8.13 Reenita Hora: On Fiction as a Weapon Against Forgetting

What happens when the wounds of Partition run deeper than history books will ever reveal? 

In this episode, Reenita Hora joins Tara to discuss her searing historical novel Vermilion Harvest, set against the haunting backdrop of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Through the fearless, curious eyes of protagonist Aruna, Reenita brings alive an often forgotten chapter of colonial brutality and the emotional legacy it left behind. 

They talk about the silencing of trauma, mixed-race identity, interfaith love, and how historical fiction can give voice to the stories that official narratives erase. Reenita also shares her journey to being an author and the exciting ways in which the book might find new life through music, theatre, or film.

With equal parts heart and history, this episode explores the tension between legacy and liberation, and the quiet courage it takes to rewrite the script.

Books, shows, and films mentioned in this episode:

• Love Story by Erich Segal
• Titanic (1997)
• Fault in Our Stars by John Green 
• Operation Mom by Reenita Hora
• Sundri and Mundri's Lohri Adventure by Reenita Hora
• Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin
• Jallianwala bagh, 1919 by Kishwar Desai

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‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Transcript

Tara Khandelwal: 0:47

So if you're a regular listener, you know I love a good historical novel, especially when it's during the British Raj and flips the idea of a colonial hangover on its head. But before we dive in, take a second to hit that follow button on Spotify Apple podcast or wherever you're listening, and don't forget to follow us on Instagram for updates and everything bound is up to now, let's get to it, because today's book really checks all the boxes for me. Jane austenite, flirting, fierce female lead and an Indian tragedy with emotional stakes. My guest today is rinita hora, whose novel vermilion harvest is set against the backdrop of the Jallianwala bag massacre in 1919, and against this horrific moment in history, Renita weaves a love story between Aruna Dugal, who's a strong, opinionated Anglo Indian school teacher, and I asked Pete Mohammed, who's a Muslim lawyer in training with a rebellious streak. And their chemistry is so undeniable, but there's so much danger surrounding them. And when Aruna learns for general Dyer is up to she must race to warn Ayaz, who's about to give a speech at the park. So there's a lot of tension, politics, emotion, all the right ingredients for a historical novel. And you guys know I love that genre. So Renita, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to talk about this book and talk history with you.

Reenita Hora: 2:16

Thank you so much. I am so excited to be on this show. I've been looking forward to it, and I'm just thrilled with your opening and listening to how much you love the story. I mean that just does it all for me.

Tara Khandelwal: 2:31

Yeah, I am a history buff, and I love how you go all the facts together in a very interesting way through the story. So before we go into sort of the nitty gritties of the story, what drew you to the Jallianwala Bagh and Amritsar during this time period? You know, I went to visit Amritsar a few years ago, and I went to visit the site of the Jallianwala Park, and I actually saw the bullet holes. And, I mean, just seeing that visually, it was just so striking. And your book really made that period come to life.

Reenita Hora: 3:01

You know, in some way, shape or form, I have had this story in my head, in the making for some 30 plus years. I would say, I know that sounds like a long time for a book, but if I go back to the year that I was in school, in 11th standard, that particular year, there were a few different things that happened. Firstly, I was in a play, in a house play, which was also set against this tragedy, the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and that perhaps was one of the things that first drew me so closely to this event in history. I am Punjabi. I come from a Punjabi family. My mother's side of the family has a home in Amritsar, you know, on the outskirts of the cantonment there. So there was some background that I grew up with. And my late grandfather, my Nanaji, I remember him telling us the story about how he passed by the entrance of Jallianwala Bagh a few days after the massacre, and he saw this pile of chappal slippers stacked up. And they had stacked them up to sort of redistribute, you know, those slippers. And it left such a visual in his mind. This was a story that he passed down to us, and we carried down, you know, to the, you know, through our family line. And it's interesting, because when I mentioned this anecdote at some of the book clubs that I have been presenting at, for people who are familiar with Amritsar or Punjab or this specific tragedy in particular, this particular anecdote really strikes them. You know, it's almost shocking. So going back to when I was in 11th standard, a friend of mine, a very good friend of mine, said to me, you know, I want you to read this book. We would read books together, and I was not into love stories, you know, it was just not my jam. And she wanted me to read Love Story by Eric Segal. And I said, How can you, even, you know, present me with a book, you know, where love story is the title? And she said, Well, that's why I knew you would be resistant. But you've got to bear with me, because you've got to read this one, because this one you're going to fall in love with. Forget the title. And she was absolutely right. You know, that was perhaps my first exposure to what I really define as an epic love story, and some. Somewhere sort of in my gray matter, something set in, you know, saying, you know, one day I want to write an epic love story like this, and I'm going to fast forward many years to the year I saw Titanic, and that reminded me of that moment. And then fast forward to many years later, where I was writing young adult and reading a lot of young adult and John Green's 14 hour stars, another epic love story, and all of these pieces came together. This is when I realized that my love story is going to be set against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. And, you know, like I said, it took some 30 years or so for that to come together.

Tara Khandelwal: 6:29

I love that story. And you know how creative juices get flowing? There's so many inputs that build up over time. Now, coming back to the book, you know the two main characters, they are Ayaz, who's a Muslim lawyer in training, and Aruna, who's an Anglo Indian Hindu teacher. And they've fallen in love. And this kind of interfaith love used to be, and it's still not something that's accepted by a society. And you've said that this book is not a love story, and reading it, I understand why it's very much a political and historical novel. But can you tell us about this relationship and how you've used this relationship to showcase what happened in Jallianwala? Bagh,

Reenita Hora: 7:09

absolutely. I mean, I would argue that it's not a romance, but it is a love story, right? It's not a romance because it doesn't fit the romance formula. The romance market is, interestingly enough, the biggest reading market, certainly in America. I'm not sure about India, or the rest of the world, not in India. Yeah. But there's this very specific formula where the story must end in happily ever after or happy for now. And this is not the case with my story. And just rewinding for a second to when I read Love Story by Eric Segal, it amazed me that that was a love story, but it wasn't a romance. And I was like, how can that possibly be? No, that is literary fiction. So this is what I was trying to do here. And for me, the political backdrop was perfect, because I really wanted to delve into the history of the time, because I remember when I was in school, and I think for most of us, I don't know what the history textbooks look like these days, but we got maybe two paragraphs about Jallianwala Bagh, you know, in our history in 10th standard, ninth standard history textbook, not more than that. So you had an idea, but a very brief idea, but it was very important to me. Firstly, a lot of my stories, even young adult rom com, totally different. Have these Punjabi characters, themes, backdrops, backgrounds. I didn't necessarily plan it that way, but I guess this is the space I'm coming from myself, so I can speak to it. But there was so much of the political story of India at the time happening in Punjab, and that's something I wanted to explore. Also this particular massacre, this incident is the one incident that really we can say sparked our independence movement, which, you know, took until 1947 so many, many years. But this really set it. There had been meetings and ideas and, you know, sort of gathering of minds and exploring this idea of what home rule is and what it could be. But I think this massacre really put everything in motion. Also, when I embarked on the research, I myself was shocked to find that there was so much happening in Amritsar, in Punjab, elsewhere in India, sort of leading up to the days or the day of this massacre, April 13, right in Amritsar itself, there was so many events that could have ignited a massacre, or, let's just say, an incident of their own, but they were curbed, or they were controlled, or, you know, somehow prevented from catching fire, so to speak. And I didn't know any of that, so I really wanted to bring that to the world, but to Indian readers, like I said, all we got were these two paragraphs in the history book. So we knew nothing. Right outside of India, they literally know nothing. I mean, what I get all the time is, oh my gosh. I never knew that such a thing ever even happened in India. So I think it's up to us storytellers to bring these stories to the world. In the USA, where I live, interracial relationships. Interracial marriage is par for the course. This is what people do. We are Indians. Our children are marrying non Indians, etc. In India, this is not the case, as you say, not back then, certainly not back then, and mostly not even today. You know, it's it's taboo, it's a no, no. So I was very, very keen to sort of explore that, and through my characters, my protagonists explore what strife is. So there's religious strife, there is forbidden love, and that in and of itself, I mean, in any time period in India is, is, you know, it's going to cause problems, right? But now you've got this major political event. You've got this Anglo Indian School teacher being Anglo Indian that, in and of itself, you know, causes a huge, you know, slew of problems because she's born of a Hindu, Punjabi mother and a British father. And I won't go into any of the spoilers as to the backstory of that, although it is referenced in the book. But you know, she's an outcast, and she feels, because she is a feisty character, she feels that that position, being Anglo Indian, being outcast anyway, gives her license and leeway to go about the city, explore the city, in a way that a normal Punjabi girl, whatever you however you want to define, that normal Punjabi girl wouldn't be able to do right? But she says, who's going to judge me? They're judging me anyway. So I might as well go to a dhaba. I might as well go to these crowds, which, you know, where you're not going to find women. Basically, you know, I might as well go and ride in a Tonga to school every day, something that you know, a female school teacher would not do, things like that, and she falls in love with this Muslim man where, again, as I mentioned earlier, she's the outcast in his family. He's going to be the outcast in her family. It's going to be a problem, but that becomes a microcosm of problems set against this macrocosm of problems that are happening in political India, where there is also inter communal rife, inter religious strife, right? And we see that. We explore that because the British policy was divide and rule. Let's keep the Hindus Muslims and Sikhs apart. Let there be infighting, because as long as everybody's fighting in and amongst themselves, we have the power, right? So that was beginning to change. There were, there were aspects of change in Amritsar at the time. There was a ram nav me procession celebration right before the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and specifically, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were celebrating together. They were drinking out of the same cup. And this was really very unnerving for, you know, the deputy commissioner at the time and the British, you know, at the time, because their whole idea is like, Okay, if, if, if if these Indians are going to unite, you know, then that's power building up against us. And it's the same thing. So you so that's the macrocosm. And then you see that on the microcosmic level with Ayaz and arunas relationship, yeah,

Tara Khandelwal: 14:21

I loved all the characters. And I really liked the protagonist because I am very, I was very fascinated by the Anglo Indian part of it because she has this constant feeling of not being accepted. The Indians think that she is too British. The British don't accept her because she's too Indian. And she never tries to hide it as well. Like her mother says, you could just be a fair skinned Indian people. No need to know. You're just like everybody. And Aruna says she doesn't want to hide. You know who she is, so I wanted to know, you know, a little bit more about that. What was it really like for Anglo Indians? I found that very, very, very fascinating, that whole strand,

Reenita Hora: 15:02

oh my gosh. This is a topic that has also fascinated me. All my life, I've had this morbid fascination, and it really morbid is the only way to describe it. I grew up in a very traditional Punjabi household where the Anglo Indian community was severely looked down upon. You know, if I'm to be 100% honest, and I've said this at various book clubs and meetings, and you know, I will invariably meet with other Punjabis and say, but you know, we didn't look down on the community my family, did, you know? And there was a very large Anglo Indian community in Calcutta, which is where my. Punjabi family hailed from before they sort of, they moved from Punjab to Calcutta to Mumbai. That was their trajectory over the years. And they would see, you know, these Anglo Indians born out of mostly local women and British Army officers, not strictly, but mostly. That's what you saw. And again, as I said, looking they looked upon them with complete distaste. This community did not fit into the Indian community. They because they have this British blood, and they're impure and they're, you know, it's almost like the pariahs, or, you know, born out of these British officers who've got these other families elsewhere in England, or whatever. So, you know, have no time for them. They did not fit into British society either. So they were given these sort of halfway government, lower level government jobs, jobs in the railways, jobs in schools, jobs in the post office. These jobs were deemed to be too good for Indians because they were government jobs. Yet there weren't enough British people in India to take on all these jobs. So why not give them to the half Bloods, if you will, speak, if so to speak, and I'm intentionally using these words, which are awful words. I mean, in the US, I'd be canceled instantly for using these words. But I've been using them intentionally, Half Blood, mongrel, pariah, just to show you the kind of language and terminology that has been used to describe the Anglo Indian community. Years ago, I was in Hong Kong. I was a journalist on Public Radio, and I was interviewing an Anglo Indian musician, this young man, and of course, I interviewed him about his music, but I was fascinated by his backstory, and the interview just went into a whole other direction. But I was asking him all these questions about what it felt like to be an Anglo Indian, and I remember him telling me that his entire family of some 3040, people, by then, picked up and moved out of the outskirts of Calcutta to a place in England, not like a suburb of Birmingham or like one of the one of those towns. And it wasn't until they moved there and had settled there five, 610, years into it, that they finally felt like they had their own identity, their own place, without judgment, either from the Indians or the British. So this is something that has broken my heart and has given me this sense of morbid fascination, like I said earlier, and I really wanted to explore this, and found a place to do that with Aruna.

Tara Khandelwal: 18:51

Yeah, I found it also so fascinating, you know, because she teaches in the school with other British teachers, and then she kind of, you see her becoming more and more patriotic and standing up to them at the same time. You know, the tongawa is refusing to take her because he thinks he she is British. So it's also kind of a little bit of a coming of age story where she is finding herself, and I really like that theme as well. Another thing that I found fascinating was that, as you said, you know, everyone knows a lot about the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, but I found it very fascinating the way you described the tension leading up to that event and what was happening in Amritsar and Punjab the day by day. You so, how you structure the book is, you take it day by day, which I found is very interesting structure, you know, you describe the hartal, the growing tension because of this unrest over the Rowlatt Act, which allowed Britishers to arrest Indians on any crime, you know, they can make anything a crime, which was kind of wild to see. There was a anecdote where somebody had got arrested because they just had a copy of the book das capital on them. And we see characters like Dyer, general Dyer, who's, you know, horrible, villainous character, come in and out. One of the days there's a bomb threat, one of the days Gandhi isn't let into Punjab, I could see a lot of research has been done to make the structure happen. So why this, day by day, structure and the growing tension? And were there any moments that were particularly hard

Reenita Hora: 20:20

to write? All of the moments were, I wouldn't say, easy to write, but I felt had to be written, because, again, I had researched them through sort of non fiction books and documents and things like that. And, you know, general Dyer's court trial actually was very, very through a lot of light on the situation, but we don't know this and and most people are not going to pick up non fiction texts to. To figure out, you know, why or what. But you know, because I was so fascinated by it, I said, Okay, to me, historical fiction means taking real history, actual historical days, events, places, situations, and placing my fictional characters in these scenarios to see how they might react, to explore how they might react. Yeah, so because in my research, I found that, as you just mentioned, there was so many little incidences that led up to the actual massacre that could have been a full blown, if not massacre, then a very large incident in and of themselves. I felt that that had to be the backdrop for this story, okay? And she is Aruna is a young girl. After all, she's a woman, but she is, I mean, she's a kid, also at the same time, right? She's a teenager. They're both teenagers, 18 and 19. And although we suppose, and we believe that 100 years ago or so, they were probably a lot more mature, when you think about it, kids are kids, and she's going to be worried about, you know, this young man she's quoting, and where is he? And how am I going to find him? I mean, these are not days of phones and cell phones, and she has no idea, right? So I thought it would be ideal to have her go through that struggle of, where is he? Where do I find him? Where could he be if she knew that? Okay, he is a student, but, you know, he's taking part in these Congress meetings, and he is corralling people to take part in the hotel. So he must be here. He must be there. He must have gone to there was a funeral set of funeral processions happening one morning, and you know, she knew that he's probably going to be participating in sort of the Muslim funerals that needed to happen that day, etc, to raise the stakes, to raise the tension. And it was very tense, because the hotels were supposed to be peaceful. They were being modeled upon hotels that had taken place in just before that, days before that, in Delhi or other places, Gandhi ji was calling, you know, for these hartals, some of them turned violent because human nature, even, you know, in a time of peace, or to, you know, embark upon a peaceful protest, things turn violent because passions and emotions are high, right? And so I really wanted to sort of explore all of that. And General Dyer, in fact, comes in at the very, very end the truly, a day or so before the actual event, uninvited, unannounced. He comes from Jalandhar. He was not asked, as far as we know or understand, to show up. There were others who had been assigned to sort of take care of the Amritsar situation before him, and they had so called either failed or gotten fed up, or, you know, were told you're not doing a good enough job, whatever the case might be. And he sort of shows up. She gets wind of the fact that this general dire person has shown up. He's come from Jalandhar. What is he doing here? He's apparently planning something. He's apparently issued a curfew, but nobody knows about this because he hasn't really issued a curfew. There's a curfew, but they haven't really issued a notice. They've just given it to a few people. How are the rest gonna find out? And they're specifically targeting the people who plan to gather at Jallianwala Bagh on April 13, because it's the day of essaki, you know, it's the spring harvest festival, so people are going there to celebrate. And she knew that, she knew he knew that. And you know, this is what is happening. So it was very important for me to really encapsulate all of these different events into the story, to sort of build the tension, build the stakes, and build sort of the angst that the protagonists would be going through at the time.

Tara Khandelwal: 25:06

Yeah. And I, said, I really like that day by day structure that you put into the story. And I think that's a good thing, because the story does take place over just, you know, just a few, like, a week, kind of correct, you know, yeah, and the stakes are super high in that week. So one thing I enjoyed also was the Jane Austen as floating in the first chapter, the very first time your protagonists meet. And we see Aruna carrying a Jane Austen book in her bag, and they bond over this, and they start floating with each other, and Jane Austen quotes, and they quote Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park. And it was fun to read because it's like every reader's fantasy to have. Someone could Jane Austen at them? So tell me story behind this. Why Jane Austen?

Reenita Hora: 25:54

So this was interesting because I was speaking with my agent at the time when I was writing the book, and she said, okay, okay, so I must say the book I have had written, or that had been released previous to this was a totally different book, but it was a young adult rom com. There's a little more calm than rom but operation mom, my plan to get my mom a life and a man. Very funny story set in contemporary Mumbai, and there were a lot of pop culture references in that book. And generally when you're writing young adult and contemporary young adult, that's tends to happen, sort of, you know, the couple will bond over pop culture, pop culture references. So when I started writing vermilion harvest at that time, I thought it was young adult. Mean, you could look at the age of the characters and argue, well, it's still kind of young adult, but it's historical fiction. But, you know, everybody has different opinions, and it doesn't fit in the young adult section of the bookstore. But my agent at the time said, okay, so what are the kind of pop culture references that these two are going to bond over, what would they talk about? What would they use to flirt? How would they flirt? So I had to really think about that and pop culture. I mean, that was wow. You know, what are they going you know, there's no media. There's no I mean, even radio was not really a thing in some households. We you know, Aruna has a radio in her household, but it wasn't prevalent. It wasn't everywhere. So the one thing that she would have had and Ayaz only because they're educated, right? Therefore, they would have had books in English books. She's an English school teacher, so she would have read English books. Ayaz is also comes from an educated sect of Muslims, and he is a law student, so he would have read English books. So it's very, very specific, because if, again, if you look at people in general in India, may not have been educated, may not have access to books, and if any access to literature would not necessarily have been English literature. So I drew upon this to have them bond. And you know, definitely Jane Austen Mansfield Park, you know, all of those Pride and Prejudice had been published and would have been read at the time. So I had to pick and choose and being very sort of, you know, female driven, it seemed to fit with, you know, arunas character the way I was building it. So I use that. And I also had to think, as I mentioned, about how they would flirt, you know, where they would sort of court, where they would go off to steal a kiss and etc, what would be appropriate, inappropriate, or, you know, I had to do a lot of research about Amritsar, the city, what you know, the makeup of the city, the maps of the city where young people go. That was more difficult, not being from there, having spent the time there to do the research, but really having to sort of dig into the minds of the locals, but the locals today, to try and then backflip that to 1919, and you know what would be happening then? So, so, yeah, that's where that came from.

Tara Khandelwal: 29:34

Very interesting way to think about it, you know, because it's sort of pop culture references and the talking points that these two would have had to connect on. So your book is also, you know, your book is obviously very, extremely rooted in Indian culture. There's this first scene where you're at a dhaba and Amritsar, and all the men are enjoying their meal. And in the scene, Aruna narrates, it was uncommon for women to be seen in a dhaba, so the men just stare at her until she notices a rat by her leg, and all hell breaks loose. And the book is very quintessentially Indian, and yet your book was first published in the US. So I actually was very curious about that. What was that like? Did you have to explain the cultural significance? What was the publishing process? And then, how did this book then come to be published in India?

Reenita Hora: 30:19

Such a great question. You know, willingly, I would have preferred to have had it published in India first. You're right. It's a very Indian book, the time period, the topic, all of that. I did pitch it to publishers in India, did not find any who were interested, and I couldn't understand why. I just couldn't say, you give a reason, no, no reasons, you know, and for the. Life of me, I couldn't understand why, because it's such a I mean, this is an Indian book and an Indian story, right in the US. I'm from the US. So then I said, Okay, let's, let's do the US. In fact, before I did that, I actually did sign with a UK publisher. However, I pulled out of that because, for various reasons, decided that they weren't the right publisher. And in the US, the US is not really interested. I mean, they do a lot of historical fiction, but this is very specific, and it's set in India, based in India, so it doesn't really fit the Own Voices sort of category, because it's not the experience of the Indian American. So from that point of view, it's not the first kind of book that most publishers here would publish. Eventually. I did publish it through Indigo house, which is an indie publisher here in the US. And I think what really did it was the editor at the publishing house is Irish, Irish American, actually. And the story of the Irish and what they've been through in many, many ways, resonates with what the Indians have been through as well, vis a vis the British. You know, it's not a complete sort of apples to apples comparison, but there's a lot of overlap in the kind of angst, the kind of trauma, the kind of challenges and difficulties, you know, in those relationships. And I honestly think that's what did it now, I have to say she is an amazing, amazing editor, and in a very short span of time, had ended up reading the book way more than I had even at the time, and probably even today, she's probably read that book more than I have myself. You know, it's come to that point. It came to that point A while ago, and she said to me, she said, Renita, every single time I read it, I just start crying. And even though I'm used to it, even though I know, even though I feel that this time I can get through it, it just brings me to tears every single time I don't know what you have done. And I said to her, I said, Lynn, at the risk of sounding like a horrible, mean girl, I just have to say, I have never been happier to make somebody cry, you know. So it was published here by indig No house, and after that, in fact, it was weird circumstance. My next book that is coming out is called ace of blades, and it is the late it is the memoir of my late father, r k Malhotra, who is the pioneer of India's razor blade industry. That is being published in India by Jekyll, and I specifically chose Jekyll. Jekyll does a lot of work in nonfiction. This is nonfiction, but it's literary nonfiction, so it reads like fiction, you know, memoir. But I specifically chose Jekyll for this, and then in that process, I sort of looked at Jekyll publishing ace of blades in India and indig No House Publishing vermilion harvest in the US. And I said to myself, You know what, Jekyll, you should be publishing vermilion harvest as well. It's fiction, it's historical fiction, but it's it's this interesting mix of fact and fiction, and I think that really struck them. Once they read the manuscript, they were like, this is very different, and it's different from what we do usually. But you know, this is history, and I think that's what sort of intrigued them. So then they bought the rights, the India distribution rights, publishing and distribution rights for the book. You have

Tara Khandelwal: 34:51

gone through a variety of careers before you settled into full time writing, which I'm also interested in your writing journey, because, as you said, you write young adult novels. You've had your own Ayurvedic consultancy. You've worked in print and radio, marketing and communications. So how did you end up in full time writing?

Reenita Hora: 35:08

Oh my gosh. So in some way, shape or form throughout my working life and career, my job, my daily job, my daily bread, has been storytelling, right? You're right. I've worked in the field of Ayurveda, but that was storytelling, because, what is that? How does it work? You know, it's literally, it was, in many ways, explaining the story of Ayurveda each time. And actually, those were my very first books. You know that I wrote my career as a journalist in print, on radio, broadcast, Marketing and Communications. All of these basically, are storytelling modalities, you know, platforms, things that require stories to be told, to sell a product or a service or, you know, etc. So it was always in me and part of my day job in some way, shape or form, but I started writing books in I think it was 2012 2013 round about there actually a little bit earlier, if you actually look at the non fiction books and the planning and you know the time frame, the thing is, when you are in a full time career, you're tired at the end of the day. So, you know, it's like, where do you find the time you really need to have the dedication, the motivation to sort of take carve out that extra time in your day to write your book. And I would do it, but I was always exhausted, always couldn't find the time when there was something at work, which was pretty much all the time, you know, that needed to take priority, and always took priority over my books, naturally, right? So my books would sort of sit on the back burner and, you know, Stew. And I have discovered over the years that being an author is it's not an easy thing, because it's one thing to write your story, which is something I love to do. I love to sit here in my home office, shut the world out, shut out everything I know and write. I mean, that is my pleasure, my happy place. You know what gives me joy? But authors have to put as much into marketing their books, at least in this day and age, and nine out of 10 authors, or maybe 9.9 out of 10 authors, right? And that takes you away sort of from the writing, but it's also very tiring, and I found that over the years, while I was focusing on this day job, you know, I'd write a book, then I'd let it sit, you know, for a few years, then I'd do another book, and you sort of lose the momentum, you know, for these are the marketing and audience building things like that. So it's not necessarily a good way to do it, of course, authors in general, and you know, flatly, speaking for most of us, we don't have the luxury of being full time authors. That is a concept that, you know, unlike the Jane Austen years, you know, whatever, it just doesn't exist. So I took a conscious decision in the middle of the pandemic, mid pandemic, to quit my day job and focus on developing my IP full time. And this is in the US. This is in the US. Exactly my last full time job was with SRI International, Stanford Research Institute. I was heading their marketing and communications. It was very big job. COVID. Now we're working from home. It was all going great. It was all going really, really well. But I was itching to develop my stories, and I choose that term because really, it's a combination. At that time, it was a combination of books and audio. And very soon thereafter, I started writing screenplays as well. And I had just crossed 50, and I said to my husband, I said, Listen, none of us are getting any younger. I didn't go into this at a young age. I need to do this, and I need to do it full time. Now. I've always been sort of jealous, if you will, of full time authors, you know, people who have the ability to just spend their entire day writing. I always said that I want to be that person, but when, when one day said I'm going to do it now, and he categorically looked at me and said, You are completely demented. And he wasn't entirely wrong, you know, because there isn't a day that goes by since that, you know, I don't go through that, you know, sign curve, effect of, I'm on a high because the story is everything to sort of, you know, you're pushing and you're selling, and you're in the bookstores and you're at the book clubs and you're talking, you know, really trying to build the audiences. And that's not easy. So it's, you know, it's a very real thing, and you don't have the steady paycheck coming every two weeks anymore, that that stopped, you know, the day, the day I made that decision. So it's, it can be quite unnerving. And you know, there's, there's lots of incidences where your work is, you're getting a publishing deal, or a screenplay is, it's pushing forward, but then something happens, you know, and it doesn't happen. So it's again, it's, you know, the ups and downs of daily life. It's very real.

Tara Khandelwal: 40:43

But I like that. It's your happy place to be in your writing room. What other historical periods are you going to write about?

Reenita Hora: 40:51

Oh my gosh, this particular one has led me down the rabbit hole, because in the book, I reference very briefly, the gadar movement and the ghadar mutiny. And I speak to you today from my home in San Francisco. And when I started researching this, I just came across fascinating archives at UC Berkeley and other places, but specifically UC Berkeley, which is relatively close by about some of the first Indian immigrants to the United States. Many of these were members of the ghadar Party, which was

Tara Khandelwal: 41:34

headquartered. What is the ghadar party? Could you refresh? Yes, absolutely,

Reenita Hora: 41:39

okay. We had our first armed revolution against the British in 1857 which failed after that. The next sort of piece of history that you really hear about is 1919, Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Now, in between, there was a movement to embark upon another revolution, armed revolution against the British, to bring the colony and bring the Empire down. This was being planned by a group of Indians outside of India. Many of them were ex British Army soldiers, Sikhs and Gurkhas who had left the British Army, and there were others who were just freedom fighters of sorts, but it was deemed to be safer to plan this armed revolution out from outside of India, because within India, with the British ruling, their spy network and intelligence is amazing. So invariably, the people who were there, many, many of them who were part of this movement were caught and hanged instantly. And there's various anecdotes and stories about about them. And you know, there were all of maybe two or three women that we know about who were involved. Madam kama was one of them, and two Punjabi women. And in San Francisco, this place was actually deemed to be the headquarters of the ghadar movement because they printed a propaganda newspaper called the ghadar it was printed in Hindi, in English, Gurmukhi, Urdu and a slew of other languages as well, and it was literally sent to these Indians around the world, the Indians stationed in places like Singapore and Hong Kong and Germany and Canada, Oregon, etc, to basically bring them together. And they were planning these gun running trips where they were sending guns and bullets to India, funded by the Germans. This is 1914, 1516, you know, those years. And the whole philosophy was, if the British are enemies of India and the British are enemies of Germany, then India and Germany must be friends. So literally, the German consul general in San Francisco was fun sending funds to the ghadar party here in San Francisco to print this propaganda newspaper and send guns and ammunition to India for this armed revolution, which failed. The armed revolution failed, but the stories around it are fascinating, and I have just gone down the rabbit holes. I've been spending days and weeks in the library at UC Berkeley because you're not allowed to bring the documents outside. They're not digitized, so you have to go there and study them there and then leave. And you know, there's not enough time in the day, which drives me crazy. But I have been looking and looking and looking and looking to find the woman's story, the female story, and it's very much a story of men, but I have found, finally, Padmavati Chandra, who was the wife of Ram Chandra Bharadwaj, who, let's say, ran the printing press. And it's fascinating because he was arrested. They were arrested in something called the Hindu German conspiracy trial as soon as World War One broke out, because America joined the war, and now they're breaking the neutrality agreement. It gets into various political details, but it is fascinating, and this is definitely something I'm researching right now for a book and possibly a film as well.

Tara Khandelwal: 45:30

Oh, that's amazing. I was actually going to ask you about the film stuff as well, because I attended your talk, yeah, at so house. And it was with the maker of kesri two. No, not kesri Two. It was with the maker of a TV show about Jalen wala bag. And then. Three, two was also releasing that weekend. I really, I really enjoyed that film as well, because it was about, you know, the lawyer who sort of prosecutes general Dyer. I didn't know that part of history exists. And this story is so interesting, because when one thinks about the Indian diaspora, you think of it as a very recent phenomenon, you know, in the last 4050, years. But, you know, I never thought of it as something that exists even sort of like 100 200 years ago. And it's so interesting. It just makes me think about all of the periods of history, and there's so much to excavate, and there's so many stories that have yet to be told. And I think that's why I really like historical fiction, because it brings alive this history, and the authors who write it, they are doing the work, you know, sometimes, because as readers, I would find it very boring to go and sit in archives, but you are doing the work of going and sifting through all of those archives and all of those documents and, you know, hundreds and hundreds of pages, and then putting it together in a very Fun story. For someone like me who is a history buff but doesn't want to do the work to learn about it. So I really am very excited by all the possibilities that are out there for people who want to write historical fiction.

Reenita Hora: 47:02

It's fascinating. It's really fascinating because it throws light on so many issues, which, as you said, we see in the social fabric of India, of America, of Indian Americans today, but that were relevant back then. You know, in California, you see, I've written a children's book, a young children's book, a picture book. It's called Sundari and mundris Lori adventure, and it's about two sisters in Fresno California and how they're celebrating Lori. And it's a fantasy story, and they get portaled into the story of Dula Bhatti through their grandmother's shawl. But why I chose Fresno California is because there's a very large Sikh community. It's a farming community, and they are actually the very some of the very first immigrants into America, Indian immigrants. And many of them came or out of this, you know, gadar movement, and being farmers, or being, you know, from the Sikh community, and finding land, they settled there and sort of develop when Padmavati Chandra, who I'm researching, when her husband was arrested, she went to the farmers to raise money for his bail and things like that, you know. So it's all connected, and we know that this community exists here, but we don't know about the struggles they went through, you know, at the turn of the century, and I found plenty. I mean, I could go on all day. Give me a timeout, you know. And I agree with you. I mean, these stories need to be shared. They need to be shared with the world at large, but they need to be shared for us Indians, because we have no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea at all.

Tara Khandelwal: 48:46

So tell me more about the film stuff, because I saw that. The head of Sony live is also given a blob for this book, and he was also there at the event. So is there something happening with Sony live?

Reenita Hora: 48:57

I don't know. I you know, Sony live produced Ram madhwani, waking of a nation, which was we were on the joint panel together at Soho House. And, you know, RAM, I can see, just from watching his series, has been fascinated by, you know, the same piece of history, the same events that I have been, you know, he in creating his series, and I in sort of writing this book. I don't know whether Sony live would, do another Jallianwala bag story, but shogato, who had Sony live, was my first ever publisher. So there's, you know, some history back that you know from there, vermilion harvest is being shocked. That's all I can say right now, separately, I do have a Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi lyricist and musician who has fallen in love with this and wants to create music around it for a musical, theatrical, musical, which would also lend itself, probably, to film. So I'm just really excited, because for me, as far as I'm concerned, I've birthed this story, and for it to pick up, you know, take wing and fly. Other folks need to come into the picture and sort of collaborate or sort of run with it. So I've had a few different inquiries. I don't know what will pan out, so we'll see.

Tara Khandelwal: 50:39

But I like what you said about, you know, creating your IP, because that's exactly what this means. You know, the IP can exist in many formats, and I'm always a. Opponent of that as well, because then the story lives on, and then the author gets so much more value out of the story that they've created. So really happy to hear about that. Okay, so now we are going to go to our last section of the interview, which is a fun quiz round where I'm going to ask you some questions and you have to answer in one word for one sentence. Okay, so you're a children's book author as well. Which do you prefer writing for children or writing for adults?

Reenita Hora: 51:12

I think adults are children, so it's one in the same.

Tara Khandelwal: 51:17

Lovely your favorite character from vermilion harvest?

Reenita Hora: 51:21

Oh my gosh, that is so tough. I think in many ways, the fav, my favorite character, is Aruna mother I've got mother issues, I've got mother issues and daughter issues in every book that I write.

Tara Khandelwal: 51:33

Let's pause on the fun quiz a bit, because I actually wanted to ask you about the mother the mother daughter relationship and that theme, it was very small part of the book. And I actually would have liked to see more of arunas mother because whatever was written was very fascinating. There's a tug of war between the two of them, where she's always trying to curb her and she's saying, you know, it's not good for you. It's not good for you. And you see that struggle in every mother daughter relationship and every child parent relationship, even today, which I found very, very fascinating. So yeah, tell me more about the mother daughter relationship.

Reenita Hora: 52:10

Oh my gosh. I mean, Aruna mother is in what she feels is a really, really bad place, because she is raising this daughter who was born out of, unfortunately, raped. She was raped by a British officer. She was thrown out of her own family. He gave her quarters on the outskirts of the cantonment, not inside the cantonment, but on the outskirts of the cantonment, for her to sort of live and raise this child. And she knows that she is raising this daughter who is not going to be accepted. You know, if everybody knows that she's Anglo Indian, and this is one of the reasons why? She tells us, she said, Listen, you could just pass off as a fair skinned northern Indian girl. Why don't you know? Why do you insist? And Aruna, of course, is very fast. She wants to show the world who she is, and plus, she's a school teacher, and the regular northern Indian girls don't get those jobs anyway, you know? So she feels that it's out in the open to some extent, anyway, but still, as a mother, she worries and worries and worries about her daughter. You're not going to be accepted by Ayaz and his family. It's not safe for you to be out there. What if you lose your job? Why are you going to these dhabas and riding in these tongas and, you know, going out into, you know, the markets and stuff like, you know. Why are you not learning from your friend Amrita? You know, she's a good friend of yours, but she's married and she has a young child, and she doesn't do these outlandish things like you do. So she definitely has a lot of these maternal instincts. Mothers all worry about their kids and their daughters, you know, and Aruna takes care of her mother, so she knows that she has just as her mother is responsible for her, she too is responsible for her mother. She is the earning member of the family at this point. So she feels very, very responsible for her mother. And she is also caught in this tug of war, because she wants her own life. She wants this independence. She and Ayaz have these dreams of moving to this liberal city called Bombay, where they believe that nobody will judge them. You know, they'll be free from these dismissive eyes. But at the same time, she's got to think about her mother. She can't, you know, that's, that's all, that's all she has in the world. So it's a tough situation. I didn't want the mother daughter relationship to sort of get in the way of the main love story. So it's definitely a sub story. Also, I have very, very deeply explored mother daughter craziness and dysfunction in a comedic manner in my book, Operation Mom, where the daughter is actually setting up the mother. So I said, Okay, let me, let me do something different here.

Tara Khandelwal: 54:59

Nice. Okay, a book of yours that you absolutely want to see on screen.

Reenita Hora: 55:03

Oh my gosh, every single one of them. But I've just mentioned two vermilion harvest operation mom,

Tara Khandelwal: 55:08

okay, other historical fiction books you'd recommend to our listeners,

Reenita Hora: 55:12

I would definitely recommend too big to fail, which is about the global financial crisis. It's more recent history, but it is fascinating.

Tara Khandelwal: 55:22

Other books on the jallianalla Bagh massacre that our listeners should read to know more about it.

Reenita Hora: 55:28

There's a slew of non fiction books that came out in 2019 around the 100th year anniversary of the massacre. There is one which is there are two biographies of general Dyer. I would highly recommend them. There was another one called the Amritsar massacre by Ki. Should decide recommend that as well. But these are history books

Tara Khandelwal: 55:51

and one comfort read that you keep going back to,

Reenita Hora: 55:54

oh my gosh, anything by David Sedaris. David Sedaris is a humorist. He is, you know, he writes these outlandish, crazy stories about everyday life, and sort of my favorite, my entry point into the world of David Sedaris was his an essay that he wrote about being an elf at Macy's during Christmas time. It's called SantaLand Diaries.

Tara Khandelwal: 56:22

Great. We'll check those out. Thank you so much for this conversation and bringing Jallianwala Bagh to life. I really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Reenita Hora: 56:32

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be on the show and to bring these stories to your readers. Thank you. Hope you

Tara Khandelwal: 56:40

enjoy this episode of Books and Beyond with bound.

Michelle D'costa: 56:43

This podcast is created by bound, a company that helps you grow through stories. Find us at Tom India on all social media platforms. Tune

Tara Khandelwal: 56:52

in every Wednesday as we peek into the lives and minds of some brilliant authors from India and South Asia. You.