Family Baggage — My First Book!
A book for your shelf!
TLDR: I wrote a book. It’s a family memoir. It’s based on my father. It’s humorous. It’s heartbreaking. It’s relatable. It’s available on amazon.
If you end up reading it, please consider writing a review on Amazon/Good Reads. Thank you for your support!
For as long as I can remember, I have known one thing — I want to write a book. For as long as I can remember, my father has known one thing — he wants a book written about him. These two realizations synergized when he realized that I like to write.
He first encountered my writing when I shared some Medium stories on our family WhatsApp group. I got some minor praise with nothing too specific. He used phrases like, “I like your expressions.” Not entirely sure what that meant but I guess he liked some sentences in the stories.
But I could see it coming. And sure enough, it did… while my guard was down. One night, we were bonding over a few drinks when he said, “I was thinking. You like writing as a hobby. Why don’t you write about my life?”
I said something non-committal like, “Yeah, maybe. Let me think about that.” Truth be told, I simply didn’t have the interest in doing that. I have never known what I would like my first book to be about, but I knew for sure that I didn’t want it to be about my father.
Not that there’s anything wrong about writing about one’s father. In fact, I wrote a short story on Medium inspired by his life titled, “A Father and Son Story”. I thought that would satisfy him, but once again I got some mild praise like, “Good writing. I liked it but it was sad. My life is not so sad.”
I thought I had done my bit, but if anything, I now had stronger sales pitches to write a full-blown book.
“It can be a bestseller”, “There are so many interesting episodes that are worth writing about”, “I would write it myself but I don’t have the writing skills”
My father isn’t one to be ignored. Implicit and explicit sales pitches became more and more frequent and at one point he shoved a diary in my face containing notes and a timeline of his life.
As I read through the notes, I scratched my head on what, if anything, could I write that anyone would want to read.
My eureka moment arrived on a rainy afternoon in Pune, India when I was visiting my father from the US. As I woke up from a power nap, I realized that while I simply could not write a book about his life, I could write a book about him.
While his life may not be as interesting, he is. His ideas, his habits, his philosophies, his addictions, his personality traits are truly interesting and dare I say…hilarious!
You see, my father is somewhat of a dying breed. He’s like a white rhino or a panda. Remarkable creatures to look at but extremely rare to encounter. In fact, a panda is the best comparison for him because not only does he look like one, but just like a panda, he’s responsible for his own predicament too!
Men’s Vogue, 1994
I walked over to his room with a cup of tea and pitched him the idea of a book that makes fun of, rather than celebrates his life. To my surprise, he instantly agreed. He yelled excitedly, “Make fun of me! I don’t want some depressing book. Go ahead.”
When I finally put my fingers to a keyboard, my father was eighty. Given his age and frailties, I knew well that if I wanted to get this book out in his presence, I had to move quickly.
Moving quickly took two and a half years, but it happened not a day too soon.
On a sultry April night this year, my father passed away after a prolonged battle with respiratory illness. In his final moments, he was surrounded by family, at home, in his room, just the way he wanted it. He lived life on his own terms and he held off death to his whims. A few days prior, he enjoyed a glass of his favorite single malt, ate some of his favorite spicy food and watched a comedy.
A month prior to that, before he was hospitalized, he held a book in his hands, read it cover to cover and gave his stamp of approval. A week before his passing, he signed a few copies for friends and family.
He was a 10 but had the worst handwriting known to man.
One of his enduring wishes was for his story to be shared with the world. It was not something that I wasn’t keen on doing, but today I am deeply grateful that I did.
I share with you, Family Baggage — A memoir of Humor, Heartbreak, and the Stories We Carry. It’s a humorous tale of an ordinary, middle-class Indian family seeking the extraordinary in their lives in the midst of chaos and heartbreak.
While not biographical, it talks some about my father, a lot about our family, a little about me and perhaps a wee bit about us… individuals living in this uncertain, crazy, unpredictable but beautiful world.
You can purchase Family Baggage on amazon.com. It’s available in Paperback, Hardcover and Kindle. If you end up reading it, please consider writing a review on Amazon/Good Reads. Thank you for your support!
