Non Fiction

Downsides of Spiritual Awakening

1. You are alone, there is this compromise between the body and the soul.

2. You feel like crying but you cannot, it feels stupid. There is none any more matured than you to cry out to. Crying to yourself looks futile.

3. You are bored more often than ever.

4. You feel like dying, you want this soul-body compromise to end.

5. Whenever you see someone praying, you tend to feel, they are praying to you and see the futility of it.

6. Gods and temples look puny to you.

7. Whenever you see some deity-statue, you know the value of it, the intensity they once had and you feel like teasing them for it’s you who is more authentic than them now.

8. You know you are rare, extremely rare, but not of any importance at all.

9. You feel extremely poor for you have nothing. Even your body doesn’t seem yours. You are just faking to be, and there’s no personal foundation to your soul.

10. You don’t really have any idea how to make money and feed yourself, your skills look petty and unenough for anything.

11. You sometimes literally yell at the sky for sudden weather changes. Though, you know that would objectively make no difference. You feel, you have that right at least.

12. You tend to talk to yourself.

13. You treasure your body, it’s your only lover. The one you married before coming to this world.

14. Your face and eyes tend to look lonely.

15. You can clearly see why Jesus Christ was crucified.

16. You can’t really understand why people can’t see they have nothing to loose in life, it’s already a lost bet.

17. You are no more afraid of the dark.

18. You don’t judge at all. You can relate equally with the worst man in humanity as much as you can relate with saints and geniuses. You can clearly see anyone’s existential uniqueness.

19. You aren’t against ego, pleasure or anything, against nothing in fact.

20. You know, people won’t understand your reasons to speak in terms of analogies. Also, You tend to loose coherency, language skills/ articulation.

21. You love to be alone more than anything.

22. You put beauty over reasons, experiences over calculations and the life over everything.

23. You see everyone as prospective Buddhas.

24. You know, your statements will be misunderstood, even before speaking.

25. You speak quite literally sometimes, sometimes out of humor, sometimes as a kid and can clearly see people suspecting your mental health.

26. You tend to become lazy.

27. You tend to like raw people more than intellectuals.

28. You won’t argue to prove your point.

29. You believe in miracles, fairy tales, everything. You become a kid basically.

30. You know, your awakening has become a series of loses and you have gained nothing at all.

Author Interviewed

1. When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

In my early teenage, when I was 13 or 14, after reading a Russian  novel, “Lolita”, a  part of me knew I was gonna write some day.

2. How long does it take you to write a book?

Well, I don’t like rushing things, It took me nine months to complete “Divyanjali” but I was writing a couple of other books too, So three months to write a novel in average.

3. What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

I write like a monster 24/7, my writing subconsciously goes on while I am asleep too.

4. Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?

Introspection

5. What does your family think of your writing?

They absolutely love what I am doing, they are proud that I write, but then again they are worried I may not make my living just by writing.

6. What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?

Books create you too.

7. How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?

A couple of them, four to be precise, I will be publishing them one every coming year. “Divyanjali” is my favorite.

8. Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?

haha, let’s see

9. What do you think makes a good story?

Straightforward plot, vibrant characters, music-like writing, sincere words

10. Is being a writer a gift or a curse?

It’s a gift.

11. Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

Writing is travelling, travelling nooks and corners of your mind, better say, of your unconsciousness. It needs a hell lot of courage and patience. Both part are challenging. Jumping a Bungee takes a couple of seconds, serious writing is like jumping bungee again and again for weeks or months. So, to explore your head, to fight your demons and find the right words to put back on your story is in itself a challenging task.

12. Who are your favorite authors?

Khalil Gibran, Rabindranath Tagore

13. What inspires you to get out of bed each day?

Breakfast, haha!

14. Do you remember the first story you ever read and the impact it had on you?

Well it was some story in a primary school book. I don’t remember it was in Nepali or in English but  it was a story of a blind guy named Suresh or something, who was thrown out of his house, his dog followed him, he went to the ocean or something, dog saves him, I don’t clearly remember, I was perhaps in grade one when I read that from my elder brothers book. Do first graders read ?  Or perhaps Baba read it to me. That story gave me some far-away imaginations I can’t really describe.

15. Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?

I don’t but what I remember is that the story ended with the narrator abruptly waking up.

16. How do you develop characters do you already know who they are before you begin writing or do you let them develop as you go?

Well, Protagonists I know, I clearly know what he/she does and what he/she won’t, at any cost, infact I develop them after my own heart, on my own image so they are not much different than me in some plane. Other characters come and go. sometimes they become too stubborn to handle, then writing becomes more challenging, thus more fun too.

17. Out of the protagonists you’ve written about so far, which one do you feel you relate to the most?

Divyanjali, she has an irreplaceable spot in my heart.

18. Tell us about your writing process and the way you brainstorm story ideas.

I don’t brainstorm at all. I start writing, make a plot and take the hard way to finish it.

19. Where is your favorite place to write?

My home, my bed to be specific. I need something to lean back  on, some food and I can continually write for days.

20. How did you break into publishing?

Well, it was a hassle-some thing, I wrote to top publishing houses of Nepal but was never replied, one of them accepted but me being a bit low on budget could not afford them. My high school friend Bikram found this publisher for me.

21. What marketing strategies do you find most helpful?

Well, one must reach out. Social media is a great thing in today’s world. Having friends who trust you and your work goes a long way.

22. Anything else you wanna add at last ?

Thank you! Have a Good day.

On Writing

Writing is travelling. Travelling nooks and corners of your mind, better say, of your unconsciousness.
I’d go a little further and say its a pilgrimage coz it helps on cutting karmas from unknown times, from unknown upadhros.
If you write honestly, if you cut a way through your unconsciousness, you may find yourself traversing through the universal mind, universal unconsciousness as well.

While it’s highly rare, two people write the same thing at once, it cannot be called impossible.
Everyone has a different set of layers in their mind, of personal lives, thoughts and everything but the overall unconsciousness is the same for everyone. Every personal experience, every personal memory dissolve there.

So, if you write without anything interefering, not even your breathe and your heartbeat, you would be writing the same thing Buddhas experienced, the enlightened ones realized. But since words are interference already, writing what Buddhas saw is impossible. Only an empty mind can approve that, only eyes can approve that.
Words ? words are not of that world.

Experiencers are nobler than writers.
The ideal poet would live poetry, the ideal novelist would live a novel, not write them. Their approach is of the soul, the everythingness, or say the nothingness.

Mind observes everything, feels them too. But often these experiences are better understood worldly  when they are scraped with the knowledge we gained on day to day basis.
Thus, writers write.

And
It’d poetry If it’s more interefered by the heart.
It’d be a scary story, if it’s more interfered by the overall unconsciousness.
It’d be a work of compassion, if it’s interfered by intelligence or by the conscious mind

And, Buddhas share!
It’s like an internship, without which, a student’s degree is not complete. Existence continuously lures them to share what they have realized one way or the other.
OR,
They become the whole existence, It’d be ugly for them to not water dying flowers around.
That way, scriptures and purads are born, Bible and Quarans are born.

In short,

A writer is a traveler.
And there is nothing he travels but his own soul, the mind and the subtle mind-like realm of this vast existence.

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