When I was in 5th standard, I used to love to look out of the window in my class. Academically, it was one of the many worst years in my life and I was doing quite badly in school, but every time I looked out, I could forget all my troubles and just be engrossed in my own day dreams. I was often berated by teachers for being a dreamer, but I suppose children of that age have a thick skin (at least I did) and all the reprimands used to bounce off me. When we moved into a classroom that had the most boring window views, I started paying attention in class and slowly improved my grades.
I have been writing something or the other since the time I was ten. Most of it was gibberish, direct or indirect plagiarism of Enid Blyton but I realised that it was fun to write and the idea stuck in my head.
Many years later when I was expecting Saboor, I was bored and I had not given serious thought to writing. I sat down and wrote a short story about a girl who looks out of the window in class. On a whim I sent it to Open Sesame and forgot about it completely.
A few days after Saboor was born, an uncle called up and asked me to look at the paper. They had published my story! I was euphoric and it was the immediate impetus for me to pen down another short story. Soon, I was writing for Open Sesame regularly, and then one day I wrote a story about a Marwari seth who runs a shop in Vellore. I don’t know why I wrote it, but till date, I feel it is one of my best stories. However, there was something different about this story and I couldn’t send it to Open Sesame. I realised that it was not something children would enjoy or understand.
The realisation that I could write fiction, proper short stories, was thrilling and once again I wrote a few stories, but couldn’t find publishers for them. On one of my quests to get the short stories published, one publisher gave me the idea to string them together into a novel. The idea seemed farfetched but I gave it a try. Of my seven stories, only two could fit in, and thus Kite Strings was born.
