Ira Singh
Birth—
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Ira Singh teaches English Literature at Delhi University’s Miranda House. She has reviewed books as well as written articles for a variety of publications. The Surveyor is her first novel.She started writing short stories in her twenties. But it wasn’t till her late twenties that she thought of being a writer. Those short stories–almost inevitably, it seemed–all went on to be rejected by various newspapers, journals and even a publisher, later, when she daringly decided to put some of what she thought were the better ones together in a collection. Simultaneously, she started writing a novel. she wrote 30,000 words and trashed it, started over, junked it. The voice was wrong. By this time she was in my mid thirties, reading a great deal, as always, teaching, as she had been for many years, but dissatisfied. She applied to do an M.A. in creative writing. She thought it might help. She applied for the Charles Wallace Fellowship and got it and they sent her off to summer school.She got admission to the M.A, on the strength of a writing sample. She felt good. She thought otherwise she couldn’t go on, couldn’t afford it, life intervened, but that wasn’t the point. She started writing what became The Surveyor. She wrote the first draft one summer quite a long time ago. After that came the work, of years.
Having chosen a story that intersperses between facts and imagination, Singh admits her greatest nightmare is to “get her facts wrong”, nevertheless, she admits the word “research” does not fit into her style of writing. For her, the process of knowing the past events and history had much to do with “background reading” that every novelist does, including her. “I read a lot, but that was to ensure that my background appears credible,” she said. “I personally believe, history is something that should not overwhelm the main narrative. Situations, characters should talk about life and background should be relevant to the series of events,” she added. Ira lives in Delhi and is a professor of English literature at Miranda House, University of Delhi. |