ALL SHE WANTED TO BE
Tanaz Bhathena, whose debut novel A Girl Like That received rave reviews from Publishers Weekly and New York Times’ best-selling author Jodi Picoult among others, knew she wanted to be a writer when she was 13, but the conversation with her father didn’t go as planned.
Did she want to be a doctor, he asked. No, said Bhathena, she didn’t like science. A lawyer? An emphatic no. An engineer, then? Math wasn’t her strong suit, she pointed out. Well, what did she want to do, he asked.
And that’s when she said she wanted to write.
“He stared at me for a long time. ‘Fine, you’ll be an accountant,’ he announced,” she recalls with a fond laugh. “I was not raised to argue with my parents and that was that, at least for the time being. If and when I brought it up again, they’d ask if I was sure I would be a success and obviously, I couldn’t say for sure that I would!”
Her parents, Parsis from Mumbai, were working and living in Saudi Arabia at the time and moved to Canada in 2001.
The family settled in Mississauga. Bhathena attended TL Kennedy and faced some of the issues the protagonist in her second book, The Beauty of the Moment, faces.
She describes the sense of isolation, of dislocation, of existing in a limbo in her book.
“I feel that immigrants who come to Canada are not necessarily fully prepared for the realities of life here,” says Bhathena. “There are many who lived as housewives and then to adjust to living alone and perhaps get back into the workforce is not an easy transition. We need resources that can help newcomers in these aspects of their lives. They need support. Mental health is a very real issue that needs to be addressed.”
Teenagers she interacts with on her book readings sometimes want to discuss the timeline of her finding success. It was such a long journey, what can she say to them that will make it a positive one for them?
Bhathena poses a question in turn.
“Does writing make you happy? If the answer is yes, then continue to write, even if you don’t get published. This might sound rich coming from me but honestly, publishing doesn’t make me as happy as writing does. In college, when I wasn’t writing for a while, I was very unhappy.”
She also tells them to have a Plan B, something that will help pay the bills. “JK Rowling did! It may be a while before you get published. So keep writing, perfecting your craft. Talent is great, but persistence is important. My books are getting published and I hope that one day I will be able to write full time. It’s a slow build, but this is what I love doing. Getting lost in a different world that I can create, getting away from my mundane reality. When I stop writing for the day, sometimes it’s like emerging from under water. If the session went great, it’s almost a spiritual experience.”
Bhathena’s next novel, Haunted by the Sky, was the first in a young fantasy series.