Explore cultures other than your own, says David Hair, New Zealander and author of The Bone Tiki, to young writers who prefer to work within their own comfort zone.
Hair is coming to Bangalore to launch his book Pyre of Queens, published by Penguin Books India. The story is about Ravindra-Raj, the evil sorcerer-king, who devises a deadly secret ritual where he and his seven queens will burn on his pyre, and he will rise again with the powers of Ravana, demon-king of the epic Ramayana. But things go wrong when one queen, the beautiful, spirited Darya, escapes with the help of Aram Dhoop, the court poet.
Hair’s first book, The Bone Tiki, won the Best First Novel award (in the Young Adult Fiction genre of books at the 2010 New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards). The Bone Tiki and its sequel The Taniwha’s Tear are fantasy novels set in New Zealand.
Before moving to India, Hair worked primarily in financial services and has a degree in history and classical studies. Though he has always been interested in folklore, history, and has a passion for football, writing had always been a life long ambition.”
“Writing is what I always wanted to do and eventually I found time for it,” he says. “I worked for a bank, then for some insurance and financial companies, which meant that writing had to be put on the back burner for a while. When I started writing The Bone Tiki in my spare time, it helped that I had two teenage children and I could draw from my own experiences with them. The book was rooted in New Zealand history and the protagonist of the book was a teenager. Later I was asked to write a sequel too.”
Hair moved to New Delhi some years ago when his wife was posted to the New Zealand High Commission. “My wife used to come to Bangalore earlier to learn yoga and I had heard a lot of stories about India before I came here,” he says. “I must say that India has lived up to all that my wife told me. It is full of colour and history and is a treasure trove of things to do and find out. Both of us love exploring the country, sampling the food and we have watched a few Indian movies, too.”
Hair found that, in India, he had enough time during the day to write books. “But it was when we went on a trip to Jodhpur, that I was inspired to write Pyre of Queens,” he says. “It wasn’t easy writing a book outside my culture, but fortunately, I had friends here whom I used as a sounding board. I would ask them if an Indian would say this or do that and they would help me. The book is action-packed and fast, and was great fun to write.”
Hair says that he has not got around to reading too many of the art-literature books that India has produced. “I like fantasy and adventure but not too many Indians write in this genre,” he says.
Hair has planned four books in this series and they will be released over the next few years. He returns to New Zealand in a few weeks, as his wife’s posting in India is coming to an end. But he plans to keep writing books on Indian themes.
He adds a last word for aspiring writers in the city: “Be persistent, believe in yourself and never give up. It is very important for writers to look at the way other people live, because it will enrich and add value to their writing.”
