About Me
Jahnavi Iyengar May 28, 2010
Multiple interests converge on this blog - writing, editing, Indian history, travel...
I am an editor and writer with a deep interest in Indian history which seeps into quite a bit of the places I travel to.
I edit Historical Fiction, Suspense, Crime, Indian History and Culture, Biography.
I never did like the introduction and exposure to history I had at school in India. The textbooks were all so cut and dry. Just a series of dates and names of kings with nothing much about their personalities to distinguish one from the other.
In a desperate attempt to infuse some life into a History class once, I remember my teacher assigning one British Governor-General to each of us students and asking us to read up about him and enact a monoact of his time in India. The hilarious fallout of this strategy was each of us remembered the classmate who enacted the part and quite forgot the dandee's actual name.
What I was truly always interested in was the lives of the common people of those times, people who lived normal lives even while grand events that defined an era were happening around them. For example, I wanted to know how a teacher or water carrier's life was impacted by History's twists and turns rather than the battle the current king fought. Much, much later I stumbled upon a perfectly legitimate branch of history known as Subaltern History. This study of History focusses on what happens among the masses at the base levels of society than among the elite. Exactly what I was looking for.
Convergence - History and Writing
A happy accident was the convergence of my two main interests - writing and Indian history. This eventually led to my first book, co-written with a dear friend, a lady who had material collected first-hand but did not write and I, housebound with an infant in a new town with my husband travelling on work three weeks in a month. It was a jodi made in heaven, as they say in my part of the world. Jodi is a pair. We were a pair who came in contact seredipitously and staying together through house shifts to complete and publish the book that started as travel notes and then went on to write numerous articles on Indian history and culture.
I went on to write independently too and had several articles published over the years. We got the opportunity to edit a 500 page book on Hinduism together that got published privately. The editing of this book taught me an important lesson - that of drawing boundaries with clients on adding bits and pieces of material long after the assigned date which only led to all schedules going awry. A clear-cut plan of action agreeable to us and to the author was the only way forward.
Since then I have gone on to other things in the book sphere - reviewing books, beta reading for novelists and completing the first draft of my novel.
Travel
I've travelled a lot within India and abroad. It is certainly the most educative experience I've had. My travel is not so much to be able to tick boxes and sit back with a 'Been there, Done that' sigh of contentment but to experience the place as much as I can in the short while I'm there. Collecting experiences. The photo above was clicked by my then ten year old daughter who went rather click-happy on that trip. Nothing better than letting loose a youngster with a camera. Just seeing the world through their perspective is so very educative.
I'm glad you stopped by.