Interview with Gumlat Maio
Interview with Gumlat Maio
Author of “once upon a time in college”
Gumlat Maio was born in Arunachal Pradesh. His series of stories and cartoons about his experiences as a student in North Bengal Medical College and an ongoing novel ‘School Boy Seng’ has been regularly uploaded on his Facebook page ‘Once Upon a Time Somewhere’ garnering more than 17, 000 followers and over four million views so far. He is also the brain behind the satirical cartoon strip Arnachal Mirror, which pokes fun at problems faced by the common man in the sensitive border state.
Chit Chat session
Tell us a little about yourself and your background?
Hi! I am Gumlat Ong Maio. I am 30 years old. I was born in Arunachal Pradesh. I am a doctor by profession and a writer, poet and cartoonist by hobby. I upload my work regularly on my Facebook page “Once Upon a Time Somewhere” which currently has over 17.6 thousand followers and has been visited over 4 million times.
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
I was a voracious reader of novels since childhood and frequented the school library often. Reading those great works of literature by legendary authors, there was always a desire to create my own characters, my own novel someday, that thrill of making an attempt at transporting readers emotionally into the world I create in a book.
Some people have talents to tell stories or convey their ideas through movie-making or painting or songs. I felt, for me, writing was what appealed to me the most and what came naturally to me, to transform my ideas, thoughts and memories into stories that people could relate to emotionally.
What have you written? Give us an insight into your book.
So far, two of my books have been published. “Once Upon a Time in College” and its sequel.
The first book is an autobiographical account of what happened in my first year of college at North Bengal Medical College, Siliguri. The hurdles of an exhaustive MBBS academic curriculum for a novice medical student, hostel ragging, first love and separation, after-effects of a break-up – these are some of the themes covered in the book. Even heart-breaking moments have been sprinkled with humor because that was the aim behind writing this novel, to infuse the readers with feel-good factor, to take them on a nostalgic trip to their pre-graduation days.
What inspired you to write the book “Once Upon a Time in College”?
It was never a plan to turn my college stories into a novel. I used to maintain a blog way back in 2008 where I penned down short 100-200 word descriptions of school and college life incidents, which was read by maybe a dozen people. Each of those posts had a maximum of one comment.
I was not content with those short posts. I wanted to write something longer, with more detailed description. Since the blog had no audience, I decided to write lengthy, detailed stories about college on Facebook. Soon, the audience grew and I kept on adding a chapter whenever I had the time. By the time I finished the last chapter of college first-year, there were enough chapters to fill a novel. So, I thought, “Maybe I can compile all of it into a novel.”
What challenges did you face while penning down this book?
Since the novel described real people and real incidents, there was always the apprehension that some people who I mentioned in the stories would not take too kindly to how I depicted them, even though I treated every character with a dose of friendly humor. To prevent this, I didn’t mention anyone by their real names.
Then, one fine day on a confession page in Facebook, someone anonymous posted very defamatory things about me. His words were full of ‘maybe he is like this’, ‘maybe he did this’; there were a lot of ‘maybe(s)’ in every sentence, which showed that he knew nothing about me.
His college and batch was mentioned but not his name. I re-read my stories and found out I had forgot to change the real name of a senior in a chapter which mentioned that he used to rag us a lot, so it didn’t take long to find out who that senior was. Soon, the admin deleted that confession after I complained to him and asked him that how can he allow an anonymous post defaming me when all the sentences start with ‘maybe’ and the anonymous guy is not even sure of a single accusation he’s throwing at me. The senior, very strangely, even sent me a friend request after a few days and began liking my profile pics, as well.
So, it’s tricky writing about real people without flattering them.
What are your ambitions for your writing career?
I am not that ambitious. I am happy writing and drawing cartoons whenever I get free time from my medical duties. I can’t write every day. I am a moody writer and I write only when I feel the urge for it. That’s why, while many writers complete a novel in five-six months by writing every day, my novels take more than a year to complete.
What does your family think of your writing?
I think in my part of the world, parents don’t even imagine writing, painting or anything relating to creative arts as career options because more often than not, these options do not pay well. All they encourage are to be a doctor or engineer or any type of officer because more than anything, they want their children to have a secure future. My parents are yet to read any of my novels. They are thrilled though, to see my name in books. I had to motivate myself single-handedly to initiate myself into writing stories.
Every writer has a motive behind writing a book. So what was your motive behind writing this book?
To bring a smile to anyone who goes through this novel, to remind them of their own school and college days.
Also, as someone who is itching to write stories, you yearn for someone who will narrate an interesting story to you verbally, which you can adapt into your own written version of the story. But how long can you wait for that storyteller to come to your life? So, instead of waiting, I decided to find stories wherever I could spot them, from the various incidents that occurred in my life.
How did you manage to devote time to writing along with other works?
I write once a week or once in ten days. And it’s not difficult to find that amount of time.
I don’t put myself into too much pressure worrying about the lengthy interval between two stories. I take my own sweet time. Basically, I’m a lazy writer and don’t follow any strict routine for writing. Sometimes when I am busy with friends and families during festive season, I can live without writing for more than a month.
Which writers inspire you? Why?
I love the female characters in Haruki Murakami’s books. Both the girls in his book ‘Norwegian Wood’, Naoko and Midori are weird but desirable in a strange way. I can’t go through a page of Arundhati Roy’s ‘God of Small Things’ without consulting a dictionary, but once I grasp the meaning, they are such beautiful and unique pieces of creative writing. I have immense respect for authors who write in unpretentiously simple language like Jhumpa Lahiri. Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss” is another novel which has inspired me to be adventurous and use unconventional ways of narrating an incident.
“Once Upon a Time in College” is available at?
Online at Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm, Shopclues and Infibeam. Ebook available for download at Amazon Kindle, Google Play, Kobo and Rockstand. Available in bookstores in Arunachal Pradesh at Itanagar, Namsai, Tezu and Bordumsa.
What is the hardest thing about writing?
It’s a lonely process. You have to sit alone in front of a laptop, in a silent place and constantly motivate yourself to churn up new stories. The hardest thing is that most people care only about the finished product, the finished work but the whole process and hard work and frustrations which go into creating it, shaping it, you are completely alone when that’s happening.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
If writing makes you happy, you should never stop, no matter what negative thoughts hamper you. Don’t think – “Why should I write and show my work to anyone? It’s not good enough.” Writing ten average books is better than not writing at all. If you write something bad, the feedback and criticism will make you better when you start a new work.
Write what makes you comfortable and don’t be desperate to copy the plots or ‘formula’ of what great authors used in their novels. Sometimes I worried about how an entire 2000-word chapter of mine spanned only an hour of conversation between its characters. I used to worry about why my entire novel spanned only one year of my life. Will readers accept when novels like David Copperfield and Wuthering Heights chronicle the whole life of its characters from birth to death?
Then, I read “Catcher in the Rye” and found that the entire novel spans only three to four days. Every novel is different. Every writer has a different mind. You should only care about whether your work can engage the reader from first page to the last.
We would be highly appreciated if you say some words for our venture, “Writing Geeks”.
Every writer wants his work to reach as many readers as possible. Writing Geeks is providing a great platform to upcoming writers by conducting book reviews and author interviews and spreading awareness about first-time writers among readers. Reputed newspapers, magazines and online news sites only publish news about authors who are already famous so, Writing Geeks is doing a wonderful job to publicize works by new authors.
