Andy Paula is a versatile personality – a corporate trainer, an avid reader, a passionate blogger, and now, a writer. Her book, Love’s labor is a romance novella published by Indireads, a Toronto based e-publishing house. Love’s Labor was inaugurated by the Hon.Minister of State, H.R.D., Dr.Shashi Tharoor and commended by former President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam for its electronic format as ‘saving the environment’. Andy has written both fiction and non-fiction for the digital and print media. Her short story Anjum was published simultaneously by Indireads and eFiction India, and earned her accolades both sides of the border. It also listed Andy as an Amazon and a Barnes & Noble author. Let’s catch Andy Paula in a tête-à-tête to find out more about her books and her literary journey so far -

M&J: How did the corporate trainer Anindita Sarkar turn into writer Andy Paula?

AP: The corporate trainer was looking for a change of scene without consciously doing much about it. So the universe took it upon itself and gave her a year in London. She quit her corporate job and accompanied her software professional husband on his onsite, and without the pressures of a regular job, took to blogging seriously as she soaked in the English sun and snow.
Like the Guru appears when the disciple is ready, the publisher appeared when the procrastinator became serious. The self-imposed discipline that blogging had brought about gave me the courage to dive headlong into writing Love’s Labor, when Naheed Hassan, the founder of the e-publishing house, Indireads, contacted me. She had envisioned a literary feast for the South Asian diaspora spread across the globe with authors from the same geography donning the chefs’ hat. Indirom, the flagship of Indireads, was specifically looking for South Asian romance, as Naheed, the avid reader was tired of reading about billionaires with Italian good-looks and blondes that they were wooing. She couldn’t see the type in the world around her – you know how shattering that can be for a romantic soul – and decided to reveal to the world what she had and was experiencing around her.
Andy Paula was born with Indireads – a classic example of being at the right place at the right time. The christening of Anindita to Andy had happened long ago at school, Paula just added to the cosmo touch! And when Love’s Labor was undergoing merciless edits, and Anindita had almost given up, Andy Paula thundered, ‘If there’s one book you write in your entire life, this has to be it!’, and Anindita relented.

Is the writer Andy Paula different from Anindita Sarkar?

They are like the two sides of the same coin. When one side flips over and becomes the other, even the coin doesn’t know.

What inspired you to write Love’s Labor?

This story had been festering inside me for over fifteen years. It had to be told. Love’s Labor has its inception in the last decade when it was discovered at home that a cousin had the audacity to fall for a man from another community. All hell broke loose and the poor girl was subjected to the worse possible form of blackmail starting from her mother threatening to swallow sleeping pills to the matriarch leaving home were the offender to not change her decision. The man in question was well-placed and even offered to take the cousin away to his place of work; she vehemently refused citing filial duty and social disgrace as reasons. And in an unexpected twist of events, one day, she disappeared from home. While initially it was suspected that she had eloped, the lover himself was at a loss because he was very much at home!

This incident, a legend during my young adulthood, left a disturbing influence on me. As a thinking individual, I replayed it in various forms in my imagination, giving it a happily-ever-after ending. And then, Love’s Labor was born. Piali, the quintessential small-town Indian girl is torn between her love for the lover on one hand and her love for her family on the other.

How much of you is in the protagonist Piali Roy?

To the extent that both of us are certain about what we want to do in life, both are Literature lovers and have a mind not easily swayed by public opinion. In many ways, the professional part of Piali reflects the professional side of me but somewhere down the narrative, she becomes her own person and I have no control over her.

If you were to do one thing differently in the book – what would that be & why?

I would possibly change the ending. Caste divide is such a menacing reality in India. Even in our modern times, the current ending of Love’s Labor is almost wishful. In a rewrite, I would let it remain as it did in real time – incomplete, unfinished, unconsummated…

What is your message to the aspiring authors?

I’d tell them what Hemingway told us. “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”  So if you cannot bear the agony of an untold story inside you, then sit and bleed at your laptop. If you can bear the agony, then stick to your day job. It pays your bills.

How was your experience while contributing to Love Across Borders- An Anthology of Short Stories? Do you feel a difference in the writing style of your counterpart across the border?

Uplifting!

Love Across Borders aims to foster goodwill between the two nations that have seen strife and tension over the last six decades. We wanted to weave a narrative of love and hope where there has been, mostly, animosity and despair. Whether it was this noble intent or something else, I’ll never know but Anjum, my story in the LAB anthology, is the quickest piece I’ve ever written.

I did not find any difference in the style of writing of my Pakistani counterparts. Love and friendship are universal concepts and the imaginary line separating the two countries does nothing to change that fact. Interestingly, there are a couple of stories in the anthology that are collaborative efforts. Best Friends Forever has been co-written by Naheed Hassan, a Pakistani who lives in Boston, and Shweta Ganesh Kumar, an Indian who is currently in El Salvador; One Stupid Comment is a dystopian fiction by Karachi-based Sabahat Muhammad and Indian author Shuchi Kalra. In That Seventies Babe, Mamun Adil poignantly tells the tale of a young, Pakistani boy madly in love with a gorgeous Indian woman. The emotions of love, longing and jealousy are so real that they could belong to any part of the world.
The waves of change are something the educated milieu both sides of the border are embracing, convinced that this is the only failsafe method to write intelligent history. LAB is an effort towards that end and I feel privileged to have been a part of the cause.

Would you like to share your future projects with our readers?

The more I talk about it, the less I seem to accomplish it! But since you ask, my next manuscript, And Then It Was Dawn, is underway. It is a story of relationships, played out of New Delhi and Banaras, two places I can write about with a certain degree of ease. And Then It Was … is more layered than Love’s Labor and I hope to complete it soon.


This interview was conducted by Morsels&Juices for their Inspired section.
http://morselsandjuices.com/inspired/