Praveena’s Visit to Thomson Press

‘The cover, the pages, the ink… I cannot even begin to put into words what that moment meant to me.’

Praveena Shivram’s Karuppu, Young Zubaan’s latest YA fiction novel, is now available on our webstore. Last month, when the book was being printed at Thomson Press, Praveena came all the way from Chennai to witness the printing process! Read on to know more about her experience at the press.

Where do I even start the story of how Karuppu came to be… where did the idea come from? What was my process? How was this written?… In the eight years that it took for this book to become a reality, I have realized that none of these questions matter. Often, in an attempt to dissect and analyse, we forget the frailties, the vulnerabilities of a book being born. And, in idealising it, we fall into the danger of either negating the struggle or oversimplifying the joy.

When I walked into Thomson Press in Faridabad, where Karuppu was being printed, there was a strange numbness. Ishani, Nithya and I waited for a long time in a room with a table that we immediately felt was perfect to roll out a large map, comfortable chairs that we immediately researched for future reference, and a white box under the whiteboard we were immediately sure was filled with ingots but disappointingly only had the whiteboard marker and eraser. Through the conversation, the jokes, the easy banter, I felt overwhelmingly the presence of something larger, something so impossibly beyond me that I couldn’t even touch it anymore.

And then I did touch it.

The cover, the pages, the ink… I cannot even begin to put into words what that moment meant to me. There was a quietness, inside and outside of me, despite the hypnotising sounds of large machines and that equally hypnotising walk through their massive operation before I got to the corner where Karuppu was being printed. A quietness so deep, so vast, that I was thankful to have my editor and designer with me, witnessing this for me, with me.

I am glad that Karuppu is finally out in the world, and I hope she finds a place that embodies who she is. For me, this is a physical manifestation of what has lived inside me. And while a part of me is terrified to let go, another is relieved. I hope it is received with kindness and brings the same warmth it brought me while I wrote it.