Take Twinkle Khanna’s word for it

Last year, Khanna moved lock, stock and barrel (with 11-year-old daughter Nitara) to London. This year, she prepares for another test – the release of her book of short stories, Welcome to Paradise, published by Juggernaut. It’s her fourth book; her first after her Goldsmiths degree. Its five stories feature a broad spectrum of ideas: Influential teachers, family banter at momentous occasions, vivid scenes of small-town life. They tug at the heartstrings, serve up nostalgia, present moments of rumination and elicit chuckles. Mrs Funnybones has upped her game.

“Only extremely dumb people feel they know everything,” Khanna says. “Smart people know that they can never know enough and need to keep learning.”

Here’s what she’s learnt in the last few years, in class and out of it.

Lesson 1: Never underestimate the power of sunlight

“I didn’t factor in the stark winter darkness when I moved to London,” Khanna says, referring to the long and dreary English weather. “I’m from Mumbai. When it started getting dark at 3.30 pm, I keenly felt the sense of isolation.”

Moving to a new city is never easy, and Khanna admits to being unprepared for its administrative side. She changed five apartments in the first few months, carting baggage accumulated over years. Finding cooks, tradespeople, and friends added to her initial woes. “I had to walk to places and learn to cross the road while looking out for traffic. There’s no chance for me to do that in Mumbai! All of it was a new experience.”

Lesson 2: Rise early, worms await

Being a successful columnist is different from being a successful fiction writer. Those witty bi-weekly columns would take two days to research, formulate and write. But with a book, she can’t set a routine. The make-believe world has a way of taking over the mind.

“I read somewhere that you have to safeguard your most productive time, which for me is in the morning, right after Nitara is on the school bus. I can’t lose this time, so I’m kind of snappy and snarly if someone interrupts me then,” Khanna says. Evenings are reserved for editing or revising. “By that point, my brain cells start protesting. I don’t give them enough carbs for working overtime,” she says, laughing.

She’s figured out the key to good storytelling: write from the heart, edit from the head. “Writing the first draft is trauma, because I just regurgitate my thoughts on paper!” Khanna says. “But editing can be therapeutic. I edit until every word that makes the final cut has excellent reason to be there.”

Lesson 3: Corners are for changing course

Being the sharp columnist Mrs Funnybones brings with it some expectations. “I have always felt a certain amount of pressure to be entertaining,” Khanna says. She’s let that pressure go. Welcome to Paradise is a departure from her usual light, frothy and entertaining stories. Loved ones die, those left behind navigate the loss. One story is about an ageing woman’s quest for euthanasia. There are cheating spouses, drug-addict relatives, and people who lie about their identities. Humour sneaks in, anyway. The first story involves some confusion about the last rites of an Ismaili woman married to a Hindu. As her family bickers, the woman’s daughter wonders, “... if her father would have found the whole episode amusing. His dead wife lying three feet away and the extended family quarrelling over pigs and penises.” “I write about dark things, but they are not burdens. I see them instead as balloons,” Khanna says.

Lesson 4: It pays to be a misfit

As a teen at boarding school in Panchgani, Khanna says she was accident-prone and awkward. “I was shaped like a teapot and was called Twinkle.” She developed her wit and comebacks to stand up to schoolmates, the “three-feet high sweaty dragons”.

She’s glad she did, because it made her the writer she is. “You can only write if you don’t fit into the world the way it is. Most writers are like Tetris blocks that don’t quite fall into the grid. They make up other worlds inside their heads that are more interesting.”

And they’re constantly drawing from that harsher real world. “Some people have great auditory retention powers, but my greatest talent is as an eavesdropper,” Khanna admits. “I listen to conversations. I constantly take notes.” Many of her characters, then, are well-disguised people she’s met. Those from the story Jelly Sweets are based largely on her Nani’s family members from the small town of Satpati. And Madhura, the character seeking euthanasia, is loosely based on a beloved professor Peter Patrao, who taught Khanna in Panchgani.

Lesson 5: Age is mathematical operation

Choosing to study abroad after already becoming a famous writer may be considered an unusual choice. For Khanna, it was the only way forward. “If you are not growing, you are stagnating,” she says. She started with two shorter courses at the University of Oxford, before diving into the Masters degree.

There were nerve-wracking moments. She spent a month researching and writing her first critical-analysis essay and mustering up the courage to make friends. She wouldn’t have it any other way: “An advantage of being nearly 50 is that you are much quicker on the uptake.” Once older folks figure something out, they excel at it faster than they would have when they were young. “Age is a mathematical problem,” she concedes. “But it’s not division, in which we are reduced to a fraction of what we have been. It’s multiplication, because one continues to grow.”