On Finishing Chapter Seventeen!

Actually to let the world know, erm, that we are making slow and painful progress on the novel. Finished Chapter Seventeen at the Cafe Coffee Day's Cafe in Belapur, New Bombay last night. Only three more chapters to go. Yay! CCD's Cafes are a good place to be in, a bit tony, if you ask us. They take orders from the table and there's no number card to be carried back to the table. Hm. That's a good improvement from the ordinary CCD joint. 

But there were a few business types in ties [actually they were wimpy looking fat men with unshaven chins and fat midriffs] with business talk about "verticals" and "customer satisfaction." Come on, men, who are you kidding? In today's "sell at all costs" paradigm whoever thinks of "customer satisfaction." No customer is ever satisfied, you hear, loudmouth, fat ass. We must say the talk got on our nerves.

Let us explain painful. Yes, it's been a bit painful with the medical complaints we have. We have got some remission with the nature cure ashram we had in Kerala. But the adjunct is that we can have only non-vegetarian food, can't have rice, can't have fish, no, not even eggs. We love all these and eggs are one of our favourites. On the positive side, we must say we feel good about not taxing our body with a lot of animal fats and proteins and we feel light through the day. Additionally, we have to do one hour of yoga and one hour walking every morning. We learnt basic Yoga when we were at this ashram and we think it is a good way of keeping the body flexible. [We meant to write about the ashram experience in detail, but then decided the novel requires more concentration than that.] We have been sticking to this strict regimen and, therefore, writing becomes difficult. Hope that explains the "painful" part. Sorry, wrong word, I should change that to "satisfying."

Also, we think, we have nearly found a competent editor for our novel. It's important at this stage to get the novel professionally edited for minor errors and bloopers which might upset an editor at the agents' or publishers'. 

John is @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. He blogs here. His Youtube Channel Page. His novel Mr. Bandookwala, M.B.A., Harvard.