Author Kiran Manral gets chatty about 'The Reluctant Detective'

The table in the middle of Bandra’s Bungalow 9 breaks into occasional cheers. Popular blogger Kiran Manral is handing out signed copies of her debut novel, The Reluctant Detective to her blogger friends. As she wound up her ladies' lunch, DNA pulled Manral aside for a little chat about her book, writing and the brat!

 

An avid blogger and a freelance writer, Manral’s first book is about a housewife who stumbles onto a murder mystery. “The idea of the book came by not in a day, not in a month. It was the story of so many women out there. They have a child, give up their career and what do they do with their time? They gossip, they shop, they do something to make their life more interesting,” says Manral whose protagonist stumbles into dead bodies around her as she parties, struggles with weight and plays proud mommy. Is Kanan Mehra an extension of Kiran Manral? “There are a lot of similarities like the obsession with weight, shoes and shopping and complete lack of domestic skills, but that’s where it ends. I haven’t really found corpses, you know,” she chuckles.

 

Manral was merrily running her blogs and her NGO when her friends started to demand that she write a book. “I finally said okay and I wrote out three chapters,” says Manral as she admits that she didn’t quite have a plot in mind. After sending out her three chapters and a synopsis to her publisher, Manral received a positive response and she got down to writing the rest. “I wrote the book in a couple of weeks,” she laughs. “The editor liked the initial chapters and she was travelling abroad soon and I was worried that if I delayed it she would forget about it. So I dashed it off,” says Manral. Spending an hour day at her desk dedicated to writing was all it took the brand new author to pen her debut novel. Manral dishes out some advice.

 

“The best words I have ever read are by Stephen King who when asked how do you write, replied, ‘One word at a time’.”

 

Her principle is that if you have 1,000 words of which 500 words are useless, you still have 500 words that count for something. “There’s no point in waiting for the perfect inspiration, the perfect mood or the perfect moment because you may never find the time,” says the author-cum-mum-cum-social activist-cum-social media-cum-freelance writer.

 

“From 8.30 in the morning to afternoon, I work on my assignments and other work and post lunch I spend about an hour doing my creative writing,’ says Manral describing her typical day at work.

 

For someone who dons so many hats, she makes it sound like a breeze, we joke. “If you have to find time, you find it. There’s no great secret,” she laughs. While many writers wait in the wings for their great novel to be accepted by a publisher, Manral was lucky enough to strike gold at the first shot with Westland India. “I was very lucky but then there was a side-story there. I sent it to two literary agents who hated it! They told me it would never work and they told me to give up on it. I was devastated, but now it takes me great pleasure to tell them what they soundly rejected has been accepted and published.”

 

For Manral, it is a matter of luck and staying true to one’s authentic voice. “If the book touches a chord with anyone who reads it, I would love it. It is meant to evoke a few laughs, it is a light book. It isn’t meant to be something serious or heavy. I wasn’t looking for somebody to read it with a serious bent of mind.”

 

Being a mother is a massive part of Manral’s blog and the “brat” as she adoringly calls him on the blog also forms a huge part of her first novel. “I have cannibalised his life completely, poor child!” says Manral, “He got me to blog seriously. I owe my popularity to him completely. And it would be odd for me to write about a woman without a brat.”

 

However, the brat is unaware of his involvement in his book. That hasn’t stopped him from throwing a “my mother wrote a book, did your mother write?” trump card at other kids in the neighbourhood, says Manral with pride.

 

The other man in Manral’s life, her husband, also hasn’t really read the book. “He knew vaguely I was writing something. When recently he heard that the book is coming out, he got animated and inquired about the title and ordered a couple of copies to distribute them among friends,” says Manral, who happily admits that the men in her life are both proud but not involved in her fame.

 

As someone who does a lot of writing as a form of work anyway, Manral uses creative writing as a playground. “Normally my assignments are so boring, forgive me for saying this, but you’re researching stories, fleshing them out and writing them. When I got down to writing the book it was really like an unwinder. I like to have fun when I write. I like to laugh at what I write” says Manral.

 

Manral is already working on book two which is with the editor and there is a third one in the pipeline about a young single girl from the North-East. “It will also be on a lighter side,” she informs us. “There’s a dark book I have been writing but I don’t know… I refuse to let go. No one likes it but I insist on writing it. It’s a different voice and it isn’t easy reading,” says the author who thinks that the market today is open to books appealing to a wider audience. And all this while she promotes her book across social media platforms and attends book readings and signings. How does she make time? “I don’t know,” she says softly, “I guess it is the passion that drives me,” she says as she waves us good bye and runs along to collect the brat.

 

The Reluctant Detective is available at all leading bookstores.