Author Interview: Dr. Nitya Prakash, #ANTINATIONAL

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antinational, award-winning, book, book cover, book launch, dialogue, emotions, fiction, interview, malpractices, medical, Novel, novel launch, official trailer, prelaunch

Interviewed by Purvi Petal

Dr. Nitya Prakash is a versatile personality – a writer, a banker, a management expert, an investment consultant, software engineer, motivational speaker, media man, all rolled in one. He is the author of the much-hyped romantic novel ‘Dear, I Hate You’, thriller fiction ‘R.I.P. In the Name of Love’ and popular fiction ‘Little Lucknow’. He was born and brought up in the city of Nawabs – Lucknow, UP (India). He did his computer graduation from the University of Lucknow, Lucknow followed by an Executive Management Program from K.J.Somaiya Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai and also a Post Graduate Diploma in Banking Management from ICICI Manipal Academy, Bangalore. He is NSDL and AMFI certified, which enables him to work as an investment consultant. He is a ferocious reader and a prolific writer and has been regular in writing many youth awakening articles in TOI and many other reputed magazines. His fun one-liners are extremely popular amongst his ever growing reading populace. He is the Co-Founder of Creative Ecstasy, Dronacharya and The School on Wheels India. In fact, there is such a long list of his achievements, that this space feels threatened in running out in my attempt to cover him. Rather than go on about his past achievements, I had the man talk to me about the latest from his pen, an intriguing new book titled ‘Antinational’.

Why ‘antinational’? Just because it is the current buzzword?

Ever since I gathered the wisdom to think about the way people behave, I was always fascinated with the belief that I have something worth sharing about human psychology with the wider world around me. Antinational talks about human emotions while the story builds on the medical malpractices in our country.

Could you describe the reader you were writing for?

If you’re active on social media platforms, then it’s even easier to find out what readers like, provided you get some traffic. You can tell when your audience responds to a particular post because there will be comments and links that show that people thought that your content was worth reading. I find that a good technique for deciding on new content is to look at what readers’ interests are and write articles and books that cater to those interests. When writing a book, I look for books that got a good response, as well as for the questions that readers have asked. These provide a good starting point for thinking about new material.

What makes you tick as a writer?

Most writers claim they write only to entertain, and yet messages do creep into our books whether we will it or not. I don’t write just to entertain but to write the stories I want to read, stories that no one else has written. And still, the messages are there: nothing is as it seems, we are not necessarily who we think we are, history did not necessarily happen the way we think it did, and what we see is not necessarily the truth. But all that was more of a side effect. Mostly I just want to write good stories with good characters that I would have loved to read.

Did you find the characters changing as you wrote, or did they stay true to your early conception of them?

I always ensure that I do proper justice to my characters. I try my best to keep them who they are.

Your spin rate of your works is amazing. Is it that easy to write?

I am a compulsive writer. Writing is hard because we’re human. We’re scared, fragile beings who think of every single excuse to procrastinate that which we ought to be doing. This is what is hard about writing: it never ends. You can put your “game face” on for 24 hours or a week and succeed. But that’s not what makes a writer. That’s why we call it “the writing life” — it consumes who you are and what you do. The difficulty of writing has nothing to do with pen and paper, monitor and keyboard. It has to do with heart and soul and the mind behind the words. That’s the real hard part of writing, the part that will experience all kinds of internal resistance: convincing yourself that no excuse is good enough to not write.

So now that you know the hard part, the rest is easy. That’s how I write.
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Any favorite genre? As a writer and as a reader?

My favorite genre is fantasy as a reader. Books like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings I greatly enjoy and could read multiple times. The back story, history, names, fantasy elements, and story are unforgettable and resonate well after you’re finished putting it down. The way I would describe it is ‘completely delectable’. I tend to enjoy the philosophical genre most when writing. I think I like it because it generally includes many stories that touch on the functions of people and their roles in society. It covers much about ethics and morals and the experiences of many.

Which book inspired you the most (how) while which one impressed you the most (why) ?

Books are possibly my favorite thing ever. Looking at my bookshelf now is like looking at a little timeline. Each book reminds me of what was going on in my life at the time. When I was younger I fell in love with Fredrick Forsyth’s “The day of the Jackal” and that book really kicks started my love of reading. The conspiracy plot in the book was great. Oh no, I really want to list all the books on my shelf but that will just take forever. I have more than 4500 books in my personal library. I am a diehard fan of Fredrick Forsyth, Agatha Christie, and Ruskin Bond. The top five books, I would like to recommend from my bookshelf are: The day of the Jackal by Fredrick Forsyth, To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie, The Sensualist by Ruskin Bond and Srimad Bhagwat Gita by Ved Vyasa.

You are into multiple occupations, or should I say, interests. How do you keep up with them and which one is closest to your real self?

 

I am good at multi-tasking. When I’m engaged at work, I fully engage myself for defined periods of time. When I’m renewing, I truly renew. Make waves. I don’t live my life in the gray zone. Training people is the best thing to undertake and it is the closest to my real self.

Funny but a regular question, which one is your favorite or the work dearest to you? Why?

One novel sits on my desk at all times: In the Name of Love, R.I.P. There are many other books by me that I adore, but this is my personal favorite book, the one I keep nearby for writing inspiration. ITNOL changed me in an unforgettable way.

A word or phrase you often use in your writing.

‘Let bygones be bygones!’

The last line of your autobiography will be…

‘It’s me being me, making you be you…’

 

Would like to hear from your own mouth, a precisely detailed account of your writing journey!

It’s been an incredible journey (and not always an easy one). Allah called my father to rest in peace when I was two years old. I never had any interest in what other boys of my age were into. No cars and no action men figures. It was all about the books for me. At the age of eleven, I wrote my first article for The Times of India. After completing my formal education I started my career with MicroSave (A Bill & Melinda Gates foundation company) and then I worked for a couple of years in ICICI Bank as an International Trade Finance Manager. But, I never found myself in the medium; it was too scattered for me. My professional writing journey started with writing research papers on microfinance and then Dear, I Hate You happened. My first novel was a tribute to my girlfriend who passed away in a car accident and it fetched immense love and respect from the readers and critics. I love experimenting with my life and also my books. It is assumed that an author understands that he is writing for his readers, not for his own fascination and every time my readers want new stuff from me. My first novel was a romantic fiction, the second one was a thriller, the third one was on child psychology and the fourth one is a paranormal research work. Fortunately for me, experimenting to explore the creative ideas I didn’t even know existed is easy. I just have to do something new.

This has been an amazing talk session! Thank you for being a guest on my blog.

 

Dr. Nitya Prakash, the award-winning bestselling author, trainer, and success coach interviewed here can be reached and his credentials further explored at these Links:

Amazon | Goodreads | Facebook | Wikipedia | Website

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This interview was conducted in the context of Dr. Nitya Prakash’s  upcoming novel, ANTINATIONAL . The Official Book Trailer of ANTI-NATIONAL is out now.

Youtube link : https://youtu.be/W0CJWK2U4i8

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P.S. ~ The questionnaire is copyrighted and the intellectual property of Purvi Petal. The first publication rights to the interview rest with Purvi Petal. The interview can be reproduced only with prior explicit permission of Purvi Petal and the interviewed. A clear bold mention and ping link to the original interview along with the name of the original interviewer, Purvi Petal, as well as the interviewee must be made when reproducing the interview in part, as an excerpt or as a whole.

 

Don’t Let Demons Destruct Them

Tags

Alternative therapies, Bach flower essences, Balance, Bother, care, Coping with life, death, depression, emotions, Fighting depression, Harmony, Hear them out, Homeopathy, Inner demons, Life, listen, Medical aid, Mental fatigue, mind, Society, suicide, thoughts

When people despair, commit suicide, do drugs, I always think, I wish they could do the other one of drugs, that of the likes of homeopathy. I wish there was a way awareness could be raised about how the Bach flower essences and other alternative medicines alter your innate psyche, it helps you tackle yourself. There was this news of a very young actress commiting suicide due to a deep disturbance of relationships in her life. Apparently. Actually there is more to it than one singular reason. That what is the last straw becomes the ultimate trigger, and is labelled as the reason. The reality is far deeper. The person is trying their best at multiple levels. When they begin either feeling or experiencing failure one after the another at all ends, or the struggle gets overwhelming, people try to find an escape. The last main cause of upset just becomes the exact excuse to escape away, a retreat for the mind is sought by the mind in the form of depression. That could even begin with aggression, so to say, the person first feeling agitated about their state of affairs, but later, tiring out and resigning to it.
Things not to say to someone mentally fatigued are many, but most importantly, the worst is calling them ‘cowards, gutless, incapable, happens, ignore, forget, why don’t you fight it?, you don’t try enough, you don’t want to get out of it, you have victim mentality, you know you are mentally ill’, etc. A brain fag has ensued for them and it is a kind of fatigue that takes over once one has tried too hard everywhere. Even if this has been labelled an illness, the label in itself is detrimental to people accepting it. Straight plain depression appears more acceptable. Also, these people are different from attention seekers as well as those narcissists who act like victims. The latter are basically cruel people, with only time for themselves. They will make you pay in other ways if they find time to hear you at all. The former ones are only more vulnerable people. Somewhere the line between the two blurs too, and that is why the former are banged with remarks the latter deserve to earn.
We must develop our ear to hear the anguish of the ones really needing our attention that one odd time they need us as compared to the times they may have given us. Look around. Maybe there is someone with eyes eager for tears to roll and a mouth hungry to blurt their anguish. You need to recognize the one who appears like something else, or the one who is too silent. Verbosity and silence, both are masks to genuine pain. They have been biting their lip while you have been sharpening your axe of rudeness with, “ugh Come on! Happens, its life. You are too sentimental. Shrug off. Why crib so much? You know, you don’t try enough. You are the perpetual victim because you think like that in your head. Maybe you don’t put as much your heart in your work as much as you put your foot in your mouth?” to hack them off your back.
It is better to hear them out. If you can help with empathetic words, fine, else, silent listening is good enough. If you can suggest remedies, worth the effort, though, it is difficult to make people develop faith in something other than quack or fake. But I try. I like to try suggesting homeo or Bach options, music and meditation recommendations, and some chanting to the fractured hearts. All in all, you know, even if you consider all this exercise only equivalent to a placebo, in effectuality, it is slipping time of hope in their hands which have been till then full of despair. Bitter blunt truths maybe good, but sometimes lullabies and fairytales are read just to please ourselves with the thought that demons can after all be slayed and there can be happy endings. So rather than let people commit suicide for feeling incapable due to inability to handle harsh reality or opt for weed as an escape, it is much better to help them try Homeopathy and Bach flower essences to help them deal their issues with a reasonable mind.
I am a workaholic and I don’t ever know where to put a stop. To add to that, I am a multi-tasker who prides in being a perfectionist and intend to give equal and dedicated attention to each task in hand, at hand. I might just get killed with over-exhaustion but I will go on working endlessly, even when it gets far beyond my physical endurance. Any other idea in between the ideas floating in my mind, at the time of creation, can crash my world. Why? Because I am too deeply engrossed and completely involved in my work, for that point, whatever it is, it becomes my passion. Getting out of that reverie, that mind phase becomes difficult for me, I just feel the need to go on even beyond breaking point, till the point of completion. Bach essences help me manage this. Even today, I was so driven with a decor project that I went overboard in draining myself. Bach helped me settle my mind and regain enough strength that I could at least tell myself no more! and lie down on the bed. It broke the control of that hypnotic thought of the project and made me consider myself instead. If this is how, in small measures, we can draw our own breaks and escalators where required, then the world will become a much much better place, with less of its arrogant sadness, fuelled with rage.
My 2 cents.

Pre-Release Review: 14 Days to Die by A.B. Whelan

Tags

affair, anger, betrayal, book, disloyal, distrust, extra-marital, Faith, familiar, family, fiction, frustration, girlfriend, giveaway, hitman, home, home alone, homely, housewife, infidelity, love, love lost, lover, marriage, mind, mistrust, murder, murderer, nonworking, pictures, rage, shock, signed-copy, stay-at-home, threats, vacation, wife

4.5*/5 rating

Hello!
Who’s calling?
Death..

The not-by-chance discovery of her husband’s intentions to have her murdered are the beginning of a true evaluation of Sarah’s apparently happy marriage with her husband. Concluding the revelations to be just the tip of the iceberg, the scales are tipped in favor of Sarah hating her husband more and more by every passing day, wishing him dead by each passing moment, cursing herself for trusting life and more than that, the man she loves wholeheartedly, too much. She learns it the hard way how being the dedicated loyal wife has its biggest pitfall, first being taken for granted and then desired to be rid off in the most ominous possible way! Another novel I was tempted to read the moment I read its blurb and excerpt. 14 Days To Die  by A.B. Whelan. A little slow paced story that doesn’t let you go!

The story builds its drama word by word and the very prologue in so engaging, so genuine and understandable, you fall headlong in sympathy for this woman called Sarah. The honest but hilarious rollout of her minute to minute musings do not catch you off guard, but instead, you smile and smirk at how relatable those feelings would be for women caught in a similar situation.

One could say the book shouldn’t be read by men because it is too close a read of a troubled woman’s mind. Knowing the intensity of her pain can actually prepare them to fend fo themselves! 😛

The novel’s big plus is it’s very localized, homely timbre. For me, it’s very Asian in tone, more like incidences coming from an Indian home, something I like, the familiarity of content, despite being foreign. It was like a setting from my neighborhood, including Sarah’s narration of her everyday experiences, hopes, expectations, disappointments, beginning from her children, going onto Mike and ending on life itself.

Somehow, unlike the other reviewers who enjoyed it as a fun read, I perceived it more literally and hence seriously despite the novel’s even-paced, comfortable, sometime hilarious, sometimes sarcastic, cheeky situational humor and even a light uncomplicated tone, totally natural and unforced, completely unlike the compromise that Sarah was thrust into. Because life is like that. It reads like a genuine, honest, serious, gutsy take on mostly at-home women wives, or maybe even serious girlfriends, it must not be a joke to be in this woman’s shoes. It took me more time than due for this book, the author was too kind to rush the ARC for the review but I wasn’t exactly enjoying it as much as I should, only because I had been feeling unhappy about Sarah’s plight, making me feel vague and uneasy, plus a bad cold and damp weather keeps you mostly in the S.A.D. phase, because otherwise the book had every expression to keep me turning pages. On the other hand, I was so excited about the book, I could go hug kiss the author for penning such a literal account of what a woman goes through and thinks like, ‘only’ when she realizes she is getting crushed in the daily grind and being made a scapegoat, so much so that she is turned into the soon to be butchered sheep.

I have often wondered, why is it that marriages break up when there begin lurking threats of third, fourth, fifth or multiple angles? The rocky marriages such as Diana-Charles-Camilla or Hillary-Clinton-Monica and the fatal or disastrous outcomes of such trio situations, how many times did the situation of one of them sending a hired killer aiming for another’s heart, arise with them as a thought, a possible reality, or a failed attempt? What goes on in the mind of the betrayer and the betrayed? Does the thought of getting back at their more than errant husband/wife haunt them enough to want to get back at them in some way, plausibly with a reactionary love affair somewhere in the light of a revenge (such as Diana’s with Hewitt, Gilbey, Barry Mannakee and then later with Dody Fayed, Squidgygate I and II and what not) . Or it could lead to defiling of the partner’s image followed by divorce such as the publication of Diana: Her True Story in 1992, followed by the Camillagate scandal concluding in a string of divorces.

Sometimes, the reasons are far more trivial, where the husband is not able to segregate his personal life from the world outside and is unable to make either reassure the woman back home or make her secure about him. It is a lack of not merely understanding, but also the maturity of his accepting the necessity of the woman back home to be made at ease and if she already is, then not to go out and break her trust.

Love triangles become lethal when the offended believe they have been lied to or betrayed. No one likes being made a subject of treason. OR the killer was repeatedly lied to, betrayed, ignored and used callously, sometimes in their partial knowledge and then finally, after waiting for long for their partner to realize their worth and sincerity, their patience gives in, leading to such instances of retribution. So mostly, an intimate partner murder is a gendered phenomenon. Some people kill their mates because they find themselves in a love triangle.

This is all in the wide angle, those caught in a triangle are too much at fag ends to fall in a single line again. All in all, I just have to say, I won’t blame Sarah at all for her reactions and responses, her thoughts and capacity to cope with what came her way. It couldn’t have gone any other way. So I don’t get those ‘women’ reviewers at all who say Sarah was whining and her husband had forced her to get into that depreciatory situation. You must be really too blind and too successful and assumedly happy to not see that it wasn’t her choice, she was thrust into it for the love of her marriage, her family, her husband, her children, in the reverse order.

Was this a crime of passion– a frenzy of the heart? Was it a calculated retribution, for disrupting a bond between two lovers, that boomeranged? Or was it just one of those times…when somebody had to die? The end made me a tad sad. I kept waiting for a miracle. From the beginning till the ned. Perhaps this is where we fail. We expect miracles from ordinary lives and much more from people than the Angels we make them out to be in our heads. But then, that is what life can be. A Miracle or a Disaster. It depends on whose faith is answered. Learn the fascinating truth in a riveting story of cultivated obsession, betrayal, and murder… I am not giving away anything. 😛 Go find for yourself from this a must pick up for the season. You can buy the book soon, the expected publication is January 13th 2016!

And one more thing! If you want to win a signed ARC of ’14 Days to Die’ than check out this Goodreads book giveaway:https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/168623-14-days-to-die

#Goodreads

Of Calls And Communications

Tags

bitter, calls, caress, communicatons, conversations, duress, ears, Eyes, poetry, see, sweet, talks, texts

On A night when the stars would be cold and the moon a mere hollow,
I’ll call you with hints of warmth in my words,
Use them to cotton your ears.
On an evening when the blankets would still not be dry from the damp winds,
I’ll call you for unclever conversations
Use them to line your quilts.
On afternoons when seistas would not compensate with lucid dreaming
I’ll call you to pour me margarita and yourself some red wine
And voice dialogues that would be bundled into scripts
Our first project together.
On mornings that would be still fae and hazy with the fog clogging the air
I’ll call you to leave coffee steam and stains on your bathroom mirror
While you still clear your lenses with the mist of my breath
—–……….——
But will your ears be able to hear this time, what they missed seeing in my words previously?
Will that answer, why, despite all the love, do only the bitterest of words find themselves flung only at me?
Will that explain, why I need to explain my words with intent, while yours need to go Scot free?
~ Purvi Petal, 3 Dec ©2015

An aimless, museless, collocation of words that followed me till I gave it shelter and company.

Postcard 4: From Voices To Words

Tags

apart, Autumn, Birds, feathers, flowers, forgotten, head, me, muted, noises, recalled, remembered, replies, scent, stuck, thoughts, together, translate, transmute, undone, unstuck, voices, words, write, Writer's block, writing, you

Dear…

Even if we do not flock together, you must write. Even if we do not gather the fallen feathers, you must write. Even if the flowers don’t smell the same anymore, you must write. Even if we do not collect twigs de rigueur, post longueur, you must write. For it is not everyday the words fall as easy as autumn leaves on the floor of mind, let them not decay, but time to compose do find.. for in your words I’ll search for replies to my letters, the letters you have read,maybe savoured but as yet not replied. You know how I lost my words to a blind alley. I grope in the dark for some ray of light. While I find my way back to sight, you must write. You write. I’m waiting.

Yours etc.

Purvi

*Credits:
Prose & poem ~ Purvi Petal,12Sep©2015
Postcard meme ~ @puplumage (instagram)

Postcard 3: Between Fitted Misfits

Tags

adjust, blessings, chaos, closeness, confusion, couple, differences, different, emotions, Faith, feel, fit, fitting, friend, friendship, i, legs, love, misfit, pants, peas, pods, reconstruction, relationship, same, similarities, togetherness, Us, We, you

No, we don’t match our tastes on so many counts. Our choices our different, no we don’t even eat alike. We have different faiths and we touch the ground in different degrees. No, we don’t even wear the sameness of thought all so often. But when was it necessary for two people to be together in company only when they matched like DNA? We are poets. And painters. We are artists. We thrive on disfunctionality. We survive on variation of idea. We feed on difference of opinions, we respect confusions and reconstructions. For we create from chaos. That is what makes the two of us same, similar, fitting into each other like legs and pants, corresponding and parallel, (all) of a piece, like (two) peas in a pod.
~ Purvi Petal, 11May©2015

Fitted Misfits ~ *We go together like two peas in a pod*