Shrutidhora P Mohor

What was your favorite book as a child?

It is difficult to specify just one, but The Little Prince has been a remarkable one. By no means is it a book for children alone. Its truths are deceptively simple, unassuming, amazingly direct. It is a book with valuable and life-changing lessons on friendships, on relationships, on what runs the world, on insignificance of the human existence, on domesticity, on bonding, on nurturing, above all, on hope. None of these resonate with children alone. In fact, these are expected to make more sense with adults. Till date, it is a book that makes me smile and cry at the same time.

Do you remember the original reason or motivation why you started writing creatively?

Writing was at first a savior, holding the pieces of my life together. After some six years of serious writing and publishing (and innumerable rejections), writing is a form of life and living. It is the only activity which legitimises my thoughts, my existential predicaments, my outright quirkiness. I continue to write because otherwise there is no escape, no alternative world. The motivation for writing comes from the fact that we live in a world which needs to be subverted and critiqued, experienced and suffered in more ways than what the circuit around us lets us believe. Writing is an exercise in establishing one’s fallibility. It is a process of living multiple lives, none of which conforms to given models of acceptance or even resistance. Writing is motivating because it is revolutionary, destabilising, non-hegemonic.

What was the most adventurous or thrilling thing you ever did/experienced?

I am afraid I am a hopelessly feeble person with a highly routinised existence. I seldom do anything out of my daily routine, let alone do something which is thrilling. So, in that case, I suppose, a couple of times that I had gone trekking up to some of the highest peaks of the Himalayas would count as thrilling enough for me. Those were however during my pre-teen years. Thereafter, I would count as thrilling my interest in exploring historical sites all over the country (India), and in discovering the past from relics, anecdotes, remnants. As a reclusive adult, I find diving into a book in a quiet corner one of the most thrilling activities for my soul, which feels claustrophobic in the presence of talking fellow human beings.

Do you listen to music while reading or writing? Why/why not?

My interest in music is wide-ranging and always highly heterogeneous. I love humming, picking up tunes, singing along. Music during writing is absolutely fine with me, for writing involves long periods of not-writing too. Music, and specifically songs, are a good companion while I stare out of the window, or shut my eyes and almost fall asleep, re-read what I have written, delete parts, redo words. Even when I am actually writing, songs work as an aid, soothing, positively distracting, prompting further mindfulness. While reading, I prefer music and not songs though. Lyrics can be slightly interrupting when I am soaking in the words of another author. But overall, my writing, reading, and a not-too-loud musical ambience go together. This is truer since I write almost every day at a café which plays western music, and there has been no occasion when I have been disturbed by it. Human voices around are a definite unwelcome presence. In that context, music is sometimes helpful also to insulate my auditory abilities from this disturbance.