Manju Jaidka, now a Senior Professor and Dean at Shoolini University, Solan, HP, is a former Professor and Chairperson of the Department of English at Panjab University, Chandigarh. She is the recipient of several national and international fellowships, including a Fulbright, and two Rockefeller awards.
As a speaker and academician, she is much sought after and has made presentations in forums across India and abroad (in universities including Harvard, UPenn, MIT Boston, NYU, Pittsburgh, Illinois, Dartmouth, Honolulu, Concordia, Colchester, Oxford, Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester, London, Madrid, Heidelberg, Graz, Kathmandu, Taipei, Bangladesh, Beijing, Italy, etc.).
Jaidka has published more than 25 books in her entire career and more than sixty research papers in reputed national and international journals. As a creative writer she has written two collections of poems, a play, and four novels, including Scandal Point (Rupa, 2011), Amaltas Avenue, (Lifi 2014), and Gumshoe Mania (Vishwakarma, 2021). Her non-fiction publication titled The Next Milestone (2017), was commissioned by the WHO, on the management of disability.
As the Chairperson of Chandigarh Sahitya Akademi from 2008 to 2015, she curated and held in six full-fledged Literature Festivals. At Shoolini University she organized the University’s first literature festival in February 2021, followed by another edition in April 2022. She is presently the President and chief functionary of MELOW (the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World). In this capacity she has held twenty-one international conferences since 1998. Additionally, she has held the post of Executive Director of the International American Studies Association and also serves on the advisory board of several international organizations.
Manju Jaidka lives on the Shoolini University campus, in a wooden hut surrounded by a pine forest and warbling birds. Still busy with academic duties, she organizes literary events on a weekly basis for the University. These events are live-streamed and have a massive reach, bringing together literature aficionados from across the world.
1. Who and what inspired you to write?
Stories should come to the teller as leaves to a tree, or they should not come at all. It is hard to say what inspired me. Perhaps it was the adventure stories I read in my junior school days. Or perhaps that golden treasury of modern verse that I stumbled upon in my father’s collection. Or the literature teacher we had in high school who could rattle off quotations at the drop of a hat. Whatever it was, I cannot pinpoint any one source of inspiration. But what I do know is that stories and poems, writers and their lives – bohemian or conventional – fascinated me and I thirsted for more than I could get. The more I read the more was I inspired. Shakespeare was not too old or dull; Cervantes was evergreen, Rushdie invigorating, Coetzee fascinating, T.S. Eliot mesmerising. All of them played a major role in influencing me, worming their way into my consciousness, shaping my thoughts and feelings, giving words and expressions to ideas which would have otherwise remain muted.
2. What challenges did you face while writing and getting published?
The challenges I faced related primarily to locating a good, reliable publisher. While I have had the good fortune of being published by leading publishers, every book that wanted to be born had to face a struggle, locating publishers who would be interested in taking up the project.
3. How did you come to know about the literary agency THE BOOK BAKERS?
A friend recommended The Book Bakers.
4. How did THE BOOK BAKERS help you and what would you like to say about them?
The Book Bakers helped me find a publisher twice over. I am grateful to the company.
5. How do you see literary success for yourself?
I am not satisfied with my “literary success”. I feel my books deserve more attention than they have received. I wish I was better at marketing my publications. IF only I had more time at my disposal!
6. When can we expect your next book?
I am working on it. Hope to have it ready in a few months.
7. Any message or tips for aspiring authors?
“Lage raho, Munna Bhai.” You’ll get there eventually!
BOOK NAME: WHEN CATO PLAYED CUPID & OTHER STORIES
PUBLISHER : PETALS
BOOK SYNOPSIS/BLURB:
Turn the pages and you hear the story of unrequited love: a young man silently idolizing the love of his life who, incidentally, has no clue of his amorous intentions. As you sink into the story, don’t get too lost; look what’s coming behind you. You hold your breath, climb on to the nearest table or chair, terrified. For here comes a man who thinks he’s a cockroach. He comes scuttling across the floor and tries to crawl up your leg. As you struggle to free yourself from his clutches, the sound of the Indian Ocean sweeps over your senses and almost drowns you. You hear the susurrous whisper of the waves as they rise and fall in a rhythmic pattern, lulling you to sleep. But, what’s that? The bow-wow of a dog that zealously guards his mistress’s chastity and barks away all prospective suitors? Strange happenings and unusual characters, indeed, like a mysterious barber who comes in the dead of the night to steal the crowning glory of young girls. To make it curiouser and curiouser, there’s a witch in the park that scares the wits out of little boys.
It is, indeed, a motley crowd that peoples this collection of stories.
There’s more to come. Three creatures – two human and one inanimate – bearing the same name. Whoever said that names determine destinies was certainly wrong, for the three Appus of the story have lives as dissimilar as could be. Then there is the local baddie who deserves the worst of punishments, a geriatric lover-boy who moons over his childhood sweetheart, another who thrives on seducing young girls.
All this and much more in this extraordinary collection of stories inspired by true-life events, with a liberal sprinkling of wit, irony, and assorted jeu de mots.
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