Cruising: A writer's journey

It's raining. Makes me nostalgic. I think of monsoon in Dhaka. Mangoes, jackfruits and hilsa fish cooked with kashundi. Chom choms, pran haras and freshly made emritis. I always had a sweet tooth. That calm city of my younger days is alive in memory only. 'I'm a stranger in a strange land.' The biblical sentence resonates with sadness. That's what I said to myself on my last visit to Dhaka in 1999. I was someone looking through a window pane at a life that was once my own. I fleetingly think of my university days. Mr Monem's passionate lectures on the Romantic poets. Dr Murshed's scholarly analyses of John Donne's poetry. Other, less interesting, classes. I still chuckle when I recall the one on Thomas Hardy one steamy, hot afternoon. Hardy's never been a favourite of mine. On this day the lecture droned on until, in sheer desperation, a few like-minded fellow students and I bounced a ping pong ball on the floor at the back of the class. 'There's noise of a ping pong ball,' the lecturer said without taking his eyes off the text. 'Could you please stop it?' And he continued unflappably with his clinical dissection of The Return of the Native. Modhu's canteen floats into vision. Now there was a place of learning! I had my life's education over disgustingly watery tea and hot shingaras. The arguments, the stories and the dreams I shared with friends. Rock music and American novels. Stuck between the East and West. The beginning of my fractured existence. The war of liberation and its long term consequences hastened the splintering process.

I exemplify postmodernism.

But enough! I must get going . . .

4:45pm
I'm exhausted. I've caught up with my publisher, Linda Funnell, from HarperCollins and we are on our way to meet my editor. I have worked with her on two books but I have never met Judith Lukin-Amundsen. That's the sad world of dot com we live in. Communication without meetings or the joys of conversation.

The session on characters was a bit flat. I think in the short timeframe of an hour, most writers would have difficulty in articulating how they create and develop characters. After all, they evolve during the entire period of writing a novel. Why did I write about such an odd character in The Storyteller? An ugly, bisexual, storytelling dwarf in the slums of New Delhi! I wanted to see how far I could stretch my imagination. Was there a limit to the creative horizon? Vamana wasn't for the faint-hearted or the conservative. In a bizarre way, I couldn't control his development or the direction in which he was headed. It was almost as if he had an independent life of his own.

Writing about odd characters is often an act of self-discovery. Conceiving a character like Vamana may also be a response to curiosity about a side of life a writer may know little about. It can be intimation that the imagination is tired and needs to be revived with the stimulant of something weird, something different. It can be an inadvertent process of shock learning that involves being up close and personal with people one would avoid. Working with marginalized people leads to self-questioning and assessment of one's own values and sometimes the uncomfortable realization that maybe as a writer one is not as liberal in thinking as might be expected. For me, flaws in people are far more interesting and offer greater scope for exploration in fiction than virtues. Embedded in their faults is the essence of humanity. And, as writers, that is what we must strive to show.

The afternoon session on India and Bangladesh went like a dream. More and more Australians are getting interested in the growing economic prowess of India. And along with that is the desire to know more about the country's culture. There's always a danger that in such a format Goliath will dominate the stage. Well, that didn't happen. Bangladesh held its own, and I had to make the point that I wasn't an Indian. Why have I gone back to Bangladesh in my forthcoming novel? That's easy. I wanted to explore the phenomenon of terrorism brewing in a remote region of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. But the novel's not about gratuitous violence. It's a multilayered story about a Bangali family with all kinds of secrets. Every family member has been damaged in one way or another. It's also about a love affair between the protagonist's Muslim father and a Hindu woman. How much do we know about our parents and their pasts? In many ways they are strangers to us. They control what we know about them. But do they always tell us the truth? What do they censor and refurbish? As children, do we forgive them if we make sordid discoveries about their past lives? We expect them to be role models. But can saints ever become parents? Aren't they flesh and blood, impulse and instinct? Can't they be tempted? Make mistakes? Perhaps, as children, we can be unforgiving hypocrites. How unflawed have our own lives been?

5:10pm
Coffee with Linda and Judith. There was no handshake with Judith. We embraced silently as though there was no need for words. We have known each other for a number of years over the telephone, fax and via email. We've argued, debated and pondered. Invariably she has won. She's older than I had imagined her to be. I'm reminded of the great phrase of Yeats: 'Monuments of unageing intellect.' And my God! What a mind she has! She loves my new novel. Judith has shaped it quite brilliantly during the editing. She must have poured hours into it, judging by the suggestions she made. It's now tight and doesn't drag. I'm delighted with the final outcome. I remember the last chapter. It's all my own. After the first draft, it was fifteen pages. Subsequently I shortened it to about nine. Now, it's four. That was the only chapter that Judith didn't touch. I have to confess, I am rather proud of the ending. Unexpected, sudden and climactic.

8:30 pm
In my experience, HarperCollins has always chosen its restaurants carefully. This one is called Boomerang and it's excellent. It's still raining. My agent, Lyn Tranter, decides to be adventurous and orders a dessert with wasabi in it. Wasabi in dessert? I'm more conventional, opting for the double layered chocolate pudding. It's delicious. There are a few calories to be accumulated tonight. Oh, what the hell! I'm a writer. I should only worry about the state of my mind. Suddenly Lyn decides that she wants a taste of my pudding. She uses her dessert spoon like a shovel and savages the side of the sweet. Then the big, fat strawberry I had been saving to savour at the end disappears in one mouthful. Aargh! Lyn likes my dessert. She digs deeper . . .

The conversation is genial and I talk to various acquaintances and fellow writers. But then it's time to go. 'By the way', Linda Funnell says as we exchange farewells. 'Spiral Road will be published in April next year.' Well, that's settled then. What am I going to write about next? It's complicated . . . more than likely a novel on the effects of globalization on a rural community in Bangladesh. Maybe. It will probably be a part of a Phd project at Monash. Is that foolish or what?

I've managed to make a mess in my room. I go over the notes for tomorrow's workshop. Process and not method! Be faithful to your imagination! Too bad if you offend some people. Keep structure in mind. Conflict, dialogue, self-editing and, above everything else, LANGUAGE! No latha patha phrasing. I wish I could translate that.

I'm reading John Fowles' collection of essays, Wormholes. 'I have never really wanted to be a novelist . . .' he writes in the opening piece, 'I Write Therefore I Am'. Who does?

Lights out.

There was also a beginning for me. Words written in frustration of not knowing what I wanted to do in life. A kind of early midlife crisis. 'The first thing he wanted to see was the river . . .' And so began Seasonal Adjustments. And on that river began a novelist's journey that has not ended.

Not yet, anyway.

Adib Khan is a Bangladeshi-born Australian novelist. Seasonal Adjustments is his first novel.