Authors Electric

I like to wander. To travel without any clear sense of a destination. I call myself a wanderer in my new Instagram account. The photos there all come from a recent trip to Germany. Hence the title of this blog post. Originally coined in German during the 19th century, wanderlust means an urge, an impulse, a longing to travel. Maybe this craze for the new is a Shanghainese trait. As Lynn Pan documents in Shanghai Style , early 20th century Shanghai was crazy about anything new, be it film or fashion, chandeliers or flush toilets. When I wander, I try to go back in time or place, go deep, understand. Feed my imagination. So here’s an account of our travel through Germany and how it’s about to affect my writing. Moving Pictures We went to Germany because of two major art events: documenta 14 in Kassel and the Skulptur Projekt in Münster. The former takes place every 5 years; the latter only once in a decade. So I mapped out a route that would take us to both. An...

Some people love them, some people hate them, some people can’t write without them. I’m one of those nerdy people who is always early for everything in case something unexpected goes wrong. The ceiling falling down, a failed MOT, a wasp’s nest, a rail strike, a computer meltdown… you know the sort of thing. I’m writing this post six weeks in advance, which is sailing a bit close to the wind for me, to be honest. I know people who write what’s required the night before. I’d be a nervous wreck. On the other hand, tell me whatever it is can be submitted whenever I want and I’ll never get round to it. These days I’ve been commissioned to write a story every three months for Magnet Magazine, and if I don’t have a couple in the bank I have a lurking sense of dread until I do something about it. I provide the January, April, July and October stories, and you can access back copies here . Although I have a reasonably free hand I do need to consider the readership, which is predominantl...

2016 has been a most brutal, capricious year. On January 24th, my eldest brother Amitabha Mukerjee, a marathon swimmer and all-round sportsman, met with an accident while bicycling in Kanpur. He is Professor of Computer Science at IIT Kanpur with a luminous intelligence, but the impact severely damaged his brain stem. I flew from Chicago to be with my family. Amit was airlifted to New Delhi after developing life-threatening bedsores, he was in a persistent coma, he developed septicemia at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the doctors thought his MRI looked like Michael Schumacher's; e veryone, including the doctors, said Pray for a miracle. The days blurred; we held on to his every breath before releasing our own. My parents, at 90 and 80 years of age, were terrified that they wouldn’t live to see him ever open his eyes. In March, I had to be in Malaysia to launch an anthology on Malaysian sports writing titled, “Champion Fellas”. And there, in ...