Whenever I link my blogposts on Facebook,
I get some kind of response … I get ‘like’-s and sometimes also comments … I do
look forward to these responses … and there are some of my friends who support
me almost always by ‘liking’ my posts and by sometimes by buoying me up through
comments … Shubha, my cousin, is one such supporter … and KBS Krishna is another,
especially after I started writing about my encounters with crime fiction, more
so with my recent obsession with ‘hardboiled’ detective fiction (all those
Macdonald posts!!) … Krishna was my contemporary
at CIEFL and if I am not wrong, belonged to the first ever batch of MA students
… now he teaches at the Central University of Himachal Pradesh … we got
chatting after some time about crime fiction and it was then that he told that
he worked on ‘hardboiled’ detective fiction for his PhD … aaha …
Anyway … so, one day he asked me if he
could use my posts for an online magazine that he was planning … this was the
first time somebody was asking permission to use my posts … I was curious and
asked him for details … he wanted an article that he was planning to put under
the title ‘closet classics,’ books that should have been widely known, but have
remained hidden for various reasons … he seemed to like my posts on travel
books on my blog … and wanted to merge two reviews that had similar themes (sort
of…) and make one article … So, Krishna took my posts on Bishwanath Ghosh’s ‘Chai,
Chai’ and Rishad Saam Mehta’s Hot Tea Across India and did some
editing and all that and also gave a title, Wake up and Smell the Tea,
to the merged article …
And this article appears in the first
issue of Spring Magazine on English Literature … when I saw the link for the magazine in my mail, I was happy
that finally something came out of my blog after all these years of writing …
ha ha ha … and when I read the contents of the first issue, I was really
pleased … Krishna, as the Editor-in-Chief, has brought out a magazine that puts
English literature in the hands of students and young researchers … a literature
magazine that doesn’t scare away students … a non-intimidating student-friendly
magazine … my sincere hope is that the Spring Magazine stays this way for many
more years to come … and friends, please pass the word around … this magazine
deserves a wider audience … and thanks Krishna for liking my tea book posts …
Haan … this is the chai article
… Wake up and Smell the Tea by yours truly ...
