About The Author: I am Nanda, and I am 51 years old. I was born and grew up on the island of Mauritius.
I started working at the age of 6–7 with my four brothers, helping my dad sell vegetables at the market. This has been our way of life. Like any child, I dreamed of one day being able to make my parents proud. After studying Economics in India, I came back to Mauritius and was unemployed for a year until I finally found a trial job on a 3-month basis in advertising. I learned on the job and made it my career. In 2019, I wrote and published a book called TizistwarNou Pays, which tells about Mauritius and my childhood days through the stories of my dad, my mom, and the people and values that are dear to me. For lack of support, I financed it out of my pocket, and this book went as far as Arizona in the United States, Orlando, Quebec, England, Ireland, France, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, and Dubai. People didn’t just read the book; they walked around holding it in their hands to take pictures with it under the Eiffel Tower or on the Sydney Bridge. For Christmas, they took photos proudly placing the book under their tree. This is my story.
Summary Of The Book: TizistwarNou Pays: Tales of Simpler Times is a collection of 24 beautifully written and illustrated short stories around themes like New Year’s, the Chinese shop, Hindi movies, the barbershop, playing football in the street, and climbing on trees, among others. It is written with sensitivity because I want the reader to journey through time and relive those feelings and emotions associated with life in the older days.
1. Can you tell us a little about your book?
My book, TizistwarNou Pays: Tales of Simpler Times, is a collection of 24 beautifully written and illustrated short stories about life in the 80s and 90s, based on my childhood memories. The book is written with sensitivity to make the reader journey through time and relive life in the old days. The original version in French was widely successful in Mauritius and abroad, striking a chord with Mauritians all over the world who reconnected with feelings and emotions buried inside them through stories, memories, and anecdotes. The English version has been translated to keep the emotions and authenticity of the words and expressions of the original.
2. Is there a specific event that inspired this story or was this an out of the blue idea?
The idea for the stories in the book came from a comment from my niece that made me realise how nowadays children are growing up in a world that is so different from how it was prior to technology. I realise that we seldom see children climb on trees, play football in the streets, raise chickens, watch Hindi movies with the family, or visit the Chinese shop. This inevitably creates a divide between parents and children. I wanted to pour out and capture what the 80s generation holds in our hearts.
3. What got you writing in the first place?
When I came to Mauritius after my studies in India, I was jobless for a year. One day, I got a job on a 3-month basis in advertising as a junior copywriter, and I started learning on the job. Advertising agencies are like Shaolin temples where, through pain and torture, you learn the discipline of making every word count.
4. What was your impression of your first draft when you read it?
It was not meant to be a book, actually. I started writing stories that were published for free in a newspaper, and I was surprised that so many people related to the feelings that were dear to me and that I described in my stories.
5. Which part of your story connects the most with you? Why?
I wrote the story for my dad, who passed away on the day I was leaving the country for my studies, and for my mother, for whom I had so many things inside me that I was afraid I would never be able to tell her. I wrote the stories to her, even though I knew she would not be able to read them. I just had to put them on paper. The day I wrote the story about my mom, one lady inboxed me to tell me that she had read the story and was at her office, hiding behind her computer so her colleagues would not see her cry. I realised at that moment that I had not just written about my mom but about every mom in the world.
6. What makes your book the one to read?
One day when I was doing book signings, a woman came to me and told me that she had travelled by bus for 1 and 1/2 hours to pick up my book and would now be travelling back for 1 and 1/2 hours. When I asked her why she did that, she told me, ‘Nobody has ever talked to me the way you talk to people.” It made me realise that it is not the writing skills but the compassion that touches people.
7. What was the best advice you got while writing?
I think we start writing well when we finally realise that nobody wants to read what we are writing. Nobody owes us their attention, their time, or their effort. It is up to us to make them want to read and to make it worth their time.
8. Who’s your all-time favourite author? Which book of his/hers made you fall in love with them?
In my younger days, I used to read Famous Five. We used to have a book club at school and had to read a lot of books. In that book club, I came across an author called Anthony Buckeridge, who wrote a book series called Jennings. It tells about a young boy in boarding school. I sincerely wish I was still a 10-year-old boy curled up on the sofa discovering the adventures of Jennings.
9. What is your evergreen tip to the writers out there?
Writing is a promise we make to readers that whatever we have to say is worth their time. We have to make sure we show respect to them by making our writing an act of giving.
10. What was your hardest scene to write?
The last story in my book is about my late father. It was not hard to write as such, but it was really intense to take these feelings out and feel utterly vulnerable.
11. Do you have another plot brewing?
After the success of my first book, many people have been asking for book 2. This is scheduled for this year. There is also a book of stories for children based around values. I also have a few plots in folders on my laptop, but I need time to structure the stories and write them. Hopefully, I will get to do that soon.
Amazon Link: https://www.amazon.in/dp/9357760008?ref=myi_title_dp
