About the Author

G. K Rao writes about himself:

I have been a journalist for most of my working life. That, by the way, began rather late at the age of twenty-eight, fewer than twenty years ago. Until then, I had done nothing much apart from reading and pondering. I wrote short stories and a few screenplays, but I wasn't satisfied with the cultural background in my writing. It was simply not convincing enough. A friend remarked it lacked a milieu.

After that it took me a long time to put words down on paper. Lack of confidence and a wariness about the hardness of the task explains it, I suppose. Also a sense of shame that I, an Indian, had to choose a foreign language to express myself. But of the two languages I did know, I found that Hindi was not plastic enough and Urdu was too ornate, too mannered, too courtly for me. English, on the other hand, I found friendly, and I had no difficulty bending it to my purposes. I don't know how to put it better, but now I can say that I'm not worried about speaking or expressing myself in a foreign language. I don't feel it is foreign, and that is good enough for me. I feel myself no less an Indian for writing in English.

The screenplays were written for a friend of mine, but since he couldn't get the money to do anything with them, they, like the stories, went the way of all old paper. One or two of the scripts were quite good, now that I think of it, but of course now we'll never know anything about them. Let them rot in peace.

As a journalist I worked on one of India's oldest newspapers, The Hindu, learning the trade and poking around the different corners of it. After that came the Sunday Mail one of the first Sunday newspapers. I came here to Malaysia in 1991, as Usha my wife had a desire to be in her homeland. Since then I've tried my hand at magazine editing and design, produced a book and written two (one on commission), helped to market a new type of first aid kit, and finally returned to my old trade of newsman. On the whole, it's the trade that still brings me the greatest joy. At this stage I can say that I have a pretty good grasp of the business, but of course there are a great many things in the area of providing information that have escaped me altogether. There is still time and I hope to make up the gap to some extent.

As a fiction writer I'm still very new, because since my early experiments I have written only a few feature articles, (feature writing employs some of the techniques of fiction writing) for the periodicals where I worked. The Boy Who Said No is my first work of fiction in many years.

In addition, I continue to explore philosophy, religion, and the sciences in my writing. I am working on a long essay that interrelates these subjects.

For the rest, I suppose I'm like all other people, with my own prejudices, preferences, and pretences. Sometimes I wonder how Usha puts up with them, but I remind myself that I put up with her too. If you like the person, then it is surprising how much nonsense you will accept. That is the best part of human unreason, our capacity for affection and respect despite all the reasons against it. We are at best imperfect, however much we may preen ourselves, and I for one think it will be sad day if we achieve perfection. We'll have left behind forever the changing colours of the human landscape.