Book writing made easy One of India's best known editors, the late Vinod Mehta, acknowledges the role played by Luis Vas in Mehta's getting deeper into writing. In this essay, the 70-year-young, Mumbai- based reticent Vas, shares the stories behind his 28 published books. A Goanet Reader exclusive.
By Luis S. R. Vas [email protected] While still in school everyone thought l'd be an engineer, since my father was one. Since I knew all the cars' names that passed on the road, that clinched it. In college, I wrote a couple of articles for *A Vida's* English section. Then I read a long article-cum-interview on J. Krishnamurti in the *Illustrated Weekly of India* by its editor A.S. Raman. I got interested but could find nothing on or by Krishnamurti in Goan bookshops. So I ordered from Pune a couple of books by him and got *The First and Last Freedom* with a Foreword by Aldous Huxley, and a verbatim report of some of his talks in India. I read them and decided I could write an article on him. I wrote in long hand on a lined foolscap, titled it Psychology of Freedom and mailed it to *Sunday Standard* (now *Sunday Express*). It was published under the title Quest for Inner Peace but was otherwise unchanged. By now, my low marks made it clear I wouldn't be an engineer. So I opted for journalism and enrolled at Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's Institute of Mass Comunication and Media in Mumbai. Its main subjects were: Reporting, Editing and Writing. At the end of the year I passed with a Silver Medal in Writing. My Principal, Joseph John, gave me a letter of introduction to V.K. Narasimhan, Editor of the *Indian Express*. I met Narasimhan who questioned me closely on Krishnamurti after reading the article: This is the best job I’ve seen on Krishnamurti.(Thank you) Did Krishnamurti write his books or were they based on his talks? (Some he wrote like *Commentaries on Living*; some were based on talks). Had I read Camus? I had read his Myth of Sisiphus. How close was he to Krishnamurti? On different wavelengths, I thought... and so on. Then he said I could join the *Sunday Standard*. I should go and meet its editor Kapadia. I did but Kapadia had other ideas. It can't be done in a jiffy, he said. I'd first have to go to Madras. I'd be a fish out of water there. I didn't want to leave Bombay. So I walked out of there. In any case, I was more interested in books than in journalism. So I applied to Jaico, was called, interviewed by its founder Jaman Shah and got the job of editorial assistant. I had to read and assess manuscripts, go through issues of *Publishers' Weekly* and *Bookseller* and ask for review copies of books for possible reprint in India. I asked him why he didn't reprint Krishnamurti's books? He couldn't get reprint rights. Did fiction sell? Only short stories, not novels. So I set out to compile a book on Krishnamurti and one of Goan Short Stories. I discovered a small magazine *Chetana* that specialised in articles on Krishnamurti, bought a few issues and set out to work. I selected some, sorted them out into sections, added some more material from elsewhere, including my article which led the rest. After obtaining permission from the editor of *Chetana* and others concerned, I was ready. Then I started on my collection of Goan short stories. I sent letters to the editor of *Navhind Times* and *Herald* and collected stories published in these and other Goan newspapers and was ready, after obtaining the required permissions. Finally both were out. 5,000 copies of *The Mind of J. Krishnamurti* were printed and 3,000 of *Modern Goan Short Stories*. Krishnamurti sold out immediately. It has been reprinted 22 times and still sells 45 years later. The Goan short stories had two bad reviews. One Neela d`Souza thrashed it in *The Times of India* and Dr. Carmo de Azavedo panned it in *Goa Today* though all the well known authors had been included. It didn`t sell more than 1,200 copies during the nine years I was in Jaico. Around this time Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation (TM) had been in the news on three occasions. First when the Beatles joined him in Rishikesh; next when they abandoned him and lastly when he dubbed the technique as the Science of Creative Intelligence and invited scientists to investigate it. Physiologists Robert Wallace and Herbert Benson had conducted various tests on it and published work about its beneficial results. Wallace went on to become the head of Maharishi International University. Benson went on to develop his own technique which he termed the Relaxation Response. TM consists in repeating for 20 minutes, twice a day a one-word mantra prescribed by Maharish and which you undertake not to disclose to anyone. Based on descriptions of the technique, I'd devised my own mantra and had found the meditation soothing. Now I decided to go into the real thing under two American disciples of Maharishi. The subjective results were no different from those I experienced with my own mantra. But it permitted me to write an article on it, in fact three articles. (It would also help me tackle high blood pressure years later without medication). The first article, I submitted to the *Blitz* only because it was closest to my office; but they were unreceptive and I took it next door to *Current*. I was only asked if it was authentic and when assured it was, they published it as The Mysterious Power of the Mantra. I submitted a second one to *The Economic Times*. It was on the commercial benefits of TM and it, too, was published. The third one I submitted to *Imprint*, officially edited by R.V. Pandit, the magazine's owner, who lived in Hong Kong but edited hands-on by Ruskin Bond from Mussourie. He not only published TM: Science or Hoax? but invited me to write an article a month for him, which I did on topics including Abbe Faria's Hypnotic Saga. (I couldn’t know then that I’d one day be writing a full book on Abbe Faria and his impact on hypnosis.) I also wrote on Abbe Faria for Khushwant Singh's *Illustrated Weekly*. For the same magazine I wrote an article on Dinshaw Dastur's Garland Canal system to interlink India's rivers designed to balance flooding and drought in the country. I sent the article to Buckminster Fuller and asked him for a foreword to Dastur's book on the subject, which he sent and was published by Jaico. At Jaico I commissioned some authors to write for us. A few turned into best sellers like R.N. Lakhotia's *How To Save Money on Income Tax* and Vinod Mehta's *Meena Kumari* and some into flops like Vinod's *The Sanjay Story*. Now both *Meena Kumari* and *The Sanjay Story* have been reprinted by another publisher and biopics of both are being made. In the late 1970's I quit Jaico to join L&T's PR department. Sometime later Dom Moraes was appointed editor of *Sunday Standard*, with Adil Jussawala, Manohar Shetty and Devika Sequeira to help him. It was now a colour magazine and it needed as many colour pictures as possible. I only had to look across the aisle in my office to see a story. An illustrator in our advertising department illustrated postage stamps. I did an article on him. Another artist held annual rangoli exhibitions. I wrote an article on it which was published as Powder Art. We had an industrial photographer on whom I wrote and it was published as An Eye on Industry. Around this time my wife and I thought of selling by mail order audio cassettes on self-hypnosis, meditation, creativity, etc. We taped them at night on week ends and advertised them in *Mirror*, from which my experience in Jaico told me we'd get the best response. It did until *Mirror* closed down and we couldn't find a substitute. I collected the transcripts of the cassettes and submitted them to Jaico for publication as a management book. It was accepted and published as *Dynamics of Mind Management*. It went into two editions, then stopped selling. Around this time *The Times of India* launched an Ascent section on careers and accepted contributions by experts. I am no expert on anything but I had an impressive designation: Manager, Corporate Communications, Larsen & Toubro Limited. So I decided to contribute. My first subject was Edward de Bono's Lateral Thinking. My approach was slightly sceptical rather than didactic. It appeared and I received numerous phone calls at the office by amused readers. More such articles followed and were published. Finally I had a collection that I submitted to a Delhi publisher. It was accepted but nothing happened for a year. So, I withdrew it, added another bunch that had been published in the intervening time, split the manuscript into two equal parts, submitted one part, titled *Skills for Excellence*, to another Delhi publisher and the second part, titled *Discover The Power of Your Inner Self*, to a Mumbai publisher. Both were published within a month of each other, each priced at Rs 60 and each sold around 1,000 copies by the end of the year. Both are still selling well though their prices have been raised. I now decided to branch off into a different kind of management books. The first one was based on Birbal stories. I collected 85 stories from whatever source I could find, rewrote them all, split each into two parts, titled the first part The Problem and the second part Birbal's Solution. The reader was urged to think of his own solution before reading Birbal's. At the end of each story I appended a Management Moral which my wife expanded. It was titled *Solve Your Problems the Birbal Way* and priced at Rs. 60. It became an instant best seller selling till date over 60,000 copies over the years. Companies found it useful for gifting to trainees and participants in seminars. We followed this with *Leadership Lessons from the Panchatantra*, and *Decision-Making The Jataka Way*. The next title, *Arabian Nights -- Case Studies in Creativity*, should appear next year. I retired from L&T on August 31, 2001. On September 11 the terror attack on the twin towers in New York occurred. My wife suggested a book on Osama Bin Laden. With the help of Internet research, I completed the book in 15 days time and titled it Osama Bin Laden 00 King of Terror. The publishers added Or Saviour of Islam?. It appeared on October 15, 2001. A Mumbai outfit, imagining it to be pro-Osama, bought a copy, set it on fire on the road, photographed it and sent the photo to the press and threatened to burn any shop selling it. The book stopped selling in Mumbai and my publishers who had printed 8,000 copies ended up with dead stock and refused to pay me any royalties on the book. I have now turned to less controversial subjects. A collection of articles published in *Life Positive* appeared as *Use Your Mind To Heal Your Body*. A book on neuroplasticity, that is the ability of the brain to learn even in old age, appeared as *Build a Better Brain at Any Age* and another as *Let Your Brain Be Your Doctor*. Similarly, based on case studies I wrote *Business Ideas You Can Turn Into Cash and Creative Ideas for Generating Income*. Similarly, *Healing Breath and Pranic Living and Healing*. My interest in meditation led me write two books on the subject for different publishers -- one titled *Meditation* and the other *Meditation Masters*. And I compiled a book titled *Experiences With the Jesus Prayer* which was published by a third publisher. My wife had done a course in natural cosmetology. We used her notes to write a book titled *The Joy of Natural Living*. A publisher contacted me and asked for manuscripts. I gave him two: *Seven Roads to Success at Work and in Life* based on the Enneagram, a personality based chart, and *Secrets of Happy Families*. But the publisher died and his business went bust leaving me with Rs. 25,000 unpaid royalties. For 40 years I'd collected material for a historical travelogue based on travellers' impressions of Goa over the centuries. But in 2010, the Internet had made all my material obsolete. I could obtain and did all the material I needed from the Net. It was published as *Veni, Vidi...Goa*, sponsored by the Dempos. Now, aged 70, I have semi-completed *The Amazing Kosambis* on the Buddhist monk Dharmanand, his rationalist son Damodar and the latter's daughter Meera; a sequel to *Veni, Vidi...Goa*; and *Yoga Techniques for Perfect Health* in honour of the International Yoga Day. My journey, so far, has come to an end with 28 published books and more in the pipeline. ###
