Ask the Author: Simran Keshwani
Answered Questions (6)
Simran Keshwani
I think a writer's block is nature's scream. You're just tired and you've had enough. Give yourself some rest. It'll subside.
Simran Keshwani
The ability to be able to influence and talk to so many young impressionable minds. The very idea that what you say or what you put across the table could be a stone or a sermon to somebody listening.
Simran Keshwani
Keep the faith through the heartache and the broke days and the heckling and the days when the world seems too much. Do not turn away from pen and paper. That is the death of an artist.That's what the world wants. Do not give in. Redeem!
Simran Keshwani
A Prequel to Becoming Assiya. The story of Assiya ends with burgeoning questions on identity. "Wind from My Land" explodes the understanding of the word, and further convolutes it.
Simran Keshwani
I remember my first tryst with War came rushing to my door in the form of a neat hardbound book with verses written in Urdu. We are all children of War, and my ancestors were landlords in Pakistan. They felt the horror of war at its face value, a horror no words could capture. When a woman's breast lay desecrated on the street, and a child was beheaded in front of the mother, such was the gory horror that the Partition brought. The book I had found was my great grandmother's memoir of the War. It is the only childhood treasure I have known. I think, that book, even though I lacked the knowledge to interpret the loss entwined in its pages, screamed to something in my soul. We all carry the wounds of a distant past within our DNA. It is an inescapable fact, and it is up to us, the Children of the Present, to learn from the past, carry it along, but not repeat it. That inspires me to go on using my words to my rescue.
Simran Keshwani
I have always believed that Human life is demarcated with thin fine lines between fear, conformity, hate, acceptance and love. It is very hard to ascertain one from the other, and the graph which they lie on, that of an uncertain mortal life, very often throws them in together. They coalesce, they intermix. One little slip, and we land on another end of the spectrum altogether. What is happening to the world today, is a narrative of Hate and Fear. To combat the Fear of the Unknown, we must extend a hand and know the Other. Somewhere between love and hate lies acceptance, and that is the toughest emotion humans can endure. Perhaps, that's what we have forgotten.
Becoming Assiya is the journey of a Syrian girl through the crevices of time and the ravages of war, in an attempt to find herself and regain her lost identity. What inspired me to embark on such a riveting and tense journey with my protagonist was a feeling that in times of collective tragedy and fear, what stands towering above Hate is Courage and Love. And those two, can only come through conscious efforts. The Word is my catalyst. This is my conscious effort to throw an echo of acceptance and love into a World of Hate.
Becoming Assiya is the journey of a Syrian girl through the crevices of time and the ravages of war, in an attempt to find herself and regain her lost identity. What inspired me to embark on such a riveting and tense journey with my protagonist was a feeling that in times of collective tragedy and fear, what stands towering above Hate is Courage and Love. And those two, can only come through conscious efforts. The Word is my catalyst. This is my conscious effort to throw an echo of acceptance and love into a World of Hate.
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