Authors Electric

Photo from 'The Telegraph', Kolkata - 20 May 2020 Corona + Amphan is the worst double whammy one can think of - and we are facing that at the moment. By “we”, I mean Bangladesh and two eastern states of India – Orissa and West Bengal. Cyclone Amphan hit us on 20 th May. Last year, a similar cyclone - Fani - had hit the coastal belt lining the Bay of Bengal in early May. It coincided with my daughter Srishti’s Birthday - so, the small party I’d arranged at home for her had to be cancelled. This year, a day after Amphan, with no internet, we could barely wish our niece in Hyderabad on her Birthday. While the ISD call did connect, all that could be heard from the other side were garbled voices… but at least, we could shout out a “Happy Birthday”!  Privileged kids Birthday celebrations are luxuries that can be done without for a year or two (though for children it can be a bitter disappointment; eagerly wait as they do for months for their BIG day). But even for them,...

We live in grim times. Those of us in the UK are faced with a government busy eating itself, unable to manage the competing demands of the negotiations that will sever us from Europe, the consequences of austerity that sees the NHS at breaking point and poverty spiralling out of control, and a blatantly racist discussion about who belongs here and who doesn’t. Our environment is drowning in plastic. Even our weather is non-compliant. (It’s not for me to comment on presidential difficulties in America).  One solution to this madness - distracting the electorate from things that really matter by bombing a country thousands of miles away.  People (by people I mean readers) need fiction more than ever. Fiction that not only addresses the deal and meaningful, but also provides some light relief, entertainment, brain-space away from all the guff that fills the newspapers and leaps at us from the internet. What a responsibility for us writers! How wonderful it is to be ...

I’m home from my travels. So surely I should be returning to the blank screen with renewed vigour, shouldn’t I?  Why doesn’t it work like that? I’ve a big project I want to get my teeth into. I should be refreshed by five weeks up mountains. I should be rising from my bed at sparrowfart and tapping away at the computer as the cocks crow. Oh the best-laid plans. And I’ve been away often enough to know it never works like that. The reality of a long journey, heaps of washing, and an empty fridge means that ordinary self-care must come first. Ah, self-care. I had plenty of time to reflect on that while I was away. I had an apartment in Pokhara, with a sunny balcony and view across rooftops to the hills and mountains. From there I could watch as the women of Nepal worked to meet the basic needs of their families.  Unpicked, that can be reduced to: keeping warm, keeping clean, and keeping well-fed. None of which is too difficult for those of us in the UK with enoug...

Well, I've finally managed to publish my Malawian travels on kindle (and other e-platforms). This has been a difficult book to write - wherever I went I met people eager to give me their opinions on the aid industry. And I went with First World assumptions about the importance of overseas aid and its role in changing the lives of those living in poverty - views I ended up questioning but finding no answers. And so I've left the reader with my unanswered questions. Should I have plucked solutions, rather than leave a reader uncomfortable? Or is it fine to present the challenges and leave the reader to think about them? This dilemma was part of the reason for choosing my title: Everlasting. 80% of the population of Malawi lives in poverty - and I could see no evidence of a co-ordinated of effort to challenge that. The big organisations don't seem to be trying to work themselves out of a job. At the same time, there are some magnificent, locally-driven projects that a...