Self-promoters of the world unite...you have nothing to lose but a little belly fat, laughing

This time, last year!

30 May 2008
Know that fable about the old man the boy and the donkey…? Half the people scolded the boy for sitting on the donkey while his Da walked alongside. And when they switched, the other half admonished the father for sitting on the donkey while the little boy walked. And there they went on their weary way, never knowing what was the right thing to do. (Luckily they didn’t get badgered into carrying the donkey or something.)

Ok – so that’s a little how I felt a few weeks ago, when various people said great, you’ve ARRIVED, your book’s being published by an actual publisher, and not some self-publishing stunt. Mid-way between my taking an immodest bow, a whole lot of people said quite the opposite thing: hey, you wrote some story, good for you – now get started on the real work: PROMOTING it. Publishers are like parents, I am told – they can push you out there in the world, but then you got to make a mark all on your own. And how are you going to do that if no one knows you and your book exist, haan?

So fired with this fear, that the book (hereinafter referred to as 3, Zakia Mansion, and further hereinafter referred to as 3ZM) would come, be celebrated and bought by near and dear ones – amounting to a total of 120 people – and then gather dust and find its way in big stacks to the raddiwalla, I made some serious stabs at PUBLICITY AND PROMOTION all on my own.

One thing is for sure: The next time I hear about someone successfully and ruthlessly pushing their own book/child/performing dog/paintings/musicCD, I will definitely not snigger and look superior. Because now I know that while they smile and bow and sign autographs and dance to the bank and all, they must have got there only after some rather ignominious and absurd private moments on that road to being rich and famous.

So while I’m still poor and unknown, and have no stake in appearing like I was born to fame and fortune, I have to document some of my forays into promoting Self and 3ZM.

First, I decide to do some ‘inner work’. I practice looking at pictures of ethereal Jhumpa and otherworldly Arundhati and not say to myself – “gosh, no wonder my publisher didn’t ask for my picture for the back of the book”. I conjure up the dictums delivered unconvincingly by my mother when I was 15: “Beauty is as Beauty Does.” And other such words of encouragement trademarked by Maharashtrian mothers (MMs). Talk about grounding your kids in reality. MM’s bury you in the stuff. All of us daughters of MMs are Anarkalis entombed in reality, I tell you.
Ok, so inner work shakily in place, I skip off to a small bookstore in a leafy lane. The big chains my Publisher will look after, is my logic. The small ones, I must ‘work’. Note, I don’t at this time, actually have a copy of 3ZM in hand yet. I walk into the store, and half way through the enterprise, but too late to retract, it occurs to me, that this is like selling agarbattis in a train. Only, worse, without the jhola filled with agarbattis. This is fast turning into a waking version of one of those nightmares in which you walk into your class wearing just the essentials and the school tie – you’ve forgotten to put on your school uniform. Anyway, now it’s too late, as the nice lady in the small shop looks at me and smiles. I utter the words and hear them echoing foolishly in my head: “Hi, I’m a writer. My book is coming out soon.” It’s early May, very hot, and the lady may have pushed the chair towards me and poured me a glass of water quite naturally – or then, maybe she thought all odd people who walk in out of the street and make such dubious declarations, need to be calmed, humoured, and sent kindly off on their zigzag way. Which is what she did. As I zigzagged home, I told myself that I have to do this again only when I have an advance copy of 3ZM in my hand and photographic proof (passport, licence or PAN card) that I am the writer. Otherwise I would continue to get the maaf karo agay jao reserved for the agarbatti seller and that too one without agargbattis in hand.
****


4 June 08
And so onward. Copies of the book (hereinafter referred to as 3 Zakia Mansion, pyar se log usko 3ZM pukartay hai) come to me from my publisher. Now I am at least an agarbatti salesman with the actual agarbattis in the jhola to sell. In the interim, more people have admonished me to take matters in my own hands, as no bookstore anywhere, metros, second metros, it seems, has even heard of the book yet, my friends report to me. Leave alone standing at the door with their tongues hanging out waiting for large consignments of 3ZM, bookstore owners urge other books on to my friends. ‘Other’ writers have multiple launches in simultaneous locations, Bangalore, Pune, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai for good measure. As for 3ZM, informal reports pour in: they haven’t heard of it, Gouri. Sure you’ve written it? some friends ask kindly. When they hear my anxious silence on the phone line or on gmail chat, one of them hurriedly adds, god bless her soul: “I’ll ask again and again. So they’ll remember the name. And when the book is out, I’ll gift a copy of it for everyone’s birthday that comes up in the next year.”
Ah, really, where would I be without my friends. Serious. love you for that, Anjali.
Meanwhile, I hear from a smart, fearless young couple, that I simply have to take this show on the road myself. The laugh themselves sick when I tell them I am going to leafy lane bookstores and introducing myself. They advise me to get a manager, m-a-n-a-g-e-r they spell out helpfully. One last sweet bookstore that I have a personal connection with, I bargain with them, and then I’ll do everything that you suggest.
I take myself and new-born 3ZM on a small car trip into the city. I park and gently unstrap 3ZM from the baby chair, and stand at the signals waiting to cross. I fight back the image in my head of myself as a vagrant at the signal waiting with her baby and hoping to catch the eye of passersby. This kind of beggarly-thinking wont do, man, I tell myself. I visualize Oprah saying “You go, girl!” to me. And begin to stride across the road. The effect is a little spoilt by a two-wheeler fellow trying to run me down because I come in the way of his red-light jump. I have to scurry and skitter, dandling new-born on my hip. Which brings me rather quickly to the steps of another old institution, a 30 year old book shop whose owner I went to college with. He isn’t there, but that doesn’t stop me from plonking 3ZM on a table, where two assistant women are working quietly. I start with, “umm…do you hold book readings here?” I think people sell dirty pictures and drugs with more panache and confidence. They both look at me blank, and say, ‘book readings?’ I swallow hard. Not only are they not all agog, I am going to have to repeat my question, and possibly annotate and footnote my query, possibly mime out the book reading thing, so they get what I’m asking, in that choked dry-lipped way. But before I can do any of that, the phone rings in this small shop, and the errand boy picks it up, and passes it on to one of the ladies, announcing loudly, sure of its horrific effect on them: “Mr Hagawne cha phone.” For those of you who don’t speak Marathi (how dare you not? Want to be sent back where you came from? Huh?), you may not be aware of the awfully scatological last names that exist in this part of the country. Anyway, loosely (god the puns just happen) translated, Mr Hagawne means something like: Mr Shitter. I swear, I am not making this up.
I take 3ZM protectively off the table, and wander into one of the little aisles, and end up picking up 3 other people’s books. This seems to be going well as a promotional visit, I think.
The lady speaks into the phone to Mr H, and I can see from the corner of my eye that she is savagely fighting down the giggles. Her younger assistant succumbs to them, and quickly runs out of the shop. I see her standing on the pavement laughing uncontrollably into her hanky. This sets me off a little and I grin at the lady who manages to finish off the convo with Mr H without laughing. Her face is doing her in, though. And as soon as she catches my eye, she comes completely undone. We both burst out into huge lung fulls of laughter. She tries to say sorry madam, to me, and recompose her face. But she’s totally gone. She swats the errand boy with a book and says: “He always does this, whenever this man calls. Announces his name loudly and clearly, for all to hear.” The errand boy grins and says, “You tell him to change his name to something like Mr Joshi. So much cleaner.” This makes us bellow more, and the woman who was trying to finish off her laughing outside on the pavement, enters the shop, eyes streaming. Ah, why don’t such people change their names, really, I manage to ask. The shop lady leans weakly against a shelf and says softly to me….oh madam, you don’t know, there’s another distributor who calls, and his name is…She cant finish her sentence. She goes to her desk and pulls out a card to show me, laughing and jabbing helplessly at the name. It says: ‘Mr Sanjay Boob’.
Now with this kind of exciting time at this shop, somehow it didn’t seem the right time to show them 3ZM and extol its virtues or explain what a book-reading is, no? Thank you Mr H and Mr B for that priceless laugh with strangers - but if 3ZM remains unknown to the reading public in the Deccan area, it’s all your fault.

15 June 2008
A little visibility at last

Ok - the new born 3 Zakia Mansion (pyar se usko log 3ZM kehetey hai) is not so invisible anymore. From Shantiniketan (how cool is that!) Keya Sarkar, who owns a bookstore and library and lifestyle store writes to me, saying she has got a catalogue in which my book features and she has ordered copies. 3ZM, like all newborns, needed that little smack on the bottom that the Obgyn gives, to start its journey into the real world (Note my smooth transition to americanisms like Obgyn, and not gynac or gynae in good old Indian-English). And the smack has been delivered by Keya. Thank you! (And from here on, I will rest this parallel of 3ZM and newborn baby. It's not a metaphor to grind for too long.)
Then my publisher sends me rapid and wonderfully multisyllabic emails, getting set to tie down dates for A LAUNCH. yes, a real one. With celebs reading from the book and all. And people air-kissing each other before and after.
On top of it, my friend Phillip George from Thiruvananthapuram writes saying there's a smart poster of my book cover in a bookstore there. I am strewing roses from my hat with delight hearing this.
Niece 1 calls most thrilled that the book is in her hands. She regretfully tells me that the fancy paper that she works for "does not carry reviews of Indian writers". Get this: this is a paper that has the word India in its masthead. Go figure.
Almost as absurd as the lady in The Library in Pune who I went to see about holding a reading there. "Is there a UK connection in the book?" she asks. When I look down and mumble, no miss, or sorry teacher, she looks politely at me and calls the convo to a halt. "Then we cant do anything. There are many bookstores you can approach." (ya like i didnt know, lady). Later I thought, one of the characters in 3ZM travels from Chicago to Mumbai. He must have had a London stopover. Dang and Drat! So why didnt I tell the lady there was in fact a UK connection in my book, after all. Shya...silly me.
But never mind. Tomorrow I will set out looking for Friends in High Places in the Media.
Some are born pushy, others cultivate pushiness, and some have pushiness thrust upon them. Me - the third of the above categories.
Meanwhile, one media person casually asks me: "Is your book potentially controversial? Do you bash anyone, or is there some shocking child abuse, or some such stuff? Kuch halla hoga kya, over this book? Besmirched some historical figures?"
I'm afraid the answer to that is no.
*****

June 19 2008
Ok so bite me, I want my book to be written about. But hold-on, always be careful about what you ask for....because you can be blessed with gobbledygook like this: (I wont mention the paper or the writer, because I have nothing personal against either, but I do have a problem with the state of Indian journalism, editors, editing desks, writers, the whole caboodle....moreover, this is so ironic, because this is the kind of writing I teach people NOT to indulge in. And here I sit, being written at in this way!) Hold your breath. Just a few excerpts, but it's going to be a rocky road. And I quote:

"Framing characters that have been a quarry of emotional abandonment, Gouri Dange's maiden venture in fiction writing 3, Zakia Mansion recounts the journey of maturing.
Writers can delve out the most unobtrusive of the emotional panoply felt or forgotten, spy the most understated of the peculiar human conditions, and phrase it so incisively as to leave you stunned that they can resonate your inner being like they have been an observer and cohort for life. "
......
To intuit the finer elemental experiences of a marooned mind that has fallen off the sound growth routine, it is given that a perspicacious, objective and thorough insight into the tumultuous scenario is required. But to Dange it comes relatively easy, given her surrogate profession of a family counsellor.
....
Her advice to aspirants of penmanship is that you should indulge in uninhibited writing and allow yourself to explore , refraining from taking a cavilling view of your writing. "
....
! had enough?

This confirms one theory, that the word vocabulary, has an Indian origin: Voh-kya-boli-rey?

All this sent him running to his dictionary, one of my friends told me, not to look up words, but to pick up the largest one and hurl it at the people concerned.

The Universe is telling me: You want Press? Here Press this! ImPressed? DePressed?
Now I remembered why I was a recluse in the first place. Too late, now.