sacrificed their own lives so that we could have a better life. But had we been their family, maybe we would have cause to complain."

The way Amish explains it, it does make sense. However, I was wondering about a kind of gender bias in terms of such stories, where "great men" are excused for their family lives because they were thinking of greater good of the society, but are we equally understanding about "great women", when they want to sacrifice their family lives for the greater good?

So I was wondering are there similar examples of women. The only person I could think of was Mira Bai, though I think that it is not a perfect example. She sacrificed her family life because of her feelings of devotion to Krishna. Though her husband and her family did not like it and even gave poison to her, she is considered a saint by the people.

Another similar example can be of another woman saint from Karnataka - Akka Mahadevi. Can the readers give me other examples of such women as public figures who are respected or worshipped in India, though in terms of their family lives they were less than perfect? Or is it just men who "forget" their families in their quest for greater good?

At another level, similar accusations of mistreating their wives and families have been made against a number of artists, writers, film makers and public figures. Their public image be that of sensitive persons, and they make sensitive portrayals of women and life's injustices in their works, but their wives and families accuse them of neglect, psychological and even physical violence. Perhaps in this regard, it will be easier to find examples of successful women artists, writers and film makers, who have been accused of similar behaviour by their spouses and families!

Going back to the original debate that started this reflection - Amish's explanation about why he prefers to say "Lord Ram" and not just "Ram", I have another consideration. I agree that if you believe in a religion or a god or a figure and you wish to use words like Lord, bhagwan, prophet, etc., it is fine. These titles and words should reflect the faith and devotion you feel in yourself.

However, often the faithful get angry if others do not use such titles and take this as a kind of insult to their religion. They would like to force others to use these titles - in that case, I think that such words are empty of devotion, rather they are at best, a hypocrisy!

***