We had the chance to have a candid talk with Selvan Srinivasan. Check out the author’s thoughts about the different questions we had:
- Akhila Saroha: I would like to begin by congratulating you on the publication of “Awareness Journey | The Happy Place Module – A Journey into the Deepest Aspects of Life.” What were the events that led to the idea of writing it?
Selvan Srinivasan: Thank you so much, I did feel very proud, very accomplished and fulfilled when I held the first printed book in my hand during December last year! I cannot ever forget that moment.
The events that led to writing this book were also unique and memorable. Although the idea of writing a book was at the back of my mind with varying degrees of urgency almost throughout my life as far as I can remember, the idea to write this book happened like a tsunami when it hit me. After two years of being stuck at home, both my wife and I wanted to get out of Hyderabad and spend time in a cooler place during the summer of 2022. We decided to go on a long, really long car drive and stay for a month or two in the South Indian hill station, Kodaikanal.
After overhaul service and several parts change including all the tires, my ten year old little Honda Brio was ready for the journey on April 20th last year. With several overnight halts on the way, we reached Kodaikanal five days later. On my daughter’s suggestion, I had enrolled for six days of meditation retreat at a place called “Bodhi Zendo” at Kodaikanal. We enjoyed the cool weather, spectacular scenery and still quietness of the retreat center and the program. With nothing to do except eating and sitting quietly, no digital devices, some light gardening work and afternoon naps, it seemed like an ideal retired life. At this point even traces of the idea of writing were nowhere in my mind.
On May first, we moved to an independent house that we had rented for 45 days on a remote part of Kodaikanal, did a lot of grocery shopping to set up the kitchen and started living there. We had brought the entire set of kitchen appliances with us in our car. The scenery from the house was mind blowing, weather perfect, zero air pollution, zero noise pollution and zero disturbance. It was easier for my wife to adjust because all she needed was a phone and an internet connection and she would be busy with her siblings and friends all over the world all day long. Within a couple of days, I was getting restless and feeling unproductive.
My daughter suggested writing and connected me with a writing group in Chennai called “No Blank Pages”. I just attended a couple of sessions with them and it helped me begin writing and that’s when the tsunami hit. It was like magic happening. I would spend the next twenty five days writing for hours and it felt like for most of the time I was not there at all. Some unknown voice was dictating and my fingers were flying across the keyboard of my MacBook. Unbelievably in just 25 days the first draft of 250 pages of my first book was written!
- Akhila Saroha: As a title, “Awareness Journey | The Happy Place Module – A Journey into the Deepest Aspects of Life” makes the readers wander at different levels about its significance and validity. Did you have any alternative titles in mind? How did you come up with this as the title?
Selvan Srinivasan: ”Awareness Journey” was already the name of my six month online mentoring program. How I landed on this name for my course is another interesting story that happened in October 2018 when I went with my younger daughter to Pondicherry for a few days with a specific goal of brainstorming and coming up with a name for the mentoring course that I had just created over two years starting in 2017. We went deep sea diving when it became too intense. I don’t even know swimming and my daughter inspired me to do it and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. To make the long story short, we finally came up with the name “Awareness Journey” during those three days. Before this happened, the course was already up and running and I had several students doing it but it was just called the SelvanS Mentoring course.
The Happy Place Module is the first module of this course. Each month is one module and focuses on a specific aspect of the journey within. Happy place is not the same as the emotion of happiness. I have defined what the Happy Place is in the book itself. It is a state of mind. When we use the tools described in the book and connect with the frequency of the electromagnetic energy field of the earth, we experience an aware state of mind and I call this the Happy Place. A Journey into the deepest aspects of life is how I used to describe my course on the website since the beginning. In other words, the title of the book existed long before the book itself took birth and claimed it!
- Akhila Saroha: How easy or difficult was it for you to decide the placement of the pace of the text and ensure that the readers would also feel connected to it in “Awareness Journey | The Happy Place Module – A Journey into the Deepest Aspects of Life”?
Selvan Srinivasan: When I first joined that book writers group meeting and before the story of the book started flowing through my mind, I made a list of the forty odd participants that had gone through the course with me until then. That is when Ayushi was born. The character and the combination of all her traits is fictional but each part of her is true. What I mean is that each feature or trait of Ayushi would have come from a different candidate who actually did the course with me. Each conversation in the book actually happened. I just changed the setting in some cases in which the conversations happened. For the first few days of writing, two people were involved with me and were reading what I wrote and giving feedback and this helped. For example the idea of Oogway came out of a suggestion that the story seemed too instructional and boring because the mentor seemed too serious. Oogway was actually the name a group of graduate students called me when they did the course together in 2018. It was getting tedious and affecting the creative flow so after the first few days, I stopped sharing what I wrote on a daily basis until the entire first draft was written.
The tough part started after the first draft was written. I shared it with several of my students who had done the course with me as well as a few others who had never heard of the course before. They all contributed immensely to make my story more engaging and interesting. Writing the book took only twenty five days but polishing it and making it ready for submission to the publisher for editing took another four months and this was quite tedious although I thoroughly enjoyed each and every step on the way.
- Akhila Saroha: The book breaks ground by exploring subjects that make it unique in itself. Please share about your past experiences in literary writing as well as your future plans in writing.
Selvan Srinivasan: I started reading novels when I was eight years old, when I was introduced to my first Enid Blyton novel by my cousin sister who is actually a few months younger than me! I had a continuous flow of novels and picture books like Amar Chitra Katha and Chandamama throughout my growing years. I was reminded of this train trip we did as a huge joint family from Bombay to Madras during my preteen summer holidays. Our parents had promised to buy us novels in the station but we couldn’t get it. In frustration my cousin and I promised each other that we would grow up and become authors and ensure that railway stations had enough supply of books for everyone!
But life took a different turn. Even though I was a college topper in my twelfth board exams, I had to drop out of engineering college due to economic reasons and join my father’s faltering manufacturing factory. I had been an entrepreneur and industrialist for the next four decades of my life until I retired and moved to Hyderabad and started my own journey into awareness. I continued reading throughout my life. I never stopped reading books despite my hectic rollercoaster of life as an entrepreneur. This book is my first ever attempt in the literary field. But to me the inspiration was not the literature or writing but the need to bring my message to the world. The words, the grammar and literature just flowed out of me naturally, probably out of the thousands of books I had read throughout my life. I never stopped reading books despite my hectic rollercoaster of life as an entrepreneur.
- Akhila Saroha: Did you have any particular audience in mind while writing “Awareness Journey | The Happy Place Module – A Journey into the Deepest Aspects of Life”? Which was it?
Selvan Srinivasan: My dedication message goes like this: “To the healing of the suffering humanity. May this book guide you to find the path to the place within to experience and live a life of complete freedom from suffering”
I go on to write in my introduction, as humans or as sentient beings with a physical body, experiencing pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. We can choose to opt out of suffering. It is merely a skill that we can inculcate. I learnt this skill and came to this realization during the course of my journey into awareness and ever since I am being driven by a calling from within to deliver this message to as many people as possible.
Almost the entire humanity seems to be suffering. It has been institutionalized into a system now, this suffering. But a few people still remain curious to find an alternative path because they are able to sense that things are not what they seem to be. There seems to be something deeper, some underlying level of existence where the solution exists. This book is meant for such curious seekers who are willing to experiment.
- Akhila Saroha: “Awareness Journey | The Happy Place Module – A Journey into the Deepest Aspects of Life” has a strong significance on the personal and social levels. Was prose the first format of writing that came to your mind to give words to your expression? Would you like to try the same with poetry as well?
Selvan Srinivasan: It has been prose so far. My wife used to say that I am tone deaf and I am not much into poetry or singing or music. But I don’t know what is happening within me as I go deeper into my own awareness. Messages come to my mind in the form of poetic quotes. I say it out sometimes during my mentoring sessions but I have not started writing it yet. Maybe one day after the six books in this Awareness Journey series have been published, I may find inspiration to start writing poetry. Strangely my voice modulation is also improving and my wife has started appreciating my singing!
- Akhila Saroha: “Awareness Journey | The Happy Place Module – A Journey into the Deepest Aspects of Life” has given a powerful introduction to your potential as a writer. How was the journey of the book in the making?
Selvan Srinivasan: Those twenty five days when the first rough draft of the book was written was the easiest part of making the book happen. When I returned back to Hyderabad and started the process of reaching out to publishers, I got so deeply frustrated with the daunting task ahead that I almost gave up the idea of publishing the book for a few weeks! But the calling had come from somewhere deep and that deep force did not let me rest. I came back rebounding, researched other books in the genre, learnt how to write a Book Proposal, relentlessly searched for a publisher until I found one. Meanwhile I must have read and revised the book a hundred times. Some of my students gave wonderful suggestions. I sent it to an American friend to get a sense of how it would look from a westerner’s perspective. Made a few changes based on her inputs. From June 2022 to January 2013 it was an amazing journey through unchartered territory before my life story became a published book.
- Akhila Saroha: “Awareness Journey | The Happy Place Module – A Journey into the Deepest Aspects of Life” is based on changing people’s lives through a certain course of action. How easy or difficult was it for you to decide the manner in which the structure of the book was to be defined?
Selvan Srinivasan: It was effortless. There was no thinking and deciding involved. The words just flowed and got arranged into this structure.
- Akhila Saroha: “Awareness Journey | The Happy Place Module – A Journey into the Deepest Aspects of Life” features a plot that develops swiftly and still manages to keep the readers involved. How did you ensure that the readership would remain involved throughout?
Selvan Srinivasan: By engaging readers throughout the process of the editing and rewriting. I would have asked this question a million times to the team of people who were reading it and giving suggestions; “How to make it more engaging and interesting”. Because basically it is a self-help book at its core and the practice is designed to quieten the thinking-mind. For the thinking-mind it is a suicidal trip because it ceases to exist when the aware mind opens up. How to entice the thinking-mind to happily go into this journey?
During the last five years, I have had several students who constantly keep dropping out of the course due to unconscious inner resistance and I could somehow help them come back. I had to just ask them what all I did to help them come back and incorporate it into the book.
- Akhila Saroha: In the present time, the ideas in “Awareness Journey | The Happy Place Module – A Journey into the Deepest Aspects of Life” do not find much mention. What, according to you, could be the possible reason for that?
Selvan Srinivasan: Collective human unconsciousness is the reason. It gets accentuated by the digital world that keeps the thinking mind engaged and attached, making it impossible to begin the inner journey into awareness. I have written a detailed note about this in the ‘about the book’ page of my website https://awarenessjourney.org/.
