Shaktibari, The Making of
Or, how I decided to give my work away for free
To quote from the introduction of my little booklet: “One day, I was thinking about language, how easy it is to rewrite words, and how much easier to erase memories that aren’t written down… So I jumped headfirst into that rabbit hole, and came out with this little nugget.”
The “nugget” ended up being a piece about forced memory erosion in a post-apocalyptic Bengal, and how a found object literally begins to turn the tide. The characters don’t start a revolution; they find a much quieter, more subversive solution to reclaim their history. Or, at least, begin to. Do I think there’s scope to expand this into a full-length novel? Maybe. For now, though, it’s just under 4,000 words. Despite not getting anywhere in the magazine contest I originally wrote it for, I’m pleasantly surprised at what it’s becoming.
In what I think was one of my smarter decisions, I decided to turn it into a social experiment. I’d print five copies, and leave them in cafes around Ahmedabad, India, where I live.
Easier said than done. Sure, I’d written a story. But it’s been a very long time since I’ve been on the layout/typeset side of editorial production. I have zero art skills (This is established fact. A friend’s daughter—then a preschooler—once demanded I return the crayons she’d lent me after seeing me draw a “cat”), and approximately the same budget to commission art for the cover. So I slunk over to AI to have something generated. Turned out nicer than I expected, to be honest.
Then it was onwards to MS Paint, where I more or less managed to create two passable images that would work as inside and outside covers.
Next, typesetting! After several false starts, I found a website that took my WPS file and gave me a typeset booklet, where the front page corresponded to the last and everything! Wish I’d remembered to bookmark it.
Anyway, given the importance of the found object in the story, I wanted to place these copies at locations that have an honour-based bookshelf. The books would be found objects themselves. I even left three blank pages at the end for readers to leave notes/reviews/whatever else for future readers.
As a trial, I printed two, and shared the image of the unbound stacks of paper as my WhatsApp status (where most of my real-life relationships live, so it’s not as odd as it sounds).
Even before I figured out that I wanted to bind each copy by hand using distinct materials and include a built-in bookmark, four people reached out asking where they could buy a copy. It was a little surreal. This is an A5-sized, 32-page booklet. And people wanted to pay to read it?!
So now, it’ll be a print run of 10. (Does this count as a second print run seeing how I’d originally only planned five?)
Some will be left at local cafes. A couple are headed to Dharamkot, where my sister reports that her friend is launching the town’s first library at her cafe. Another couple will hopefully live on the shelves of people who asked if they could buy a copy. At least one is headed to an undisclosed location in Kolkata, and another will travel to London via Delhi, at some point in the future.
And one is reserved for my own bookshelf.
I’m not ashamed to say that I would rather show off a physical copy than pull up a PDF every time I have to tell people about my latest project.
For everyone else, I’m making a free ebook version, which, unfortunately, will have to exist as a PDF. If you’d like a copy, subscribe here and I’ll pass it along.