of us are accustomed to and have heard
creation stories that begin with light
with primal sound but today is not a
story about the creation of the world or
the universe it’s about the creation of
stories about the sources and
inspirations for creativity in fiction
writing I’m tossing up a cover of one of
them of one of our issues about a print
magazine the magazine I ran four short
stories to remind you that we are
talking about the story let me return to
the word according to the Oxford English
Dictionary and I’m sure I’ll end up
paraphrasing somewhat but according to
the Oxford English Dictionary the word
is a single distinct unit an element of
speech and of writing words have meaning
they can have explicit significance or
they can have implicit significance like
all of you I probably end up
interpreting words either in a direct
and literal fashion or I use my
imagination to get at the meaning of a
word I know that it’s often difficult
for an audience to have reams of text on
a screen and so I am going to loop
through a series of images that are art
created by Olivia Fraser to be that we
used in out of print in September 2017
just to entertain you so if I get a
little boring you have some beautiful
things to look at we were talking about
words and one’s understanding of words
my understanding of words is of course
influenced by my background its
influenced by my childhood which gave me
an exposure to multiple languages –
announced interaction of different
cultures it gave me a
and a hope in the ideals of plurality
and secularism which is how I grew up
and that naturally influences the way
you interpret and understand words my
work in science has impacted the way I
think about words I you know by
immersing myself in my research I have
come to respect precision and
specificity and my understanding of
words is of course impacted by my work
as a writer which gives me the ability
the gift almost one might say of being
able to communicate and of being able to
put the imaginings in one’s head into
story form now why am I talking about
all of this of course I’ve already told
you that I’m interested in the sources
the inspirations of creativity why does
a writer write what drives a writer to
write but I’m also trying to give you a
context of why and how I came to talk
about what I’m going to share with you
today outside out when I was presented
with the theme of today’s TEDx seminar I
was thrown into a whirlwind of thought
outside out what does that mean outside
out thinking beyond the outside outside
out is extending the boundary but what
is that boundary is it a line a Lakshmi
and Rekha that we cross at our peril is
it a set of walls like politicians today
seem so eager to construct to separate
us
is it a frontier a space frontier
extending our imaginations opening up
larger perspectives to me actually
because of my work in science the idea
of the boundary moved from the infinite
down to the microscopic from the
sophisticated of conglomerates the
living sell the boundary of the living
cell is this amazing entity the bio
membrane and I’ve worked on the bio
membrane as a scientist and what the
membrane does is it holds the cell and
protects it it prevents it from
imploding upon itself it prevents it
from exploding it prevents it from
disintegrating and dissipating its
contents this incredible entity the bio
membrane not only contains the cell
holding life itself but it permits
communications across its barriers its
semipermeable is selectively porous
membrane is selectively porous fabric
human beings are ultimately
self-centered and so you take that idea
of something that is holding and
protecting a unicellular system and you
transpose it to yourself a multicellular
entity and you think of fabrics of
garments of quarters of shawls of capes
of coats garments that hold and protect
you but most of these garments are
reversible you can turn them inside out
and reveal the interior expose the
interior so you have inside out outside
in reversibility exposure and you layer
on top of that the idea of porosity and
you end up with outside out she’s just
playing with words you’re saying to
yourselves I can tell well isn’t that
what writers do you play with words u
transpose ideas onto phrases you tell
stories so permit me this outside out so
what does outside out mean to a writer
what does that idea of raw exposure
really mean to a writer let me step back
and pose an often investigated question
perhaps even an overly explored question
and ask how autobiographical is fiction
does a writer put herself her
experiences into her writing and I think
the answer is complex it’s
multi-dimensional and simply it is
yes/no and everything in between
I myself tend to do that I do put myself
into my writing in the sense that often
my stories are triggered by my own
experiences and observations so in a
story that I wrote called disappearing
act that was published in a magazine
called dead housekeeping it’s a story of
an elderly man who’s suffering from some
kind of old age disease senility
dementia and it was triggered by my
driving everyday past this elderly
gentleman who lived under the flyover in
Bombay and he was clearly relatively
well cared for he brought a fresh
thought the everyday and but he was
clearly not very well often very
agitated and it brought to mind various
stories about people I knew or had heard
of who were in similar situations and
also their caregivers so all of these
tales wove together to create this new
story that I called a disappearing act
these stories are of course based on
various real-life episodes observations
experiences but they are not about me
they’re really just my emotional
responses to various things that take
place now Kiran nagakura in his latest
book jeshoda he opens it with an
extraordinary
sold a woman is giving birth it’s a very
difficult yet a very caring birth the
child is born she determines its gender
it’s a girl and she crushes it to death
between her thighs now clearly that’s
not an autobiographical story I mean
Kiran a Gurkha didn’t have this
experience himself but he’s had an
emotional response in extremely
controlled response to episodes he might
have heard of read about he is from
having a reaction to society and
creating a fictional character who then
carries forward this story let’s turn
now to the writing of Meena and Asami in
her latest book when I hit you she
writes about a young marriage it’s about
a brutally abusive one the husband is a
an academic university professor the
wife the narrator is a writer in early
2012 Meena wrote an article a real life
article in Outlook magazine talking
about her own brutally abusive marriage
that was both psychologically and
physically abusive it takes a great deal
of courage surely to write about
something like that
Omer and mother interviewed her recently
and he asked her wouldn’t people think
that the novel is about you and she
clarified that it really is a fictional
novel but it’s shamelessly quote-unquote
informed by her own experiences it takes
courage as I said but it also takes a
great deal of craft to tell a story that
is about yourself
and transform it into fiction the story
is extremely well-structured the novel
is very finely written and also very
finely edited and clearly took a great
deal of control
create indeed but I’ll move instead to a
question that I asked myself and for
this I throw up a quote from Margaret
dura that I will leave you to read but
the question is how conscious is that
crafting of oneself into a story and to
talk about that I’ll talk about a young
scriptwriter called Raja Thunder and she
told me that recently she wrote a script
that was turned into a film by someone
else and when she saw the film she
realized that in fact one of the central
characters was based on someone
extremely close to her and she hadn’t
been aware of that while writing it so I
think as you progress in your writing as
you proceed with your craft you begin to
create that awareness in an extremely
conscious aware and significant fashion
I’m going to slowly come to the end of
this talk which was about creativity it
was about putting oneself into one’s
writing it was about the inspirations
for writing and for this conclusion I
will throw up another quote from
Margaret dura that’s quite complex and
again that I should leave you to read
but the one point that I shall make
about it is when you ask a writer when
you ask her why she writes what drives
you to write she talks about perforating
the darkness entering into the ones in
herself in her case of course it’s
darkness it’s Dirar
but I think ultimately one writes to to
dream and I throw up a slide from out of
print magazine that I think is quite
revealing one writes in order to support
each other in order to build community
and that you’ll see hopefully in the
you write to resist all of these things
are so important in today’s day and age
and ultimately you write to tell stories
outside out [Applause]