If you are one of Tishani Doshi’s 5,000 plus followers on Instagram, you are likely to have followed her recent adventures in Ethiopia, author hangouts at Jaipur LitFest, teaser videos of her poetry, and more. Her social media presence is worthy of #Goals, with its well-curated pictures and glimpses into the life of a multi-hyphenate artiste (she’s a novelist, poet, dancer, journalist, educator and, dare we say, Instagram influencer?).
Social media has helped many artistes land their big breaks. The most obvious examples are poets Rupi Kaur and Nikita Gill who built traction with their short verses on Instagram before using that following to publish their own books and perform to packed stadiums.
But writers like Doshi, who did not become famous only because of the Internet, have also realised the medium’s potential to stay connected with readers and share their work with a larger audience. It might even be that their online presence helps their books stay in the public’s mind long after publishing. In some cases, their social media projects give them popularity that goes beyond their label as writers.
‘Actual’ writing first
When I ask her about whether the digital age helps today’s writers market their work, the author nudges me towards a different vocabulary. “Marketing is not really a great word in this regard,” she says. “I see what you mean, but really, what we’re trying to do when we publish a book is to create a connection. We’re not selling toothpaste.”
Nor does she believe in the concept of branding for herself. She recalls the time she was at a literary festival and an agent used the word ‘brand’ to talk about writers. “I wanted to throw a refrigerator at him,” she admits. “I don’t think of myself as a brand, and neither do the writers I know. This doesn’t mean we aren’t out there hustling. Writers have always occupied a role in the public imagination, as intellectuals or entertainers, so nothing has changed in this regard except the medium has widened and now we have social media. It’s important to be out there, sure, but not more important than the actual writing.”
Reaching out to readers
Social media helps, because building a sense of audience is crucial for any artiste. Doshi credits her guru and late dancer Chandralekha, for this insight. “The audience may be small, but it should be committed. You want to feel that there are people who will understand the decisions you’ve made, the changes in directions, tones, moods.” And by delving into the space of mixed-medium art, she has built a committed audience for herself. For instance, last year, she fused dance with poetry when she set the verses from her poetry collection, Girls are Coming Out of the Woods , to choreography. Today, snippets of her performance still get traction on social media.
If she is ever reminded of the “too-muchness of life” and feels the pressure to maintain a certain persona on the interweb, she just unplugs and walks away. The nice thing about the Internet, unlike life, is that you can actually switch off, she says. “I’m not on Twitter, I don’t like it. Facebook — I don’t have a public page, and in any case, it’s on its way out! And Instagram I adore, it’s my guilty pleasure, endless vortex of time distraction.”
On family, home and society
Doshi’s second novel, Small Days and Nights , offers readers a glimpse into the early life of a young girl — half Indian, half Italian — in Madras. But the narrative soon takes wings and shifts to other locales including Puducherry, Kodaikanal, and even Italy. The family of the narrator, Grace, consists of a father who is deeply disturbed by loud noises, and a mother who guards a secret from her daughter for as long as she is alive.
When Grace returns to India as an adult, she discovers that she has a sister, Lucia, who has Down Syndrome. The siblings move in together, living in a beachfront house, adjusting to life with their newly-discovered sibling. “I’ve also lived in a coastal Tamil Nadu village for eight years, so I wanted to capture that landscape in novel, how it is for an urban woman like myself to place herself in that context alone,” explains Doshi, who currently teaches writing at the New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus.
The story, she admits, is inspired in part by her experience of growing up with a brother who has Down Syndrome. She had read about the playwright Arthur Miller and his photographer wife Inge Morath, who had institutionalised their son Daniel (also born with the genetic disorder). “Miller never went to visit him,” she says. “I didn’t want to sentimentalise the experience because I’ve lived it, but I wanted to write about some of the difficulties, the joys, and how society looks at differently-abled people, especially here in India.”
Small Days and Nights, published by Bloomsbury, is priced at ₹499.
