What an Adventure!
By Aneeta Sundararaj
When my dream job as a medico-legal lawyer became an absolute nightmare, I quit. This was December, 2002. I had no new job to go to and very limited financial resources to live on. Nevertheless, I was now absolutely free to pursue any dream I wished and I chose to write the novel that had been swimming inside my head for years. What an adventure of self-discovery and joy it has been. Most certainly not an easy journey, but one with many, many memorable experiences.
It began with complete silence. I told no one that I was writing a novel. Within three months I
started receiving comments like, “Aneeta, you have to get a job. No one wants a dependent
housewife" [I am not married but was receiving proposals of marriage at this time], and “What are you doing to pay your bills? Are you into multi-level marketing?” The last comment, I might add, was one of the nicer suggestions about how I was raising the money to live. To keep them all quiet, I gave the answer that I was taking a sabbatical. Even with this, I had negative responses [from people totally unrelated to my family] to the tune of, “We give you one year, after which you must get a job and not be a burden to your parents.” After this, I said nothing and smiled politely when people asked me what I was doing.
I kept going and soon I had the first draft of The Banana Leaf Men ready on my desk. I then sent it to be edited and proofread and so on. Many have asked me why I chose to self-publish, and honestly, I never thought about it. I just did it. I think that subconsciously, after legal practice where everything was regulated, from where and when you can have morning coffee to what
colored stockings you can wear, I would not have been able to take it if someone
had said, “We will not publish your story.”
Not being bound to a rigid routine was wonderful for I was now free to do as I wished. When my father was suddenly
hospitalized last August, I was able to leave everything and be there for the family. This freedom was fantastic. However, the discipline required to complete the novel was tremendous, but because I enjoyed every minute of it, I never once felt the strain. Writing the novel was magic. Words flowed, ideas got churned, and deep-seated emotions were brought out. The play with words was most intellectually invigorating. This was the easy part!
The hard part came when I had to answer the question, “How do I get this book onto the bookshelves?”
First step was to set up the publishing company, Sensations Pro Sdn Bhd. My training as a lawyer was very useful here for one of the first things I did was to put in an application for registration of the logo of the company, which is
. This was to protect its very first book,
The Banana Leaf Men.
Next was the printer. Once I found a printer and he provided me with an estimate on how much it would cost to get my book into print I drew up a plan outlining everything that I could think of. Only after this did I begin to tell a select few about my novel. The principal of my old school, New England Girls’ School in Australia, was very willing to let me launch the book there. So I had the date for the launch – 20th September, 2003 and that meant that I would have to fly there. The plane flight was booked for the 10th of September. On the 1st of September, the printer quite coolly told me the books would not be ready! I had to change my flight and argue with him to high heaven before he agreed to digitally print the books (at his cost) before I left. Even when they were printed (thankfully only 100 copies) I discovered that the paper used for the cover was completely wrong. In the sun, the cover of the book would just curl and it was terrible. There were so many errors, and like any other human being in the same situation may have done, I cried.
Anyway, the Australian launch proceeded as planned and when I returned everything had to be re-done properly as we had planned another launch in my hometown, Alor Star. I had paid the deposit for 2,500 copies of the novel to be printed. Once again, the printer let me down as he said the copies were not going to be ready in time. I soon
realized what was happening. I would tell this man in his office what to do and he would never relay the message to anyone else in the company. So those at the printing press itself never knew that there were orders to be fulfilled.
Perhaps from being a lawyer for so long, it was ingrained in me that absolutely everything had to be in writing. So, when this man happily went off on holiday on the day the books were to be delivered to me, I was able to go to his boss and show him all the correspondence between his company and mine regarding all the commitments that had been made. The books did eventually arrive but I had no launch! Nevertheless, I learned an important lesson and that was never to agree to a date to launch any book until one is absolutely sure that the books will exist.
If this drama with the printer was not enough, I went through another humiliating experience with a total stranger. This person asked for an autographed copy of my novel and quite naively, I agreed to meet this person for coffee. An example of what transpired is as follows: The first sentence in
The Banana Leaf Men is ‘"Are you quite mad?” asked Sharmini, Tika’s Best-of-Friends.’ Now this person said to me, “No one says this. This is not the way people speak.” When I replied that that was exactly what someone had said to me, this person said, “Oh. I am so glad I no longer live in Malaysia.”
From then on I was told that my English was atrocious, I was not humble, I was going to be the laughing stock of the international literary world and that my readers’ intelligence would be insulted when they read
The Banana Leaf Men. The cover design [which incidentally I drew myself] had absolutely no appeal whatsoever and I was a failure even before I had begun. I could have accepted all these comments but the only problem I had was that this person had yet to read the novel!
So now, with only one launch in Australia and obviously no hope of getting any positive response to this book, I needed to garner all my strength to carry on. The biggest problem was to find a way to launch this book and get publicity using as little money as possible as my funds were fast depleting. This is where the element of pure luck came in. When I received the first copies of the novel, I was
on my way back to my hometown when I stopped over to meet with some friends. A
manager of a bookshop happened to be there at the time and she was willing to host the launch for me. I immediately agreed and voila, a launch in Malaysia with media publicity.
Even with this, there were still problems as I now had to find a distributor. I also learned how secretive the other publishers were and how nasty they could be. Comments like “Oh Aneeta, of course we will help you,” were always made in the presence of celebrities at star-studded functions but when I approached them in the cold light of day, the remark was “Oh, I’ll let you know.” But for each of these rejections, there was also another window of opportunity.
I attended a book launch of one of my other friends and there I met a distributor. I later contacted her myself, gave her a copy of
The Banana Leaf Men, told her to read it and only consider taking me on if she liked the novel. She loved it and is now doing an absolutely wonderful job distributing my books.
Little by little, my dreams are being realized. One of them is a small one but nevertheless important. I was very determined to have the size of this novel the way it is – about 7 inches by 4 inches. The reason for this specific size was because when I was in London, I was fascinated by people in the Underground Tube who would suddenly take a book out of their handbag and start to read. I vowed that I if ever I wrote a book, I wanted it to be a good book and yet accessible for all to read easily. It gave me great joy three nights ago when someone I know said to me “Aneeta, I really love your book. I have been reading it on the train on the way to work!”
However, like any adventure, there are the good moments too, and in this, I have been very lucky. The reaction to
The Banana Leaf Men has been wonderful. The first lot that went to the distributor had sold out and she came to collect more books recently. The reviews have been good and they keep coming.
As for the contents of the novel, three basic questions are asked by the main character, Avantika. Are women mere commodities? Do Indians suffer from an identity crisis? Do children who are sent overseas to study return home really ‘educated’? She asks these as she experiences the process leading to an arranged marriage.
Set in the quaint Malaysian town of Alor Star at the beginning of the new millennium,
The Banana Leaf Men is a hilarious account of Tika’s adventures with her two suitors and all the criticisms, both constructive and destructive, of the members of the Institution of the Aunties, family and friends. There are also underlying
themes-- for instance, the destruction of the Mission schools and the lack of sincerity and ethics amongst members of the legal profession.
As I have maintained, I did not write The Banana Leaf Men to please people. I had a story to tell and I was determined to tell it as truthfully as I could. Also to me,
the book was a work of art and like any work of art, it is a labor of love. So, as an artist friend of mine said, “One you produce a work of art, you must let it go, for in so doing, you are giving the world your love.” So,
the book has been my labor of love, warts and all. I give it to my readers and hope that they will enjoy reading it.
As for the future, I am already half-way through the next book and I need to expand the business side of
Sensations. There is a lot of work to keep me busy for now.
Despite having a post-graduate qualification in law, Aneeta Sundararaj
'retired' from legal practice at the end of 2002. She pursued her dream of writing
a novel. THE BANANA LEAF MEN is her first novel. The Banana Leaf Men is available for purchase via the Sensations website-
www.sensations.com.my and
retails at US12.99 [exclusive of packaging and postage]. Contact Aneeta at: aneeta@sensations.com.my
